Age-Friendly Communities and Cultural Pluralism: Examining Saskatoon’s Chinese-Canadian Social Enclave

This article uses findings from qualitative interviews to examine the experiences of members of Saskatoon's Chinese-Canadian older-adult community in terms of their realities of aging and access to important geriatric resources. Promoting an understanding of both group experience and a broader conceptualization of age-friendly development, we argue that the notion and implications of a spatial ethnic enclave are replaced in the Saskatoon context by a social enclave. This network of social support is evident in Chinese-Canadian older adults' access to housing, recreation, transportation, and health services. The article concludes with lessons learned that would help enhance culturally pluralistic age-friendly development. This work underlines the significance of social capital development within more marginalized older-adult communities, both as a reaction to outside discrimination, and as a means of ensuring healthy and inclusive community aging.