Retirement Migration to the Global South: Global Inequalities and Entanglements 9811669988, 9789811669989

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Retirement Migration to the Global South Global Inequalities and Entanglements Edited by Cornelia Schweppe

Retirement Migration to the Global South

Cornelia Schweppe Editor

Retirement Migration to the Global South Global Inequalities and Entanglements

Editor Cornelia Schweppe Institute of Education Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz Mainz, Germany

ISBN 978-981-16-6998-9    ISBN 978-981-16-6999-6 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Panther Media GmbH / Alamy Stock Photo This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. The registered company address is: 152 Beach Road, #21-­01/04 Gateway East, Singapore 189721, Singapore

Acknowledgments

This publication is based on the International Conference “Retirement Migration to the Global South: Current Insights and Future Perspectives” which took place at the University of Mainz (Germany), Institute of Education, March 12–13, 2020. The Conference was financed by University of Mainz, Germany. I would like to thank the University for its generous support.

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Contents

1 Introduction: Retirement Migration to the Global South—Global Inequalities and Entanglements  1 Cornelia Schweppe Part I Migrating to the Global South: Making Sense of Change, Differences and Social Inequalities  27 2 In Search of a Place Like Me: Making Sense of Character, Boundaries and Later-Life Mobility Pathways in Southeast Asia 29 Paul Green 3 Coloniality and Retirement Migration to the Global South 49 Matthew Hayes 4 A “Mexican Home”: Defining Belonging Through Taste Among Retired Migrants in Chapala, Mexico 71 Rachel Barber

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Part II Retirement Migrants and Their Relationships with the Local Population: Dominations and Ambiguities  93 5 Social Relationships of Retirement Migrants in Kenya with the Local Population: On Devaluation Practices, Re-education Efforts and Disappointments 95 Cornelia Schweppe and Karin Müller 6 “Between Heaven and Hell”: Love, Sex and Intimacy— International Retirement Migration of Older Men to Thailand117 Désirée Bender and Cornelia Schweppe 7 Transnational Social Relationships of International Retirement Migrants in Morocco: A Typology139 Claudio Bolzman, Tineke Fokkema, and Danique van Dalen Part III Intertwinements of International Retirement Migrations: The State, Markets and Aging Populations 163 8 International Living (and Dying). U.S. Retirement Migration to Mexico165 Sheila Croucher 9 Falling Through the Net of Social Protection: The Precarity of Retirement Migrants in Thailand187 Cornelia Schweppe 10 Care as a Right and Care as Commodity: Positioning International Retirement Migration in Thailand’s Old Age Care Regime209 Sirijit Sunanta and Kwanchanok Jaisuekun 11 Looking Back to Go Forward: A Comparative Engagement with International Retirement Migration in the Global South229 Caroline Oliver

Notes on Contributors

Rachel  Barber is a doctoral student at the Center for Research and Advanced Studies in Social Anthropology (Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social), Guadalajara, Mexico, where she is investigating how different forms of artisanal production and commercial relationships affect identity construction among Mexican artisans. Her research interests include migration, material culture, taste and cultural consumption. Désirée Bender  is a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Education (Working Group Social Pedagogy), Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. Her research areas include transnational aging, old age care, co-parenting, sociology of knowledge, poststructural theories, social support, qualitative research methodologies and methods. Claudio  Bolzman  is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the School of Social Work, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, Switzerland. His research focuses on aging, migration, life course, transnationalism and intergenerational relations. He carried out studies on older migrants in Switzerland, Morocco and Chile. His work was published in academic journals of sociology, gerontology, migration, geography and social work. Sheila  Croucher  is University Distinguished Professor of Global and Intercultural Studies at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, USA.  She is author of The Other Side of the Fence: American Migrants in Mexico (2009),

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Globalization and Belonging: The Politics of Identity in a Changing World (2018) and numerous journal articles and book chapters on how relative privilege influences the migration and transnational relations of US citizens, and others, who emigrate from the Global North to the Global South. Tineke Fokkema  is a senior researcher at the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute, University of Groningen, The Netherlands, and Endowed Professor of Aging, Families and Migration at the Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands. Her research focuses on aging, intergenerational solidarity, loneliness, migration and their intersection. Fokkema has extensive experience with analyzing large-scale cross-national surveys and has done fieldwork among older migrants in Italy and Morocco. Paul Green  is a social anthropologist and senior lecturer in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Melbourne, Australia. He is involved in two long-term ethnographic projects, focusing on the life experiences of international retirees and digital nomads, respectively, based in or moving through Southeast Asia. His research has been funded by the prestigious Toyota Foundation and can be found in numerous leading academic journals, such as Asian Studies Review, Ethnography and Mobilities. Matthew Hayes  is Associate Professor of Sociology and Canada Research Chair in Global and International Studies at St. Thomas University, Fredericton, Canada. He is the author of Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration Under Late Capitalism. Kwanchanok Jaisuekun  is a Ph.D. candidate in the Multicultural Studies Program at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research interests include gender and migration, and popular culture. She is conducting her doctoral thesis focusing on the Western migration to Pattaya, Thailand, and its healthcare implications for Thailand. Karin  Müller is a research associate at the Institute of Education (Working Group Social Pedagogy), Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany. Her research areas include biography research, migration and mobilities in old age. Her doctoral thesis dealt with the topic “Former Namibian Children in the Democratic Republic of Germany. A Metaphor Analysis of Flight Experiences.”

  NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS 

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Caroline Oliver  is Associate Professor of Sociology at University College London’s Institute of Education, England, working in the fields of sociology, anthropology and migration studies. Her research expertise is on migration, state responses to migration and intersectional identities across the life course. Over the previous twenty years, she has researched on a range of topics, including retirement migration, family migration and the reception of asylum seekers and refugees. Oliver is a member of the Centre for Sociology of Education and Equity (CSEE), whose members work to promote high-quality sociological research for the public good. She is the deputy director of UCL’s new B.Sc. Undergraduate Degree in Sociology. Cornelia Schweppe  is Full Professor of Social Pedagogy at the University of Mainz, Germany. She was the director of the Doctoral Research Program “Transnational Social Support” financed by the German Research Foundation (2008–2017) and was awarded the five-years fellowship at the Gutenberg Research College (2014–2019). She has written widely on transnational aging, retirement migration and old age care. Her current research includes projects on retirement migration to Kenya and Thailand, and transnational aging on Cuba. Sirijit  Sunanta is an assistant professor in the Ph.D.  Program in Multicultural Studies at the Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University, Thailand. Her research interests include gender and migration, globalization and food cultures and the politics of diversity in Thailand. Her current research projects focus on care transnationalization and gendered labor in Thai health and well-­being tourism. Danique  van Dalen  obtained his Undergraduate Degree in Sociology (2018) from the Erasmus University Rotterdam (EUR), The Netherlands. He is finishing his master’s at the Freie Universität Berlin and works there as a student research assistant.

List of Figures

Fig. 4.1 Fig. 4.2 Fig. 4.3 Fig. 4.4

Colorful “Mexican-style” home in Ajijic featured in the Behind the Walls tour Melody’s colorful “Mexican home” Pat and Judith’s Spanish colonial or hacienda-style home Architectural accents and Mexican artisanal objects in Regina’s discreet interpretation of the “Mexican Home”

82 85 86 87

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List of Tables

Table 7.1 Table 7.2

Presentation of the interviewees: Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium Typology of IRMs

146 156

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction: Retirement Migration to the Global South—Global Inequalities and Entanglements Cornelia Schweppe

International retirement migration (IRM) has grown into a wide field of research since the end of the twentieth century. Research has particularly focused on the migration of older people from Northern and Central European countries to the Mediterranean region, in particular to Spain (e.g., Gavanas, 2017; Hall & Hardill, 2016; King et  al., 1998; Oliver, 2008; O’Reilly, 2000; Williams et al., 2000). It is only in the last few years that research has drawn attention to the growing evidence of retirement migrations from relatively affluent countries of the “Global North” to lower-income countries in the “Global South”, including countries in

Schweppe, C. (ed.) (2021): Introduction: Retirement Migration to the Global South—Global Inequalities and Entanglements. Basingstoke and New York: Palgrave Macmillan

C. Schweppe (*) Institute of Education, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_1

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South East Asia1 (e.g., Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines) and Central and South America2 (e.g., Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Nicaragua). With the exception of some studies on Morocco (Repetti & Bolzman, 2020; Terrazzoni, 2015), IRM research in African countries is still scarce. IRM is a multi-layered and complex phenomenon. It encompasses the actor level of retirement migrants and their reasons for migrating to, and their life situations in, the countries of the Global South. It also includes the destination countries and the impacts IRM have on them. The booming international retirement industry that has grown around retirement migrants and their needs is another layer that heavily impacts IRM. IRM to countries of the Global South highlights the increasing global interconnectedness of aging in relatively affluent countries and raises critical questions about its interrelations with global inequalities. Older people tap into to these inequalities in their efforts to improve their lives by migrating to the Global South. National and international businesses take advantage of them in their discovery of IRM as a highly profitable present and future market. Global inequalities are also at the core of the implications for destination countries. Processes of recolonization and the reproduction, enhancement or reconfiguration of social inequalities are impacts repeatedly pointed out in research. Though the research interest in retirement migration to the Global South has grown in the last few years, research in this field remains selective and is internationally scattered, with different strands that are hardly connected to one another. This publication brings together research findings from a wide range of countries including studies on IRM in Africa (Kenya, Morocco), Central America (Mexico) and Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand), to facilitate an international research dialogue, which, given the growing evidence of IRM as a global phenomenon, is significant for the further development of IRM research, both empirically and theoretically. It particularly aims to provide a critical analysis of the global interrelations of retirement migration to countries of the Global South and their intertwinements with global inequalities. It addresses the complex and multi-layered dimensions and implications of this development, including the (ambiguous) everyday life worlds of retirement migrants, the growing capitalization of retirement migration and the repercussions for the destination countries. The multi-layered dimensions of IRM and its entanglement with global inequalities are presented in more detail below.

