“We’re Always Looking at the Dollars and cents”: The Financial well-being of Racialized Older Immigrants in Canada Through the lens of Service Providers

Abstract

While older adults remain a population of interest when considering financial well-being, the experiences of racialized older immigrants remain scarce. In fact, the existing literature has a propensity to keep age, race, and ethnicity as separate categories rather consider their interconnections. Addressing this paucity of research is especially urgent given recent reports that highlight the emerging experiences of poverty among older adults living in Canadian urban centers such as Montreal, Toronto, and Vancouver. Analyzing data from a focus group with service providers in the city of Calgary, Alberta, this article identifies the barriers to financial well-being among racialized older immigrants and newcomers. Themes center on the structural barriers related to the ten-year and twenty-year dependency period, and experiences of structured dependency within intergenerational family units. This article also offers recommendations for policymakers and service organizations in strengthening financial well-being of racialized older immigrants. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.