Ageing transmigrants and the decolonisation of life course

ABSTRACT

This paper examines how ageing transmigrants engage in practises that serve to decolonise life course in order to create increased opportunities to live well. It analyses the experiences of Jamaican Canadian older adults (age 60 and older) who decided to remain in Canada, return to Jamaica, or travel between countries after retirement. As transmigrants with racialised minority and diasporic backgrounds, they grapple with questions of financial, socio-cultural, and emotional well-being that become more complicated and multi-layered in later life. This qualitative study utilises multi-sited ethnography to collect data in Canada and Jamaica. It also engages with the work of cultural critic Sylvia Wynter whose conceptions of decolonisation and humanism serve to reveal more diversified life course and ageing experiences. As postcolonial nation-states, Canada and Jamaica become ambivalent and vexed sites of home, belonging, security, and movement. Through decolonisation, transmigrants learn and unlearn how to navigate these spaces in ways that illuminate the ongoing struggles and pleasures of the quotidian within the broader contexts of transnational social fields.

KEYWORDS:

• Decolonisation
• ageing
• migration
• lifelong learning
• life course

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. Block and Galabuzi (2011) use the term ‘racialised’ to ‘acknowledge ‘race’ as a social construct and a way of describing a group of people. Racialization is the process through which groups come to be designated as different and on that basis subjected to differential and unequal treatment. In the present context, racialised groups include those who may experience differential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, language, economics, religion’ (p. 19). Basch, Schiller, and Szanton-Blanc (1994) define transmigrants as ‘Immigrants who develop and maintain multiple relationships–familial, economic, social, organizational, religious, and political–that span borders…. Transmigrants take actions, make decisions, and develop subjectivities and identities embedded in networks of relationships that connect them simultaneously to two or more nation-states’ (p. 7).

2. Jamaica and Canada are former colonies of European empires, and are now regarded as postcolonial states following political independence from Great Britain. Despite independence, both countries bear the legacy and discourses of colonialism (Ashcroft, Griffiths, & Tiffin, 2007).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Shamette Hepburn

Shamette Hepburn is an Assistant Professor at the School of Social Work, York University, Canada. She completed her PhD in Social Justice Education at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education (OISE) at the University of Toronto. Her doctoral thesis attends to the global life course and visual articulation of the everyday life geographies of racialized diasporic older adults and their decisions for post-retirement care and living. Her current research interests are focused on the development of postcolonial, transnational social work research, education, and practice. 

Roland Sintos Coloma

Roland Sintos Coloma is Assistant Dean and Professor of Teacher Education at Wayne State University in Michigan, USA. He completed his PhD in Cultural Studies in Education at The Ohio State University, and was a faculty member in the US Midwest (Ohio and Kentucky) and Canada (Toronto). His research and teaching focus on urban and global education; curriculum and policy; history and theory; race, gender, and sexuality; and Filipino and Asian diasporas.