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Reasons to Migrate in Old Age to Countries in the Global South: Global Entanglements Besides better climates, nicer landscapes and the search for new experiences, adventure or a more relaxed lifestyle, research indicates that limited life perspectives and social limitations in old age in countries of the Global North play an important role in the decision to migrate to countries in the Global South. Limited financial means due to low income in old age (mainly pensions) has been shown to be an important factor in the decision to migrate to countries of the Global South, for all countries or regions from which retirement migrants predominantly originate (Hayes, 2014; Ono, 2008; Schweppe in this book). This reflects the increasingly precarious financial situation of many older people in high-income countries, a development which will most likely continue or worsen in the future. In Europe, for example, the at-risk-of-poverty rate3 among pensioners has increased from 12.3% in 2014 to 15.1% in 2019 (Eurostat, 2021). In European countries from which older persons predominantly migrate to countries of the Global South, these rates are partly above average (e.g., Switzerland: 24.6%, United Kingdom: 22.8%, Germany: 18.7%, Sweden: 15.8%). Unaffordable and rising healthcare costs and low-quality healthcare have been identified as another important reason for older people from various countries such as Japan (Toyota & Thang, 2017) and the U.S. and Canada (Miles, 2015; Sunil et al., 2007; Croucher in this book) to migrate. The old age care crisis in many high-income countries adds a further reason. It manifests in unmet old age care needs, inadequate, low-quality and high-cost old age care provision, a lack of at-home support, residential care facilities which still bear traits of total institutions (Goffman 1961), overburdened family caregivers (who, in many countries, bear a large share of old age care), a lack of personnel and time-pressured working conditions in old age care services, as well as in a lack of care concepts and support structures tailored to individual needs (Horn et  al., 2021). The recruitment of migrant care workers from lower-wage countries has become a widespread response to this crisis in many high-income countries (ibid.). While this represents a trend of moving carers in, IRM shows that the search for better care options is linked to mobility processes of older people themselves: they move out for better care. Other social and/or emotional limitations also incentivize the migration of older people to countries in the Global South. Conflictual and

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problematic family relations including divorces and strife with one’s children can be decisive factors leading to migration. Such problems are sometimes compounded by limited social networks and loneliness in the countries of origin or the fear of being left alone in the event of a later need for care and having no other alternative than care in old age homes (Bender et al., 2020). In particular, sexual, intimate and love-related limitations in old age in the countries of origin have been identified as important motives for migration, referring particularly to limited opportunities to find a (new) partner in old age, for example, after divorce or separation. In this context, migration to the Global South is less characterized by the search for short-term relationships or sexual encounters, but rather by the search for longer-term, intimate partnerships (Veress, 2009). Though so far this facet of IRM research has focused on older men, particularly regarding IRM to Thailand (Maher & Lafferty, 2014, 2020; for the Philippines, see Howard, 2019), there is evidence that the search for extended intimate experiences also applies to older women moving to countries of the Global South. This evidence does not directly originate from IRM research. However, many studies on female sex or romantic tourism4, which is particularly pronounced in touristic regions of the Global South, point to it. Such studies show that it is often older women who travel to these regions in the search for intimate (long-term) relationships with (younger) men (see Ebere & Charles-Ebere, 2018; Frohlick, 2007; Nyanzi et al., 2005; Tami, 2008). Although these trips are often initially short-term, they subsequently can lead to migration processes due to newly discovered and expanded intimate possibilities. In the specific context of IRM, such sexual and intimate desires of older women are evident on the South Coast of Kenya, which has become a prominent retirement destination among Europeans. It is reflected in the widespread intimate and longer-term relationships of older female long-term residents with local men (Berman, 2017; Chege, 2014). The aforementioned limitations in the countries of origin lead to migration to countries of the Global South because of the extended life perspectives and participation opportunities in old age that the destination countries project. These opportunities are often rooted in global inequalities. In this regard, the differences in the costs of living are of high relevance. The often considerably lower costs of living in the destination countries mean a rise in the relative income value of retirees and open up possibilities to upgrade their standards of living and resolve present or expected financial constraints—a process that Hayes (2014) calls

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geoarbitrage. In addition, the availability of better and lower-cost old age care and medical services (often promoted by the international retirement industry, which will be described in more detail below) is another factor that fuels retirement migration to countries of the Global South. The notion of expanded possibilities of experiencing intimacy and longer-­term partnerships is a further reason. For example, the sex industry in Thailand that has developed as a result of large-scale sex tourism has ensured that Thailand is considered among male retirement migrants as a country with virtually unlimited opportunities to engage in intimate relationships with women (Lapanun, 2018). Research reveals that both older men and women experience an expanded scope for engaging in intimate relationships and for finding longer-term partners in countries of the Global South compared to their countries of origin. This expanded scope is closely related to the poverty-driven availability of emotional and intimate resources and sex-related work in the destination countries. In the case of male retirement migrants to Thailand, research shows that the expanded opportunities are closely related to the prostitution milieu, which has become the workplace of countless young (and often very young) women who migrate from the rural, impoverished region of Isan in northeastern Thailand to the urban centers of tourism to seek a way out of their poverty-stricken lives. Research points to similar findings for older women. Studies on female sex and romance tourism and on relationships between older migrant women and local men on the South Coast of Kenya show that the extended sexual and intimate experiences of the older women are closely linked to the poverty-stricken life situations of local men. From the perspective of local men, engaging with older women from high-income countries is often a livelihood strategy in response to their precarious life situations (Berman, 2018; Chege, 2014). Though these structural inequalities are crucial to understanding why retirement migration to the Global South is attractive, they do not explain how people decide to which country they will migrate. Green (in this book) provides an insightful analysis of this subject based on longitudinal research involving later-life foreigners in Penang, Malaysia, and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia. He uses the conceptual lens of character to provide an analytical framework for understanding how individuals make sense of, and build rich, diverse and shifting connections between self and place.

