Abstract

Canada dramatically increased the requirements of its parents/grandparents’ sponsorship immigration program (PGP program) in 2014. This article explores sponsored Chinese parents’ reasons for later-life immigration, their lived experiences in Canada, and participants’ perspectives on the PGP program and its policy changes, especially the extended “undertaking/dependence” clause. Drawing on neoliberal governmentality, biopolitics and racism literature, the article examines the state’s positioning of sponsored older immigrants in its power relations and its implications. Analyzed here is how the marketization of life, privatization of responsibilities and personal risks, and the internalization of neoliberal values among the immigrants shape and affect sponsored PGPs’ later life. The findings of this study reveal the stereotypes and biased, hegemonic knowledge around the portrayal of sponsored PGPs, especially those from the global South, in the state’s policymaking and its neoliberal governance. They also show that their unpaid contributions are ignored and exploited by the state and that they are framed as non-economic and a pure burden to it; the state treats them as “outsiders inside” by disqualifying their social assistance and senior benefit (OAS/GIS), indicating that the PGP program, as a governmental tool, still functions to construct and reproduce racism. My research shows that neoliberal governance has not facilitated self-reliance but has further disadvantaged the racialized vulnerable group and rendered their life harder. The study calls for a more sustainable PGP program and more inclusive settlement policies to facilitate their age-well in Canada.