The article explains how senior centres create conditions for older people’s social participation. It begins with a critique of the dominant approach in the literature, which reduces participation to access to an institution and what it has to offer, while overlooking the processes that occur “after crossing the threshold”: the production of belonging, recognition and the boundaries of membership. The literature was reviewed and synthesised from the perspective of social worlds drawn from the tradition of symbolic interactionism. The analysis shows that senior centres are institutionalised orders of joint action in which participation means learning the rules, finding one’s position and building visibility within them. Four mechanisms differentiating social experiences were identified: situational contacts; boundaries of belonging; norms of activity and capability; and participant status. Inclusion thus emerges as a relational practice, co-shaped by time, space, the format of activities and staff practices.
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