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The International Retirement Industry: Tapping into Global Inequalities IRM to the Global South is also heavily promoted and facilitated by a growing international retirement industry as well as profit-oriented development strategies of the destination countries. Over the last 10–15 years, the retirement migration industry has developed into a complex, multifaceted and multi-layered sector. According to Toyota and Xiang (2012), the retirement industry “refers to business operations related to the relocation of foreign retirees, (…) who seek affordable social care and alternative retirement life” (p. 708). Both the public and private sectors have discovered retirement migration as a promising market. The actors involved are wide-ranging. It includes local and federal governments in the public sector, and the private sector includes a wide spectrum of actors at the national and international level, including individual entrepreneurs and large corporations, with many connections between both sectors. The significance of this conjunction between the public and private sector to marketize IRM is visible in many countries. Toyota and Xiang (2012) show that a “state–industry nexus” was crucial for the promotion of a retirement industry that Southeast Asian countries (e.g., Malaysia, Thailand, the Philippines) introduced as a national economic development strategy as early as the mid-1980s. More recently, Pallares and Rollins-Castillo (2019) make a similar argument concerning Latin American countries (Mexico, Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador) in their analysis of the “marketization of countries” as a strategy of receiving states to promote themselves as attractive places to retire. They show the interdependency of the state and private corporations in this marketization and its co-production, including state and local governments, entrepreneurs, business organizations, real estate developers, medical centers and many more actors, all profiting from the increase in retirement migration from high- to low-income countries (ibid.). Though the international retirement migration industry differs depending on the region and country, it builds on the present and anticipated future problems of aging in countries of the Global North, the very problems mentioned above that drive older people to migrate—income insecurity, problematic healthcare provision and the old age care crisis. It markets retirement migration to the Global South as a promising option to solve or alleviate existing problems, to expand life options in old age and to live a carefree life in old age with living standards much above those in

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countries of the Global North. International Living, a prominent global marketer in the IRM industry, particularly for North Americans, brings these promises well to the point with the following announcement of a guide to retiring overseas: “The premise is simple: Enjoy a happier, healthier, more fulfilling retirement than you could possibly afford in the U.S. or Canada by finding the right overseas retirement haven. The book reveals those affordable havens and the strategies for successfully making the move that could save your retirement” (Haskins & Prescher, 2014). In marketing retirement migration to countries of the Global South, the retirement industry capitalizes on pleasant and healthy climatic conditions, cultural appeals and the natural beauty of countries in the Global South, but above all on global inequalities. It takes advantage of the availability of cheap labor in low-income countries, differentials in the living costs, and cheaper, higher-quality care and health provisions than in the countries of the Global North. The real estate, health and old age care sectors are among the main players of this business, as are the actors around the development of infrastructures that targets the needs and desires of international retirees (e.g., restaurants, shops, leisure and sports facilities). The real estate market that targets international retirement migrants has developed widely in many IRM destinations, offering housing opportunities at a much better value (higher quality for a lower cost) compared to the countries of origin. This housing often stands in stark contrast to the living conditions of the local community. In addition to the investment in and selling of condos and houses and arranging rentals of houses or apartments, gated communities—often targeted at specific nationalities or linguistic groups—have grown as a prominent model on the IRM real estate market (Schafran & Monkkonen, 2011). These gated communities are marked by segregation and insulation from the local community. High security measures (e.g., high walls) shield them from the surrounding community. They often contain their own infrastructure including restaurants, shops, entertainment and leisure programs, old age care and health services, as well as facilities such as pools or wellness centers. It often aligns with the cultural habits or preferences (e.g., food) of the residents (Bender et  al., 2020; Toyota 2017). This infrastructure underscores the segregation from the local community as it allows to meet a wide range of needs and desires within the compound. Leaving the compound thus is not necessarily required. They vary in price

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and quality but often convey a flair of exclusiveness and often resemble luxurious hotel resorts (Bender et al., 2020). The old age care sector is another important player in the retirement migration industry. Old age care services for international retirement migrants have been developed and promoted in many Southeast Asian and Latin American countries. These care services are wide-ranging and address persons in need of assisted living as well as long-term care and sometimes specialize in particular health conditions such as dementia. They also include offers for older people in generally good health, but with options for care services in case of future health constrains. The following quote from a homepage published by Propertyshelf, a global real estate company, clearly indicates how elder care in the Global South is advertised as a lucrative and, due to the increasing number of aging people, a promising business for the future: Currently in Costa Rica the concept of retirement homes or assisted living are fairly foreign concepts. This is due to the strong family bond Costa Rican’s share. (…) However, now with the huge influx in foreigners coming to Costa Rica to live and retire there will be a high demand. These populations that are coming in the thousands are accustomed to this type of system and will especially be in need of it since many are coming alone and leaving their families and friends in their home country. (…) [I]t has become clear that something must be done to capture this market (…). (…) Because studies have shown that retirement communities bring more than ‘two to three times’ the revenue generated by tourism or just the real estate sector. 5 (Costa Rica Information, n.d.)

