The pandemic has made Canadians more aware of the 3D jobs—dirty, challenging, and dangerous—performed by numerous migrant workers in our communities.
Many of these employees were providing crucial services when the pandemic initially started when they were on the front lines. Immigrant care workers engaged in low-wage work in the health and child care sector had significant rates of COVID-19 infections, as well as widespread job losses and ongoing financial challenges.
Our most recent article, published in the Journal of Aging and Social Policy, discloses unsettling truths about the aging of immigrant women caregivers. We discovered that immigrant women over 65 who came to Canada under the (Live-in) Caregiver program put in greater hours at work but earned less money overall. The necessary in-home element was removed in 2014 and the program has since been split into two pilot programs.These findings are crucially important given Canada’s rapidly aging population and increasing concern about senior poverty in racialized communities.
In Canada, we have long known that it is disproportionately racialized immigrant women (specifically Black and Filipina women) who do challenging and devalued work as carers. We also know that jobs like personal support workers, home health aides and child-care workers are still usually associated with “women’s work” and tend to have low wages.However, what we have not known is whether these women continue to experience these disadvantages later in life. Specifically, we have very little information about the financial challenges immigrant women care workers in Canada face as they age.
On the one hand, it is plausible that care workers are more likely than other workers to continue working past the typical retirement age because of their relatively low wages and limited savings.
On the other hand, due to the physically and emotionally demanding nature of care work, which can be detrimental to their health, care workers may be less likely to continue working past age 65 and have higher rates of eligibility for government low-income supports.
