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Unravelling the Interconnections of Immigration, Precarious Labour and Racism Across the Life Course
Abstract
This paper contributes to the growing body of work on precarious labor, immigration, and social gerontology by examining the racialization of precarious employment across the life course. In particular, the authors examine the impact of precarious employment and discrimination among racialized older immigrants in Canada. Racialized older immigrants are more likely to be disadvantaged by the effects of lifelong intersections of economic and social discrimination rooted in racialization, gender, ageism, and socio-economic status. Drawing from a narrative-photovoice project that focused on the life stories of older immigrants living in Quebec and British Columbia, this paper presents the in-depth stories and photographs of four participants to highlight how intersections of race, gender, age, immigration status, and ability shape and structure experiences of aging, labor market participation and caregiving relationships.
... Il ne faut pas manquer de souligner le fait que l'éducation acquise dans d'autres parties du monde n'est pas habituellement reconnue par les employeurs et le gouvernement canadiens, ce qui limite fortement la mobilité socioéconomique des personnes immigrantes. Cette réalité oblige les immigrants à occuper des emplois mal payés, trop souvent dangereux, et à cumuler plusieurs emplois ou à travailler de longues heures (ou les deux) pour joindre les deux bouts (Ferrer, Brotman, & Koehn, 2022). ...
... En général, en matière d'emploi, les gouvernements doivent se pencher sur les droits des travailleurs âgés, en accordant une attention particulière au marché du travail secondaire et au travail domestique où travaillent de nombreux immigrants âgés. Il faut notamment veiller à améliorer la rémunération, les conditions de travail, l'accès aux prestations pour le remplacement des revenus en raison d'infection ou effets économiques de la COVID-19, et le respect des règles de santé et de sécurité au travail (Ferrer et al., 2022). Le gouvernement fédéral doit également envisager d'améliorer le processus et la rapidité avec lesquels les personnes obtiennent le statut de résident permanent. ...
Résumé
Malgré l’attention renouvelée de plusieurs médias sur la question des risques liés à la COVID-19 au sein de diverses communautés marginalisées au Québec, nous entendons encore très peu parler des personnes âgées immigrantes et de leurs proches. Dans cette note sur les politiques et pratiques, nous aborderons l’expérience du contexte pandémique chez les personnes âgées immigrantes montréalaises et leurs réseaux. Nous présenterons d’abord quelques données sociodémographiques sur les immigrants âgés montréalais. Nous exposerons ensuite nos constats sur les impacts de la COVID-19 sur les personnes âgées immigrantes, en particulier en ce qui concerne l’accès aux soins de la santé et aux services sociaux, la proche-aidance, l’emploi et le logement, à partir de nos travaux et de la littérature en gérontologie sociale. Nous terminerons en proposant quelques recommandations qui permettraient d’améliorer l’inclusion sociale des personnes âgées immigrantes et de leurs proches, autant en matière de politiques publiques que de pratiques sur le terrain.
... Accessing services and settling in Canada pose multiple challenges for older adult INRs from Arabic-Speaking communities and this is mirrored in other studies on INR populations [7,[21][22][23][24][25][26]. Participants in our study, despite being connected to a social service organization, reported insufficient support in several areas. ...
Immigrant newcomers and refugees (INRs) are two migrant categories that experience consistent systemic barriers to settlement and integration in Canada as older adults. This paper explores the challenges experienced by Arabic-speaking INR older adults in Edmonton, Canada, during settlement and discusses policy and service implications. A qualitative description study using community-based participatory research principles was implemented to evaluate and support digital literacy in Arabic-speaking INR older adults. We included men and women aged 55 and older who identified as immigrants or refugees and spoke Arabic. Experiences of settlement challenges were consistently identified during data collection and engagement of INR older adult participants. A thematic sub-analysis of interviews with (10 individuals and one couple) of participants’ narratives was completed in 2022 and was used to identify themes related to settlement barriers for this population. Two main themes were identified: (1) Limited English skills and digital literacy gaps create service barriers for INR older adults, and (2) Gaps in services and policies as basic needs remain unmet. We describe key challenges experienced by INR older adults, such as language barriers, precarious finances, poor access to health care services and lack of transportation and employment opportunities, which hinder successful integration into the new society. This study showcases the ongoing challenges with early settlement and integration that continue despite Canada’s well-developed immigration settlement landscape. INR older adults often remain invisible in policy, and understanding their experiences is a first step to addressing their needs for resources that support healthy aging in the post-migration context.
... Common concerns are devaluation in the labour market in terms of education and skills and discrimination (Akkaymak, 2016;Premji & Shakya, 2017;Salami et al., 2020). Prior Canadian research indicates concerns with employment (Liu, 2019), in particular for older immigrants (Ferrer et al., 2022), African immigrants (Salami et al., 2020), and immigrant women (Premji & Shakya, 2017;Wing et al., 2019). Overall, immigrants often fare worse than non-immigrants in terms of poverty (Kazemipur & Halli, 2000, 2001a, 2001b. ...