The main strategy to market old age care to international retirement migrants builds on the criticism of old age care in the high-income countries mentioned above and promotes care in the Global South as a qualitatively better and much more reasonably priced care option. Slogans like “We provide quality, supervised assisted living in a residential setting at affordable cost”, which is prominently placed on the homepage of a residential old age care facility in the Philippines (http://bighearts.com.ph), are common on many websites of old age care providers, no matter in which country or region of the world they operate. The reasons given for the high-quality care are also constantly repeated: facilities are small with a familiar atmosphere, and high staff ratios allow for intensive individual attention and care tailored to individual needs, including facilities (e.g., in

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Thailand) which offer 1:1 care 24 hours a day by allocating every resident three individual caregivers. Cheap labor is a fundamental condition enabling such labor-intensive old age care arrangements that would be unthinkable in high-income countries. In addition, the local staff are portrayed as natural and ideal old age caregivers, which is another common tactic used to market high-quality old age care. Based on cultural essentialization, local staff are often presented as carers who treat older people with respect, love, tenderness and affection, features that are claimed to be deeply culturally rooted and entrenched in the highly respected position of older people in the respective countries (Bender & Schweppe, 2019; Croucher in this book). Deregulation is used as another incentive for investing in old age care in countries of the Global South. For example, a blog that markets international retirement in Mexico states: “Mexico’s government does have plenty of rules about [elder care] facilities, but not the level of red tape developers encounter in the U.S. These elements make Mexico an attractive ground on many levels” (Baker, n.d.). While some degree of regulation is still evident here, old age care facilities in Thailand that cater to retirement migrants are free from any regulations. There are no stipulations on the qualifications of the operators or staff, medical treatments or architectural designs; supervisory bodies do not exist either (Horn et al., 2016). Similar strategies are used to market the healthcare sector: “High-­ quality medical care at affordable prices” is the motto here too. However, in contrast to old age care provisions, much of which has to be built from scratch in the destination countries, the IRM industry in various countries can build on existing high-quality, yet low-cost healthcare services aligned with the needs and expectations of people from high-income countries. These healthcare services have been developed within medical tourism, which has been heavily promoted in prominent IRM destinations like Thailand, Malaysia, Mexico and Costa Rica. Given that healthcare is a major concern in the decision to migrate, whether due to inadequate healthcare in the countries of origin or concerns about the cost and quality of healthcare in the destination countries, countries with such healthcare services heavily draw on them to market IRM. In addition, an increasing number of new actors are looking at healthcare for retirement migrants as a highly profitable present and future market and responding with large investments in hospitals, clinics and other healthcare services (see Croucher in this book).

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The Life Situation of Retirement Migrants: The Ambivalence of Privilege and Precarity If one asks about the life situation of retirement migrants in the countries of destination and to what extent the hope for extended options of life in old age is fulfilled, research points out the multiple and complex challenges faced by retirement migrants and the ambivalent implications for their life circumstances. While retirement migration often leads to improved and upgraded living standards and might imply enhanced options for life in old age, it also contains considerable risks, constraints and vulnerabilities. Therefore, IRM scholars have begun to critically reflect on the notion of “privilege”, which has characterized the discussion of the life situation of retirement migrants for quite a while and point out that privilege and precarity are by no means mutually exclusive. Financial vulnerability and hardship constitute one of the risks research has identified. Despite an increase in the relative value of income due to lower costs of living in the destination countries, the incomes in particular of people with low pensions may barely be enough to cover living costs over time. This has been shown particularly for male retirement migrants in Thailand (Maher & Lafferty, 2014, 2020; Bender and Schweppe in this book). Their financial hardship is a recurring topic in countless reports in forums, blogs, expat newspapers, etc. High monetary losses in intimate relationships are cited as a major risk that can leave men penniless (ibid.). Unfavorable exchange rates or frozen pensions are further factors that bear the risk of financial instability (Botterill, 2017). In addition, considerable hardship related to health and care issues (Botterill, 2017; Schweppe in this book), emotional strains due to disappointing intimate relationships, and high rates of alcohol consumption and suicide are among major problems of retirement migrants in Thailand (Schweppe in this book). While men initially experience an upgrade of social status allowing for extended life options, over time this can change and lead to the opposite, rendering men into precariousness (Bender und Schweppe in this book). Health concerns are also revealed among retirement migrants in other countries (Amin & Ingman, 2010; Botterill, 2017; Howard, 2019; Sloane et al., 2013, 2020b; Schweppe in this book). In a study by Howard (2019) on IRM in the Philippines, almost 11% of retirees reported healthcare as their main source of concern. Even though some studies point to the overall good quality and advantages of healthcare that international retirement migrants experience in the countries of destination, such as more

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personalized attention and lower costs (Sloane et al., 2013, 2020b), medical costs figure as a serious concern among retirement migrants. Specifically, the lack of health insurance of many retirement migrants is identified as a major problem (Amin & Ingman, 2010; Botterill, 2017; Sloane et  al., 2013; Schweppe in this book). Public health insurances like Medicare in the U.S. or statutory health insurance schemes in many European countries do not cover expenses outside the U.S. or Europe, respectively. Accordingly, many pay for medical treatment costs out of their own funds, sometimes putting considerable strains on their budget (Sloane et al., 2020b) Studies examining the retirement migrants’ situation and experiences with regard to old age care in the destination countries are rather scarce. The availability of inexpensive and widely available old age home care is noted as a particular strength of the host countries by retirement migrants in Mexico and Panama (Sloane et al., 2020b). Compared to the countries of origin, they see this as a much better offer to be able to remain at home in the event of needing care and to avoid residential old age care, which is often feared in the countries of origin. Concerning residential old age care facilities specifically targeted at retirement migrants, Horn et al. (2016) show the wide range of quality of such facilities in Thailand. Their analysis indicates that generalized conclusions about the quality of these facilities cannot be made. Unsurprisingly, the different quality levels are reflected in cost differences. Overall, the authors show how these facilities can offer better quality old age care and care concepts “which break with or go beyond the medical paradigm by putting a stronger emphasis on the individual as well as the social and emotional needs of elderly people” (p.  175), while simultaneously “open[ing] the door for abuse and maltreatment of residents” (ibid.). For the latter, they point to the lack of regulations, which puts facility managers in a powerful position and can barely be held accountable because there are no controls for them or the facility.

