Promoting quality of life and healthy and active ageing have become central challenges for public policies, social responses and professional practices aimed at the older population. However, the provision of health and wellbeing services is often focussed on providing care in the face of diagnosed vulnerabilities, neglecting the right to participate and exercise full citizenship in the daily lives of older people. This article is based on a study carried out as part of the Gerontological Social Work Research Project: analysing practices and contexts. It is a qualitative study, which involved interviews with residents of care homes and social workers who work in these facilities, with the aim of finding out to what extent institutional routines and professional practices promote or limit the participation and citizenship of older people living in care homes. The results show that institutionalisation is marked by factors that are external to the person's will, with the constraints to their participation first appearing in the admission process. Institutional routines then limit the residents’ participation and lead to a loss of control over their activities, habits and privacy. It confirmed the need to adopt a model of operating that is more favourable to the world of older adults, in order to promote their participation in the most diverse areas of their lives and, in this way, enhance the qualities that are present in all the subjects, without placing limitations linked to their chronological age or physical and cognitive abilities.