The province of Alberta has a reputation of being a political maverick. Fighting against Ottawa for more control over its natural resources is one of its distinctive characteristics. Over the years, Alberta has created a model of prosperity based on a particular ethos and the political adage called the "Alberta Advantage," an often-seen appellation for equality and abundance. Our research seeks to understand the extent of that so-called advantage by examining the intersection of social class, gender, race, marital status and immigrant status for two distinct periods-before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. For this, we used the 2016 Canadian census and the Alberta Viewpoint survey of 2021. By using those two datasets, we shed a light on the dynamics of inequality and rethink social class in the West.
Purpose
This article explores differentiation in the responses of precarious workers to the instability and uncertainty imposed on their work by employing organizations. Our focus is on the ways in which different workers respond to precarious working conditions, with a particular interest on marginalised groups who have been especially overlooked by studies of workforce precarity.
Design/methodology/approach
Employs an approach akin to grounded theory in an exploratory research design and utilizes in-depth, semi-structured interviews of 56 precarious workers.
Findings
Finds that different precarious workers, with divergent characteristics and resources, facing differing working conditions, and diverse structural constraints vary in the ways in which their strategies of surviving precarious work are manifested. Uncovers three differing forms of precarious workers who each employ a different range of tactics and strategies in work.
Originality/value
Generates insights into differentiation of precarious workers in their responses to the ambiguous, challenging and, in many ways, subjugating conditions of their working conditions.
The design of digital technologies for older adults is often premised on deficit models of ageing that position older people as a homogenous group and as passive users of technology, with an overwhelming focus on meeting practical needs in older age. In response, a growing number of scholars in HCI and Science and Technology Studies (STS) are engaging with processes of co-design that situate older adults as experts in their own lives and as central to the design process. These scholars highlight how an essential first phase of co-design is understanding and foregrounding the lifeworlds, experiences and expertise of older adults. This paper responds to these calls, alongside the lack of consideration of minoritised older adults in co-design. It draws on the empirical findings from the first phase of the Connecting Through Culture As We Age project, which places twenty minoritised older adults who identify as disabled, and/or racially and/or socio-economically minoritised, at the centre of a digital innovation process. Through a case study approach, we focus on two of the minoritised older adults involved, to demonstrate the value of bringing together participatory methods with an interdisciplinary lifecourse lens. We highlight the power of this approach for understanding minoritised older adults' relationships with technology, as shaped by experiences across the lifecourse, for building relationships, and ensuring their agency and voice underpin the co-design process.
Critical race scholars in social work have underlined the importance of race. However, research in social work with older people have often bypassed analysis of the significance of race and racialisation as barriers that marginalised groups encounter due to their complex identities. The lived experiences of older racialised women in Finland are not sufficiently explored to understand how racialisation has an impact in their ageing. This article aims to address the gap in scholarship on how accumulated experiences of racism from the personal to structural levels throughout the life-course contribute to inequalities in ageing of migrant women. It investigates how older women from non-European migrant background narrate their experiences of racialisation in their everyday lives in Finland. It utilises the theoretical concepts of race, racism and racialisation to interpret the research findings. The article presents empirical findings from semi-structured interviews with twenty older women, which were analysed using a thematic analysis. The article concludes that it is key to recognise racism and its ramifications for ageing migrants in structures beyond the personal level. This study sheds light on the need to better understand the structural inequalities, intersecting identities and the lived experiences of older racialised women to promote social justice.
This article reports on a series of Stakeholder Outreach Forums hosted in Canadian communities from 2018 to 2019. These forums built on a previous research project, The Lived Experiences of Aging Immigrants, which sought to amplify the voices of older immigrants through Photovoice and life course narratives analyzed through an intersectional life course perspective. The forums used World Café methods to encourage cumulative discussions among a broad range of stakeholders who work with or influence the lives of immigrant older adults. Participants viewed the previously created Lived Experiences of Aging Immigrants Photovoice exhibit, which provided a springboard for these discussions. The forums’ aim was to increase the stakeholders’ awareness of the experiences of immigrants in Canada as they age and to create space for the stakeholders to reflect upon and discuss the experiences of aging immigrants. Here we illustrate how the forums complement the narrative Photovoice research methodology and highlight the potential of Photovoice and targeted outreach strategies to extend academic research findings to relevant stakeholders. Across all forums, participants identified structural and systemic barriers that shape experiences of and responses to social exclusion in the daily lives of immigrant older adults. They further identified challenges and strengths in their own work specific to the issues of social inclusion, caregiving, housing, and transportation. Intersectoral solutions are needed to address the structural and systemic roots of exclusion at the public policy and organizational levels.
