Paper short abstract:

Linking the discourse of productivity with the materiality of the ‘old body’, this paper asks how people experience time in post-retirement. It draws from the ethnographic case study of Japanese ‘silver backpackers’ who move to live in Malaysia after their retirement.

Paper long abstract:

Scholars have observed that one's sense of time and of becoming is closely connected to one's performance of productivity. But what happens to the performative nature of time when one retires? The recent material turn in feminism challenges us to take the materiality of the body seriously in relation to discourses. Linking the discourse of productivity with the materiality of the 'old body', this paper asks how people experience time in post-retirement. It draws from the ethnographic case study of Japanese 'silver backpackers' who move to live in Malaysia after their retirement. It observes that they fill their 'empty time' (Benjamin 1968) by engaging in morally productive activities such as helping neighbours and teaching in local schools. I suggest that the morality of connection is an understudied, but nonetheless important, platform for the production of value and time in post-retirement. However, their sense of becoming in a foreign place is simultaneously constrained by the materiality of their ageing body. My ethnography of retirement migration illuminates the interaction between the bodies that are becoming, and bodies that are decaying. Hence it blurs the boundaries between young and old. The material consequences of discourse require ethical responses. This paper contributes to a more nuanced idea of 'productivity' by drawing on the lived experience of retirees whose 'productive time' is assumed to be over in the postindustrial society.