Retirement Migration

Book excerpt: The book is the first ethnographic study of international retirement migration and offers a sometimes surprising picture of the potentials, seductions and limitations of the lifestyles. People envision retirement as freedom from responsibilities through shedding the restrictive shackles of their former selves in a time of life dedicated to fun, friendship, healthy activity and individual fulfillment. However, as Oliver documents, a number of contradictions underpin the pursuits of such a lifestyle. She shows how retirees must balance time-use to achieve both freedoms and busy social schedules -- their activities, their relationships, and their cultural identities – to balance both the security of nationality with the discovery of the new. Retirement Migrationgives a critical insight into the new ways aging identities are experienced by a growing number of older people in Western societies today.