Population aging and international migration have propelled the aging of ethno-cultural minorities to the forefront of social scientific inquiries. Examining how scholarship on old age makes sense of ethnicity and race has become relevant. Based on a scoping review of peer-reviewed articles published between 1998 and 2017 (n = 336), the present article asks whether the notions of racialization and racism inform this scholarship and argues that a racism-sensitive research agenda is needed.
This report presents the findings of a study undertaken to examine the health impacts of precarious work on racialized immigrant women. There is an emerging consensus that precarious working conditions have become a determinant of poor health. The study seeks to understand this relationship in the case of racialized immigrant and refugee women who make up a growing proportion of those in precarious employment
In policy debates it is commonly claimed that older workers are entering a period of choice and control. In contrast, Guy Standing's book The Precariat: The Dangerous New Class , published in 2011, argues that older people are increasingly joining the ‘precariat’, by taking low-level jobs to supplement dwindling pension incomes. We argue that many older workers, not just those in ‘precarious jobs’, feel a sense of ‘ontological precarity’. Pressures to work longer, combined with limited alternative employment prospects and inadequate retirement incomes, give rise to a heightened sense of precarity. We develop a new theoretical model for understanding precarity as a lived experience, which is influenced by the intersection between precarious jobs, precarious welfare states and precarious households. This model is then illustrated using qualitative research from two organisations in the United Kingdom: ‘Local Government’ and ‘Hospitality’. In both organisations, older workers experienced a sense of ontological precarity because they worried about the long-term sustainability of their jobs and saw limited alternative sources of retirement income. Household circumstances either reinforced interviewees’ sense of precarity, or acted as a buffer against it. This was particularly important for women, as they typically accrued smaller financial resources in their own right. Our concluding discussion builds on this more advanced theoretical understanding of older worker precarity to call for a rethinking of state and employer support for decisions around later-life working and retirement.
This article addresses how critical race theory can inform a critical race methodology in education. The authors challenge the intercentricity of racism with other forms of subordination and exposes deficit-informed research that silences and distorts epistemologies of people of color. Although social scientists tell stories under the guise of “objective” research, these stories actually uphold deficit, racialized notions about people of color. For the authors, a critical race methodology provides a tool to “counter” deficit storytelling. Specifically, a critical race methodology offers space to conduct and present research grounded in the experiences and knowledge of people of color. As they describe how they compose counter-stories, the authors discuss how the stories can be used as theoretical, methodological, and pedagogical tools to challenge racism, sexism, and classism and work toward social justice.
Despite a growing body of epidemiological evidence in recent years documenting the health impacts of racism, the cumulative evidence base has yet to be synthesized in a comprehensive meta-analysis focused specifically on racism as a determinant of health. This meta-analysis reviewed the literature focusing on the relationship between reported racism and mental and physical health outcomes. Data from 293 studies reported in 333 articles published between 1983 and 2013, and conducted predominately in the U.S., were analysed using random effects models and mean weighted effect sizes. Racism was associated with poorer mental health (negative mental health: r =-.23, 95% CI [-.24,-.21], k = 227; positive mental health: r =-.13, 95% CI [-.16,-.10], k = 113), including depression, anxiety, psychological stress and various other outcomes. Racism was also associated with poorer general health (r =-.13 (95% CI [-.18,-.09], k = 30), and poorer physical health (r =-.09, 95% CI [-.12,-.06], k = 50). Moderation effects were found for some outcomes with regard to study and exposure characteristics. Effect sizes of racism on mental health were stronger in cross-sectional compared with longitudinal data and in non-representative samples compared with representative samples. Age, sex, birthplace and education level did not moderate the effects of racism on health. Ethnicity significantly moderated the effect of racism on negative mental health and physical health: the association between racism and negative mental health was significantly stronger for Asian American and Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants, and the association between racism and physical health was significantly stronger for Latino(a) American participants compared with African American participants. Protocol PROSPERO registration number: CRD42013005464.
This paper is an ethnographic exploration of a seldom-discussed ‘micro’ dimension of transnational studies, the practices of long-distance family relations and aged care. The importance of time as a key variable in transnational research is demonstrated through comparisons of the care exchanges of three cohorts of Italian migrants in Australia and their kin in Italy. A focus on ‘transnationalism from below’, the more quotidian and domestic features of transmigrant experience, highlights the importance of considering the role of homeland kin and communities in discussions of migration. The analysis of transnational care-giving practices illustrates that migrancy is sometimes triggered by the need to give or receive care rather than the more commonly assumed ‘rational’ economic motivations. Transnational lives are thus shaped by the ‘economies of kinship’, which develop across changing state (‘macro’), community (‘meso’) and family migration (‘micro’) histories, including, in particular, culturally constructed notions of ‘ideal’ family relations and obligations, as well as notions of ‘successful’ migration and ‘licence to leave’.
