Abstract
Many policymakers, scholars, and members of the general public in Europe and the U.S. express concerns about the ‘burden’ that elders presumably will represent, a concern that can be exacerbated in the context of elders who migrate in retirement, drawing pensions from their home countries while living elsewhere. In this chapter, we present a framework for thinking about how social inequalities shape both dependence (and burden) in later life and in the migration context. We first discuss the concept of dependence, and how ageism (and other inequalities) shape who is considered to be a burden; what ‘counts’ as an economic contribution; and how retirement migration can be depicted as a problem. We then counter this view, based on an understanding of gender and age inequalities, and preliminary research that explores how these power relations influence retirement migration decisions and contributions of such migrants. Focusing on the most economically vulnerable elders, we argue that such migrants are neither dependent nor a burden. In fact, their migration is a strategy to contribute, keep from being a burden, and fight ageism. Further, because their contributions cross national borders, they are not visible within each individual welfare state.
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Notes
- 1.
For more details concerning this study, see Repetti et al. 2018.
- 2.
Many of the retired migrants in Mexico were in second and third marriages, and thus somewhat distant from their step/children, or lacked grandchildren.
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Acknowledgments
The authors thank the Swiss National Science Foundation for funding some of the research data used in this chapter (grant n°P300P1_177756 and P2LAP1_168396).
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Calasanti, T., Repetti, M. (2021). Retirement Migration: Resisting Ageist Expectations and Gendered Scripts. In: Repetti, M., Calasanti, T., Phillipson, C. (eds) Ageing and Migration in a Global Context. Life Course Research and Social Policies, vol 13. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-71442-0_8
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