Racing to Entitled Leisure: Older Workers and Fractured Futures

Drawing on 37 semi-structured interviews with male and female workers in manufacturing and health care sectors located in the Peterborough Ontario region, the paper explores trajectories of "works end". For some these trajectories are assured and match the promise of a modernity that delivered the promise if a secure, balanced and stable life. However, for most, unstable labour markets, major industrial shifts, breaking bodies and location in the 'sandwich generation' (caught between ageing parents, unemployed offspring and extreme work pressure in senior positions) means that the post-retirement life of leisure is indeed a cruel lie made worse by failing public pension funds pushing the age of public pension eligibility, beyond what could possibly mean an 'end' to work.