This article explores the relationship between precarious employment and precarious migrant legal status. Original research on immigrant workers' employment experiences in Toronto examines the effects of several measures including human capital, network, labor market variables, and a change in legal status variable on job precarity as measured by an eight-indicator Index of Precarious Work (IPW). Precarious legal status has a long-lasting, negative effect on job precarity; both respondents who entered and remained in a precarious migratory status and those who shifted to secure status were more likely to remain in precarious work compared to respondents who entered with and remained in a secure status. This leaves no doubt that migrant-worker insecurity and vulnerability stem not only from having 'irregular' status. We introduce the notion of a work-citizenship matrix to capture the ways in which the precariousness of legal status and work intersect in the new economy. People and entire groups transition through intersecting work-citizenship insecurities, where prior locations have the potential to exert long-term effects, transitions continue to occur indefinitely over the life-course, and gains on one front are not always matched on others.
Photovoice is a participatory action research strategy by which people create and discuss photographs as a means of catalyzing
personal and community change. The use of photovoice as an effective tool for carrying out participatory needs assessment,
conducting participatory evaluation and reaching policy-makers has been discussed elsewhere. Here the authors examine the
claims made for the effectiveness of photovoice as a participatory method. To do so, they describe one large-scale case study
and then consider where it succeeded or failed in fulfilling its participatory aims. Differences among participants in political
power, class, education and control over one's life illustrate certain advantages and potential costs of participation, and
suggest considerations for minimizing the risk of unintended consequences.
Migrant workers from the Philippines are ubiquitous to global capitalism, with nearly 10 percent of the population employed in almost two hundred countries. In a visit to the United States in 2003, Philippine president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even referred to herself as not only the head of state but also “the CEO of a global Philippine enterprise of eight million Filipinos who live and work abroad.” The book investigates how and why the Philippine government transformed itself into what it calls a labor brokerage state, which actively prepares, mobilizes, and regulates its citizens for migrant work abroad. Filipino men and women fill a range of jobs around the globe, including domestic work, construction, and engineering, and they have even worked in the Middle East to support U.S. military operations. At the same time, the state redefines nationalism to normalize its citizens to migration while fostering their ties to the Philippines. Those who leave the country to work and send their wages to their families at home are treated as new national heroes. Drawing on ethnographic research of the Philippine government’s migration bureaucracy, interviews, and archival work, the book presents a new analysis of neoliberal globalization and its consequences for nation-state formation.
Research points to a higher risk for social isolation and loneliness among new immigrant and refugee older adults. Our article draws from a research project that explored the everyday stories of ageing among 19 diverse immigrant older adults in Canada. To capture their experiences of loneliness and social isolation, we use four illustrative cases derived from a structural approach to life-story narrative. To these we apply the intersectional lifecourse analytical lens to examine how life events, timing and structural forces shape our partici-pants' experiences of social isolation and loneliness. We further explore the global and linked lives of our participants as well as the categories of difference that influence their experiences along the continua of loneliness to belonging, isolation to connection. Finally, we discuss how an understanding of sources of domination and expressions of agency and resistance to these forces might lead us to solutions.
This article describes a small-scale photovoice study examining the financial literacy of older immigrants in Canada. Older immigrants experience multiple forms of financial exclusion rooted in the
intersections between age, race, gender, immigration, and labour history. While the existing literature notes how immigrants are more likely to be unbanked because of structural barriers such as
inaccessible services and language barriers, few studies have explored how older immigrants discuss their experiences and financial conditions. Using a photovoice methodology, this paper explores the experiences of financial literacy among older immigrants in Calgary, Alberta through in-depth interviews and photographs taken by participants. We discuss the lived experiences and financial realities among older immigrants, how they perceive challenges to financial literacy as well as coping strategies. Themes focus on the ways in which histories of immigration and labour impact their financial security in later life. Photographs generated offer service providers and policy makers opportunities to think about and engage in interventions that better tackle issues of financial insecurity and inequality among older immigrants.
Based on a content analysis of family gerontology empirical studies in 13 journals (2009–2018), this article identifies theories currently being used and provides suggestions for future family gerontology theorizing. Family gerontologists are now using a greater range of theories than they were in the 1990s, including many middle‐range ones, and more scholars are citing multiple theories in their publications. Ways to advance family gerontology theorizing are to integrate more gerontology content into family theory textbooks, link middle‐range theories to broader general theories, and discuss how to use multiple theories effectively in research. Commonly used and emerging theories in family gerontology research can also be closely examined, and findings related to intersectionality and intergenerational ambivalence are briefly examined as examples of emerging theories used to study later‐life families.