Relations with the Local Population: Reproducing Global Inequalities on a Micro Level While these studies focus primarily on whether, how or to what extent life options of retirement migrants have changed or are extended by moving to a country of the Global South, there is another strand of research that

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focuses on the significance and impact of the often-glaring differences in living conditions between retirement migrants and the local population. Although research shows that retirement migrants are by no means always a privileged group in their countries of origin and their life situations after migration can be precarious, in relation to the local population they are in a highly advantageous position. Their privileged position in global power relations and their privileges in terms of race, nationality and economic power are of central importance in this regard (Benson, 2013; Croucher, 2018). A distinctive feature of retirement destinations in countries of the Global South is that global asymmetries and inequalities converge directly in one geographic location and are a core element of the immediate environment of the retirement migrants and the local population. Retirement migration destinations represent microcosms of global inequalities. These global inequalities significantly shape the lives of retirement migrants and their relations to the local population. Alone, the increase in the value of income changes the retirement migrants’ status compared to their countries of origin and, in comparison to a large part of the local population, positions them as a (relatively) affluent group. However, these asymmetries are not limited to their economic situation. Benson (2013) points out the academic neglect of the fact that most lifestyle migrants are white and of Western origin and refers to Leonard (2010) who states: “In postcolonial and settler contexts, whiteness (together with nationality and gender) will have a particular historically-based relationship to power, and an ongoing and dynamic connection will exist between this and more contemporary versions” (cited in Benson, 2013, p. 19). Hayes (2015), in his study on U.S. and Canadian retirement migrants in Cuenca, Ecuador, shows how racialized identities are produced in the context of migration, which “creates for most a new awareness of their whiteness and its symbolic association with economic and other privileges” (p. 944). A variety of studies show that and how these unequal power structures impact the hierarchical positionings of retired migrants vis-à-vis the local population. Although certainly not true for all and always, they often go hand in hand with the migrants’ positionings of superiority and generalized ascriptions of deficits or assumed intellectual or cultural inferiority of the native population, in which (re)colonial markers of difference come into play and are accompanied by the reproduction of colonial forms of domination and subordination (e.g., Benson & O’Reilly, 2018; Bell, 2017; Croucher, 2009; Hayes, 2018; Schweppe and Müller in this book). What impact these reproductions or reconfigurations of global inequalities might have

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on the identity and subjectivity of the local population is a question that has not yet been explored. The migrants’ relation to the local population is also reflected in their living a physical, social and cultural environment that is often segregated from that the local population (Croucher, 2009, 2018; Efird et al., 2020; Hayes & Carlson, 2018; Lizárraga Morales et  al., 2015), marking the hierarchical position in a special way. Life often takes place in an enclave among migrant retirees reminiscent in many ways of the lifestyle characteristics of earlier colonial settlements (Croucher, 2012, p. 3). Contacts and interactions with the local community are limited and often reduced to service providers like domestic employees, sporadic contacts with neighbors or philanthropic work (Croucher, 2018; Sloane et al., 2020b; Spalding, 2013). Close friendships between retirement migrants and members of the local population do not usually exist. The migrants’ poor knowledge of the local language has been pointed out in various studies as a considerable barrier to social encounters with the local population (Croucher, 2018; Efird et al., 2020; Hayes & Carlson, 2018). The infrastructure created in many places to cater to international retirees underscores their segregation from the local population. It is frequently wide-ranging, including restaurants, bars, leisure and sports facilities, stores, clubs and services of all kinds, often owned by North Americans or Europeans (Croucher, 2018; Efird et al., 2020). Due to prices alone, this infrastructure is barely accessible to the local community. Some studies point to an awareness of these inequalities among retirement migrants, along with feelings of discomfort and corresponding practices they develop to cope with these inequalities and their privileged status—often in an attempt to relativize or conceal them. For example, studies on North Americans in Panama, Mexico and Nicaragua show that retirement migrants  engage in charity activities or volunteer work in an attempt to cover up the economic benefit of living there and signal that they are giving something back to the local population (Benson, 2013; Croucher, 2018). Hayes and Carlson (2018) show for North Americans in Ecuador how learning the Spanish language, developing friendships with Ecuadorians and living in areas of the local population instead of in gated communities are intended to diminish their position in the racialized social order of Ecuador and to erase their “otherness”. Green (2017) provides another example, elaborating on kinship as a metaphor for downplaying white privilege in the context of retired migrants’ relationships with Balinese workers. At the same time, these studies show how these

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practices often uphold or reinforce differences and hierarchies between the migrants and the local population (Croucher, 2018) and mask and maintain power relations and privilege (Green, 2017).

