UNSETTLING CHRONOMETRIC AGE AND DESERVINGNESS: TRACING OLDER REFUGEES’ AGE DOCUMENTS INTO US SYSTEMS

Abstract

Chronometric definitions of old age in U.S. welfare policy govern access to resources. When applied to older refugees, such metrics obscure the losses of displacement and challenges of resettlement in later life. In this poster, I trace the trajectory of age documents of refugees from overseas into U.S. systems. My purpose is to unsettle the logic of using chronometric age in bureaucracy, which contributes to the problem of older refugees failing to meet US age norms of employability or deservingness. My findings are based on 20 months of ethnographic fieldwork at a program for refugee “seniors” (60+) in Chicago, Illinois. Refugees become categorized by birthdates found in their documents acquired in a variety of bureaucratic contexts. Despite its frequent use among bureaucracies, chronometric age references implicit local and national cultural norms. Thus, refugees arriving in the US become subject to a process of translation into understandings of later life that affect their economic conditions. Refugees with limited resources waiting to become eligible for Supplemental Security Income at age 65 demonstrate the violence of a “joyless and indifferent regime” by which in “a single tick of the clock, one finds oneself in another category” (Baars 2012:32). As scholars of critical gerontology have suggested, the institutionalization of the life course is a major dimension of social inequality (Kohli 2007:261). These issues apply acutely to older refugees and point to a need for more critical attention to the enrollment of chronometric age standards in processes of inequality.