After migrating from Jamaica to Canada, many transmigrants eventually become retirees. With increased insecurity in later life, older adult transmigrants continue to experience the ever-shifting conceptions of identity and belonging. With most of their working lives spent in Canada, they now have multi-layered identities stemming from their transnational and diasporic experiences. These considerations remain important when they are faced with residential decisions about where to live when they retire. This paper illustrates the spatial and temporal contexts of the transnational ageing experience by exploring the findings of a multi-sited ethnographic study of Jamaican Canadian retirees (age 60 and over). The study aimed to foster an understanding of the transmigrant experiences of Jamaican Canadian older adults who live in and across Canada and Jamaica. Central questions were the following: How do retired Jamaican Canadian transmigrants perceive their experience of retirement? What are some of the considerations in selecting a final residence after they retire? How do they signal the end of their migration journey from Jamaica to Canada? Data collection took place in Toronto, Canada, and in Trelawny and Manchester, Jamaica. The study revealed opportunities and challenges associated with ageing across borders and the factors which determine where older adult transmigrants select as their final residence post-retirement, a process which signals the occlusion of their migration endeavour.
Background and objective:
The concept of precarity holds the potential to understand insecurities and risks experienced by older people in the contemporary social, economic, political and cultural context. This study maps existing conceptualizations of precarity in relation to aging and later life, identifies key themes, and considers the use of precarity in two subfields.
Research design and methods:
This article presents the findings of a two-phase scoping study of the international literature on precarity in later life. Phase I involved a review of definitions and understandings of precarity and aging. Phase II explored two emerging subthemes of disability and im/migration as related to aging and late life.
Results:
A total of 121 published studies were reviewed across Phase I and Phase II. Findings reveal that the definition of precarity is connected with insecurity, vulnerability, and labor and that particular social locations, trajectories, or conditions may heighten the risk of precarity in late life.
Implications and discussion:
The article concludes by outlining the need for conceptual clarity, research on the unique multidimensional features of aging and precarity, the delineation of allied concepts and emerging applications, and the importance of linking research results with processes of theory building and the development of policy directives for change.
Research on racialized older immigrants does not fully acknowledge the interplay between the life course experiences of diverse populations and the structural conditions that shape these experiences. Our research team has developed the intersectional life course perspective to enhance researchers’ capacity to take account of the cumulative effects of structural discrimination as people experience it throughout the life course, the meanings that people attribute to those experiences, and the implications these have on later life. Here we propose an innovative methodological approach that combines life story narrative and photovoice methods in order to operationalize the intersectional life course. We piloted this approach in a study of the everyday stories of aging among diverse immigrant older adults in two distinct Canadian provinces with the goals of enhancing capacity to account for both context and story and engaging with participants and stakeholders from multiple sectors in order to influence change.
Population aging and longevity in the context of declining social commitments raise concerns about disadvantage, inequality, and the well‐being of older people. In this short piece, we use the concept of precarity as a lens to understand new and sustained forms of insecurity that affect late life, and we illustrate how these risks, when experienced over time and in relation to conditions such as austerity, can deepen disadvantage.
For generations, migration moved in one direction at a time: migrants to host countries, and money to families left behind. The Labor of Care argues that globalization has changed all that. Valerie Francisco-Menchavez spent five years alongside a group of working migrant mothers. Drawing on interviews and up-close collaboration with these women, Francisco-Menchavez looks at the sacrifices, emotional and material consequences, and recasting of roles that emerge from family separation. She pays particular attention to how technologies like Facebook, Skype, and recorded video open up transformative ways of bridging distances while still supporting traditional family dynamics. As she shows, migrants also build communities of care in their host countries. These chosen families provide an essential form of mutual support. What emerges is a fascinating portrait of today's transnational family-sundered, yet inexorably linked over the distances by timeless emotions and new forms of intimacy. © 2018 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. All rights reserved.
'Imagined Communities' examines the creation & function of the 'imagined communities' of nationality & the way these communities were in part created by the growth of the nation-state, the interaction between capitalism & printing & the birth of vernacular languages in early modern Europe.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how precarious conditions at work affect older workers’ decision about their planned age of retirement.
Design/methodology/approach
Different theoretical approaches on the decision to retire are investigated in order to ascertain whether precarious employment extends, or not, one’s working life. A rich data set including over 250,000 old workers across EU-15 is built for the empirical investigation.
Findings
The results suggest that old workers involved in precarious employment are planning to retire later than those who are engaged with more stable and regular jobs. However, lack of training as well as poor health conditions at work are found to be associated with early retirement.
Originality/value
The analysis conceptually associates two key features of modern labour markets (precariousness and retirement) and empirically provides some evidence of the effect of poor employment conditions on the decision to retire.