Impacts of International Retirement Migration on the Destinations Research on the impacts of IRM on the destination countries is still quite limited. However,  alone the fact that the influx of retirement migrants turns IRM destinations into areas marked by sharp differences in living conditions between the retirees and the local population points to severe repercussions. Serious impacts are demonstrated by the booming IRM real estate market leading to drastic processes of gentrification—rising land, rent and utility prices are displacing local populations from their former residential areas (Escher & Petermann, 2014; Hayes, 2018). In addition, people lose large parts of their land, which, particularly for those in rural areas, means losing not only their homes but also an important source of their livelihood (Berman, 2017). Lizárraga Morales (2010) points also to the privatization of formerly public spaces such as beaches that goes along with the IRM real estate market. Lizárraga Morales (2010) gives a clear account of the environmental impacts of IRM in his study in Los Cabos, located at the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula of Mexico. The study illustrates the devastating ecological impacts of real estate development, much of which occurs on beaches and sand dunes. Due to the aridity of the region, aquifers are overexploited, causing the penetration of seawater inland and the ultimate salinization of the region’s water supply. In addition, the study points to deforestation and the consequent danger of eroding soils due to high levels of urbanization. Rising inequality of access to essential resources such as water and electricity has also been identified as impacts of IRM (Lizárraga Morales, 2010). Unlike the local population, who often has limited access to the water supply, residential areas of retirement migrants are provided with water and electricity as a matter of course. Furthermore, migrants consume a disproportionate amount of water not only in terms of their daily consumption but also due to large gardens, swimming pools and golf courses—built even in desert areas such as Baja California, Mexico—which

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can exacerbate the local populations’ already limited access to water or water scarcity in certain regions (Viteri, 2015). Public resource strain, particularly concerning the public health sector, is another impact that has been pointed out, especially in Thailand (for Ecuador and Mexico, see Sloane et  al., 2020a). The widespread lack of protection against health risks (i.e., health insurance) for retirement migrants and the lack of financial resources to pay medical bills has become a severe problem for the Thai public healthcare system. The financial burdens created by unpaid medical treatments are substantial and amount to US $10 million annually, according to figures from the Thai government (Sunanta in this book). To sum up, retirement migration to countries of the Global South is a highly ambiguous development and deeply entrenched with global inequalities. It is pushed by constrained life situations that increasingly mark old age in high-income countries and can be considered as a response by older people in their search for expanded life options. Social problems and unmet needs caused by states unwilling or unable to respond to changing old age populations are transferred to the Global South. The implications of IRM are manifold and vary significantly for the respective actors or sectors: severe impacts on the destinations countries, ambivalent consequences for the lives of older people and significant profits for the retirement industry from capitalizing on unmet needs in old age and exploiting global inequalities and structural disadvantages of countries in the global South.

Outline of the Book This book is structured in four parts. Retirement migrants are faced with many changes, differences and social inequalities. How they make sense and give meaning to them is at the center of Part 1. Paul Green in Chap. 2 draws on longitudinal research involving later-­ life foreigners based in Penang, Malaysia, and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, and examines self, mobility and place-making processes through the conceptual lens of character, providing an analytical framework for understanding how individuals make sense of and build rich, diverse and shifting connections between self and place. Understanding character on these dialogic terms he draws attention to the theoretical, historical and social relevance of boundaries, which provide a basis to make sense of how and in what ways later-life foreigners build and value relations across self, other and

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otherness in lifestyle destinations. He suggests that conceptual framing of self, place and boundaries is crucial as it illustrates how character-driven mobility choices impact in variable ways, across time and in place, on experiences and perceptions of aging, health and belonging. Matthew Hayes in Chap. 3 examines how older adult migrants to Essaouira, Morocco, make sense of and give meaning to perceptions of material inequality and difference that are part of their day-to-day live. He focuses on one particular cultural narrative which shows that one way retirees from Europe make sense of global-scale inequalities in their everyday lives in Essaouira is by switching between cultural codes that refer to material inequality and hardship, on the one hand, and essentialized cultures of work and consumerism, on the other hand. He demonstrates that by accounting for material inequalities through narratives about culture, lifestyle migrants mark distance between themselves and other global migrants. The effect, he argues, is the reproduction of a form of epistemic coloniality, which helps to stabilize global hierarchies that might otherwise be challenged through relational sociology. Rachel Barber in Chap. 4 examines the cultivation of a “Mexican home” in the community of North American retirees in the Lake Chapala area of Mexico. She shows that the widespread adoption of a “Mexican-style” aesthetic reflects the migrants’ desire to connect with the culture of their new country of residence which, however, remains constrained by the social divisions and communicational barriers of the foreign community. She demonstrates that the retirees’ interpretations of the “Mexican home” reflect the foreign community’s sociocultural distance from the local Mexican community as well as the internal, class-based divisions among retirees. Drawing on Bourdieu’s understanding of the social significance of taste, her analysis of North American retirees’ taste in the “Mexican home” serves as a window into foreign retirees’ social repositioning processes as they define their belonging abroad. Part 2 examines relationships of retirement migrants with people from the local population. The chapters highlight the different types and structurings of relationships ranging from those characterized by superior self-­ positionings and dominance of the migrants to those which, due to specific structures, carry particular risks for retirement migrants, including risks that can lead them into problematic life situations. Cornelia Schweppe and Karin Müller in Chap. 5 examine social relationships of retirement migrants with people from the local population on the South Coast of Kenya. The life situation of the local population is

