Gender, retirement & mobility: a case study of the Lobster Enterprise Retirement Program in Newfoundland

Bury, Madeline (2019) Gender, retirement & mobility: a case study of the Lobster Enterprise Retirement Program in Newfoundland. Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

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Abstract

This thesis explores issues of retirement, restructuring, gender and mobility through an analysis of the Lobster Enterprise Retirement Program (LERP) as it impacted lobster harvesters on the South Coast of Newfoundland (LFA 11). Employing the tools of Institutional Ethnography (Smith, 2005), this analysis begins in the work and daily lives of harvesters who retired through the LERP and explores the institutional networks and chains of action which transform their lived experience into institutionally manageable outcomes. I conclude, based on interview data from harvesters and key informants as well an analysis of program documents, that the LERP perpetuates historical advantage and disadvantage within the fishery. I explore the specific mechanisms of the program which simultaneously acknowledge and then make invisible the work of women and crew, in effect precluding their access to benefits of the program. I explore the implications of this structured inequality in terms of unpaid labour, negotiations of a retirement decision within couples, life in retirement, and the ability to find land-based work in rural Newfoundland subsequent to leaving the fishery. This project is supervised by Dr. Nicole Power and Dr. Charles Mather and is funded by the On The Move Partnership.

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