Precarious employment is on the rise in Canada, increasing by nearly 50% in the last two decades. However, little is known about the mechanisms by which it can impact upon geographical mobility. Employment-related geographical mobility refers to mobility to, from and between workplaces, as well as mobility as part of work. We report on a qualitative study conducted among 27 immigrant men and women in Toronto that investigates the relationship between precarious employment and daily commutes while exploring the ways in which gender, class and migration structure this relationship.
Interview data reveal that participants were largely unable to work where they lived or live where they worked. Their precarious jobs were characterized by conditions that resulted in long, complex, unfamiliar, unsafe and expensive commutes. These commuting difficulties, in turn, resulted in participants having to refuse or quit jobs, including desirable jobs, or being unable to engage in labour market strategies that could improve their employment conditions (e.g. taking courses, volunteering, etc.). Participants’ commuting difficulties were amplified by the delays, infrequency, unavailability and high cost of public transportation. These dynamics disproportionately and/or differentially impacted certain groups of workers.
Precarious work has led to workers having to absorb an ever-growing share of the costs associated with their employment, underscored in our study as time, effort and money spent travelling to and from work. We discuss the forces that underlie the spatial patterning of work and workers in Toronto, namely the growing income gap and the increased polarization among neighbourhoods that has resulted in low-income immigrants increasingly moving from the centre to the edges of the city. We propose policy recommendations for public transportation, employment, housing and child care that can help alleviate some of the difficulties described.
This article proposes the development of an intersectional life course perspective that is capable of exploring the links between structural inequalities and the lived experience of aging among racialized older people. Merging key concepts from intersectionality and life course perspectives, the authors suggest an analytic approach to better account for the connections between individual narratives and systems of domination that impinge upon the everyday lives of racialized older people. Our proposed intersectional life course perspective includes four dimensions: 1) identifying key events and their timing, 2) examining locally and globally linked lives, 3) exploring categories of difference and how they shape identities, 4) and assessing how processes of differentiation, and systems of domination shape the lives, agency and resistance among older people. Although applicable to various forms of marginalization, we examine the interplay of racialization, immigration, labour and care in later life to highlight relationships between systems, events, trajectories, and linked lives. The illustrative case example used in this paper emerged from a larger critical ethnographic study of aging in the Filipino community in Montreal, Canada. We suggest that an intersectional life course perspective has the potential to facilitate a deeper understanding of the nexus of structural, personal and relational processes that are experienced by diverse groups of older people across the life course and into late life.
RÉSUMÉ
Bien que la recherche canadienne sur le travail domestique ait surtout porté sur les expériences immigratoires et migratoires des travailleurs domestiques dans le cadre du Programme concernant les employés de maison étrangers et du Programme des aides familiaux résidants, la recherche est rare sur la retraite de ces travailleurs et la façon dont ils vieillissent dans la société canadienne. Cet article met l’accent sur les expériences de vieillissement des travailleurs domestiques philippins qui, en entrant à la retraite, se retrouvent dans l’économie secondaire et / ou souterraine, tout en fournissant et en recevant des soins de leurs conjoints, petits-enfants et membres locales ou transnationales de leur famille. Les données ont été tirées des six entrevues qualitatives et approfondies avec vieilles domestiques philippines qui a parlé de l’expérience de l’immigration, travail dans la prestation de soins, la retraite et le vieillissement. Les résultats soulignent (1) la pauvreté que les travailleurs domestiques philippins âgés rencontrent quand ils abordent leur retraite ; (2) la nécessité pour mais l’insuffisance des dispositions sur la retraite de l’État ; (3) la nécessité de trouver du travail à la main-d’oeuvre non déclarée ; et (4) comment la pratique d’accompagnement est effectuée, comme une stratégie de survie, entre les générations.
This article critiques digital photovoice, a method deployed by social activists, developmentalists, and anthropological researchers. I argue that the uncritical use of photovoice methods (1) has allowed a reinvigoration of a positivist orientation toward image authenticity and (2) inadvertently supports hegemonic regimes of value. To revitalize photovoice as a method, I argue that practitioners must view their project as an aesthetic one, in which image-makers are considered auteurs producing realities. I provide an example from my fieldwork in Adavisandra village near Bangalore, using one of my students’ photographs to consider how representations of her life change when we take her aesthetic-auterial sensibility seriously.
