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Research has shown that forms of inequality are increasing in Canada. However, one often-overlooked form has been the inequality of retirement time, which is the period between labour market exit and the end of the life course. Divergences that persist in retirement time present opportunities for scrutiny given that they often mirror other forms of inequality across the life course. While racialized immigrants are reported to be less successful in the Canadian labour market, very little is known about their lived experiences navigating retirement time after they exit the labour market. This paper utilizes data from 20 Jamaican Canadian retirees (aged 60 and older) that follows their retirement time experiences after long-term labour market participation in Canada, in order to provide the first qualitative study focused on this significant life transition. Underscoring both precarity and agency as important facets of Jamaican Canadians’ retirement time and later life, the paper highlights the interconnections of earlier life course trajectories, livelihood strategies, and their fears of perceived improvidence. It contributes to emergent scholarship on Jamaica’s ageing diaspora, who are among growing cohorts of ageing Caribbean immigrants in Canada. Importantly, it foregrounds their strategic responses to the risks and opportunities that contour this lesser-researched phase of the migratory life course.

Drawing on ethnographic research conducted since 2009 with Cantonese-speaking Chinese senior migrants in Boston’s downtown Chinatown and its satellite community in Quincy, MA, this paper contributes to a growing scholarly literature on the problem of senior support within the changing dynamics of contemporary Chinese family life by highlighting how the paid and unpaid caregiving work performed by Chinese-born senior migrants in the U.S. provides a means for them to act strategically to secure their own support in older age. The paper describes how these senior migrants work to negotiate their value within the family through caregiving while dealing with the familial conflicts that also arise in the process.

As a result of the aging of American society and the fact that older persons require a great deal more healthcare and much more expensive treatments, the costs are on the rise and spiraling out of control. As a solution, ethicists Daniel Callahan and others have proposed healthcare rationing on the basis of age. On the basis of utilitarian ethicist, these writers have argued that age-based rationing will lead to the provision of healthcare to the greatest number of people. Of course, utilizing other ethical theories other writers have opposed the rationing of healthcare on the basis of age. The paper presents the arguments made, and the ethical theories employed, by both sides, which suggest an ethical dilemma, thus most probably a debate about age-based rationing in the future. The author found it interesting to seek the views of professors teaching healthcare –related courses about this type of rationing. Utilizing grounded theory/ quantitative research methodology, designing a questionnaire that included some 14 questions, the author interviewed some 18 professors of healthcare courses in Pennsylvania. Utilizing grounded theory in the analysis of the results of the interviews led to some eight interesting themes, which are presented and analyzed in the paper. After presenting the results of that study, and not finding the application of age-based rationing feasible, the paper also discusses other alternative solutions for reducing healthcare costs, including the notion of fair innings suggested by Allan Williams. All these alternatives are discussed in the paper.

This paper presents an ethnographic case study that aims to understand the meaning of social participation in a neighbourhood for daily mobility in later life. In the study, the mobility of the participants of a senior-citizen project was monitored over 18 months. The project was founded as a result of a municipal district’s targeting of social sustainability. The results show that social participation had positive effects on the daily mobility of the participants. The implementation of broad-minded thinking from the municipality and the cooperation of various municipal actors were shown to be essential for the positive outcome of this project.