Questions of national identity, indigenous rights, citizenship, and migration have acquired unprecedented relevance in this age of globalization. In Exalted Subjects, noted feministscholar Sunera Thobani examines the meanings and complexities of these questions in a Canadian context. Based in the theoretical traditions of political economy and cultural / post-colonial studies, this book examines how the national subject has been conceptualized in Canada at particular historical junctures, and how state policies and popular practices have exalted certain subjects over others.Foregrounding the concept of ‘race’ as a critical relation of power, Thobani examines how processes of racialization contribute to sustaining and replenishing the politics of nation formation and national subjectivity. She challenges the popular notion that the significance of racialized practices in Canada has declined in the post Second World War period, and traces key continuities and discontinuities in these practices from Confederation into the present. Drawing on historical sociology and discursive analyses, Thobani examines how the stateseeks to ‘fix’ and ‘stabilize’ its subjects in relation to the nation's ‘others.’ A controversial, ground-breaking study, Exalted Subjects makes a major contribution to our understanding of the racialized and gendered underpinnings of both nation and subject formation. © University of Toronto Press Incorporated 2007 All rights reserved.
In Canada, many immigrants and migrant workers face multiple levels of exploitation as employers further reduce costs of production. This article considers the proliferation of temporary labour recruitment agencies hiring migrant and immigrant workers as well as current organizing and campaigning against the exploitative practices of the temporary recruitment agency industry in Québec. Drawing from critical labour scholarship and the authors' engagement in immigrant labour justice struggles, we argue that, given the expansion of temporary foreign worker programs and continued attacks on unions, temp agency work and other forms of precarious work can no longer be seen as being at the margins of labour. The presence and proliferation of agency work in the context of the ongoing restructuring of work, and the existence of a pool of precarious migrant and immigrant workers acts as a de-regulatory force in labour markets. We argue that temporary agency workers' conditions and struggles for labour justice must be contextualized in relation to broader historical and contemporary trends in national and global labour as well as immigration and economic policymaking. Finally, we place in dialogue knowledge and learning arising from a Montreal immigrant workers' centre with strategies to defend agency workers' and day labourers' rights in other contexts.
Different migration theories generate competing hypotheses with regard to determinants of return migration. While neoclassical migration theory associates migration to the failure to integrate at the destination, the new economics of labour migration sees return migration as the logical stage after migrants have earned sufficient assets and knowledge and to invest in their origin countries. The projected return is then likely to be postponed for sustained or indefinite periods if integration is unsuccessful. So, from an indication or result of integration failure return is rather seen as a measure of success. Drawing on recent survey data (N = 2,832), this article tests these hypotheses by examining the main determinants of return intention among Moroccan migrants across Europe. The results indicate that structural integration through labour market participation, education and the maintenance of economic and social ties with receiving countries do not significantly affect return intentions. At the same time, investments and social ties to Morocco are positively related, and socio-cultural integration in receiving countries is negatively related to return migration intentions. The mixed results corroborate the idea that there is no uniform process of (return) migration and that competing theories might therefore be partly complementary.
Over the last two decades, women have organized against the almost routine violence that shapes their lives. Drawing from the strength of shared experience, women have recognized that the political demands of millions speak more powerfully than the pleas of a few isolated voices. This politicization in turn has transformed the way we understand violence against women. For example, battering and rape, once seen as private (family matters) and aberrational (errant sexual aggression), are now largely recognized as part of a broad-scale system of domination that affects women as a class. This process of recognizing as social and systemic what was formerly perceived as isolated and individual has also characterized the identity politics of people of color and gays and lesbians, among others. For all these groups, identity-based politics has been a source of strength, community, and intellectual development. The embrace of identity politics, however, has been in tension with dominant conceptions of social justice. Race, gender, and other identity categories are most often treated in mainstream liberal discourse as vestiges of bias or domination-that is, as intrinsically negative frameworks in which social power works to exclude or marginalize those who are different. According to this understanding, our liberatory objective should be to empty such categories of any social significance. Yet implicit in certain strands of feminist and racial liberation movements, for example, is the view that the social power in delineating difference need not be the power of domination; it can instead be the source of political empowerment and social reconstruction. The problem with identity politics is not that it fails to transcend difference, as some critics charge, but rather the opposite- that it frequently conflates or ignores intra group differences. In the context of violence against women, this elision of difference is problematic, fundamentally because the violence that many women experience is often shaped by other dimensions of their identities, such as race and class. Moreover, ignoring differences within groups frequently contributes to tension among groups, another problem of identity politics that frustrates efforts to politicize violence against women. Feminist efforts to politicize experiences of women and antiracist efforts to politicize experiences of people of color' have frequently proceeded as though the issues and experiences they each detail occur on mutually exclusive terrains. Al-though racism and sexism readily intersect in the lives of real people, they seldom do in feminist and antiracist practices. And so, when the practices expound identity as "woman" or "person of color" as an either/or proposition, they relegate the identity of women of color to a location that resists telling. My objective here is to advance the telling of that location by exploring the race and gender dimensions of violence against women of color. Contemporary feminist and antiracist discourses have failed to consider the intersections of racism and patriarchy. Focusing on two dimensions of male violence against women-battering and rape-I consider how the experiences of women of color are frequently the product of intersecting patterns of racism and sexism, and how these experiences tend not to be represented within the discourse of either feminism or antiracism... Language: en
The life course has emerged over the past 30 years as a major research paradigm. Distinctive themes include the relation between human lives and a changing society, the timing of lives, linked or interdependent lives, and human agency. Two lines of research converged in the formation of this paradigm during the 1960s; one was associated with an older "social relationship" tradition that featured intergenerational studies, and the other with more contemporary thinking about age. The emergence of a life course paradigm has been coupled with a notable decline in socialization as a research framework and with its incorporation by other theories. Also, the field has seen an expanding interest in how social change alters people's lives, an enduring perspective of sociological social psychology.
In this article we develop a theoretical framework attuned to the relationship between discourses of security, race/racialization, and foreignness. Applying this framework to three historic instances of Canadian national insecurity (Japanese-Canadian internment, the Front de libération du Québec crisis, and the Kanehsatake/Oka crisis), we argue that “foreignness” is produced and regulated in historically specific ways with consequences for how “the nation” is viewed. We demonstrate how this is especially evident in relation to racialized constructions of “internal dangerous foreigners.” Our framework and findings invite larger disciplinary consideration of the post-September 11 security environment both in and outside Canada.
Shifts in Canada’s immigration policy, most recently linked to the Security and Prosperity Partnership (SPP) with the US and Mexico, have created an increased reliance on temporary migrant workers, who constitute a disposable workforce, driven from their own countries by the same forces of neoliberal capitalism which foster their super-exploitation in the Canadian labour market. In this article, the operation of two migrant worker programmes, the Seasonal Agricultural Workers Program (SAWP) and Live-in Caregiver Program (LCP), are considered in the context of the province of British Columbia. The various means by which migrant workers are maintained in a state of vulnerability, available as a pool of cheap labour but excluded from belonging to the nation, are discussed. The article concludes by examining examples and further possibilities of alliances across social movements in BC in order to advance the struggle for human dignity.
This qualitative study explores the international migration patterns and the family lives of older adults. Informants (N = 54) reported that they came to the United States to help out their grown children with housekeeping, child care, and domestic economizing. They described how they strategically navigated U.S. immigration laws choosing to visit, immigrate, or naturalize in order to balance their ties to the United States and their homeland. Their transnational loyalties sometimes led to lives that did not strictly match their visa categories. There were “permanent” temporary visitors, U.S. permanent residents who maintained a “permanent” home elsewhere, and U.S. citizens who had naturalized in order to spend more time abroad. Implications of the findings for immigration policy and family practice are discussed.
Escape, retreat, revolt: Queer people of colour living in Montreal: Using photovoice as a tool for community organizing
- E O Lee
Lee, E.O. (2012). Escape, retreat, revolt: Queer people of colour living in Montreal: Using
photovoice as a tool for community organizing. In A. Choudry; J. Hanley, and E. Shragge
(Eds.), Organize! Building from the local for global justice. PM Press. 82-95.
The history of immigration and racism in Canada: Essential readings
- P W Ward
Ward, P.W. (2008). Evacuation. In Walker, B. (ed.),The history of immigration and racism in
Canada: Essential readings. Canadian Scholars' Press. 205-220.
Canada's economic apartheid: The social exclusion of racialized groups in the new century
- G.-E Galabuzi
Galabuzi, G.-E. (2006). Canada's economic apartheid: The social exclusion of racialized groups
in the new century. Canadian Scholars' Press.
The economic exclusion of racialized communities: A statistical profile
- G E Galabuzi
Galabuzi, G.E.(2008). The economic exclusion of racialized communities: A statistical profile.
In Walker, B. (ed.), The history of immigration and racism in Canada: Essential readings.
Canadian Scholars' Press. 279-301.
Niche employment or occupational segmentation? Immigrant women working in the settlement sector in Germany and Canada. Ryerson Centre for Immigration and Settlement
- S Jayaraman
- H Bauder
Jayaraman, S., & Bauder, H. (2013/2014). Niche employment or occupational segmentation?
Immigrant women working in the settlement sector in Germany and Canada. Ryerson Centre
for Immigration and Settlement.
True test of reconciliation: Respect the indigenous right to say no
- P Palmater
Palmater, P. (2018). True test of reconciliation: Respect the indigenous right to say no.
Canadian Dimension, 52(1), 6-7.
Return migration as failure or success? the determinants of return migration intentions among Moroccan migrants in Europe
- H De Haas
- T Fokkema
- M F Fihri
de Haas, H., Fokkema, T., & Fihri, M. F. (2015). Return migration as failure or success? the
determinants of return migration intentions among Moroccan migrants in Europe. Journal of
International Migration and Integration, 16(2), 415-429. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-014-0344-6