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marked by extreme poverty. Based on narrative-guided interviews with retirement migrants, their analysis show how inequalities and constructions of difference are at the core of retirement migrants’ relationships. The predominant relationship structuring is marked by the retirees’ superior self-positioning and by continuous (re)production of domination, subordination and devaluation of the local population. In very few exceptions, however, the relationships take a different form. In these cases, the relationships develop from shared beliefs and/or sympathies. However, in the course of these relationships, social and particularly material inequalities become highly relevant and insurmountable problems. In contrast to the other relationships in which the migrants’ privileged position leads to dominance and devaluation of the local population, retirees in these cases largely withdraw from relationships in disappointment and become socially isolated. The analysis shows that the dominance and dependency structures of Europeans that characterize Kenya’s South Coast pervade  not only the living conditions of the local population but also the social relationships between retirement migrants and Kenyans. Désirée Bender and Cornelia Schweppe in Chap. 6 examine the migration of older men from German-speaking countries to Thailand, which is (partly) motivated by the search for expanded opportunities to experience love, sex and intimacy. They frame their analysis by Bourdieu’s concept of social fields and show that the men’s migration brings about a shift in position which opens up new options for experiencing intimacy and striking up longer-term partnerships. This shift in position is fragile, however, because the structures of these relationships harbor specific risks which can propel the men into precarious life situations. Their analysis is based on guided interviews with older German-speaking men who migrated to Thailand and participant observations in bar districts. Claudio Bolzman, Tineke Fokkema and Danique van Dalen in Chap. 7 explore the social relationships of Swiss, Dutch and Belgian international retirement migrants (IRMs) in Morocco—specifically, who they have contact with and the nature of the interactions (e.g., egalitarian/hierarchical, trustful/mistrustful, unidimensional/multidimensional). Their analysis of 18 biographical interviews shows that retirees who emigrated for similar reasons tend to have similar relationships. Based on this finding, they propose a typology structured by the migration motives and the corresponding relationship structures. Part 3 focuses on the complex intertwinement of various actors in IRM, particularly the entanglements of the state, private business and

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aging populations. The chapters show how the different actors are entangled in very distinct ways and how they impact IRM developments and processes, with repercussions that are beneficial for some and risky and harmful for others. Sheila Croucher in Chap. 8 turns to U.S. “expats” who have long viewed migration to Mexico as a means to enhance their quality of life. Since the 2008 recession, however, perceived vulnerabilities in terms of the high cost of retirement, and particularly healthcare, in the U.S. have figured more prominently into the narratives surrounding this North-­ South migration flow. She situates U.S. retirement migration to Mexico in the context of (i) a Mexican government that largely welcomes foreigners from the North, and their capital; (ii) an array of transnational organizations, notably International Living Magazine (IL), that aggressively market Mexico to North Americans; and (iii) persistent global inequalities associated with neoliberalism that allow relatively privileged migrants to use international border-crossing as a way to circumnavigate the precariousness that currently accompanies aging in the U.S. Cornelia Schweppe in Chap. 9 explores the question of social protection which has not yet been examined systematically in international retirement migration research and analyzes it in the context of retirement migration from Germany to Thailand. German retirees  who migrate to  Thailand tend to be a vulnerable group already in Germany, given the large proportion of them with relatively low pensions, relatively poor health and limited social ties. In Thailand they fall through the net of social protection. They can neither draw on public social security benefits from Germany—as the German social security system largely ends at the borders of the European Union—nor can they resort to private coverage due to limited financial resources. Their personal social support networks are also limited. The lack of social protection leads to a life that, for many, is marked by poor health, a lack of old age care and financial problems which have moreover become a serious burden for Thailand. Schweppe highlights that the findings lead back to Germany and its old age social security system, for two reasons. First, as low pensions are a main reason for migration and pensions will most likely continue to decrease, IRM will probably increase in the future; countries of the global South thus will increasingly act as the backyard for unsolved problems of aging in high-income countries. Second, since the lack of benefits of the German social security system in Thailand is a major reason for the retirees’ precarious life situations

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that burdens Thailand and its public resources, she urges the international opening of Germany’s social security system. Sirijit Sunanta and Kwanchanok Jaisuekun in Chap. 10 analyze the political economy of elder care in Thailand where the entrepreneurial state promotes the commodification of care for retirement migrants as part of an economic development strategy, while public care and social protection for the growing number of Thai aging citizens is underdeveloped. The inequalities of elder healthcare provision are reinforced by the (unintended) consequences of this policy. Many international retirees not only have insufficient income to use private healthcare facilities but, due to insufficient means, strain the public health system with a high amount of unpaid bills, consume more of the time of healthcare workers and require extra services such as translation. Furthermore, wealthy foreigners who can afford private medical care are given priority for services and medicines over poorer Thai people with the same health conditions and healthcare needs. Caroline Oliver in Chap. 11 provides a comparative analysis between the first wave of intra-European IRM and IRM to the Global South, particularly drawing on urban scholars’ consideration of the global diffusion of common processes through comparative perspectives. She shows that similar dynamics that were already apparent within Europe some time ago are also reflected in IRM to the Global South—specifically, the marketization of IRM, its inherent dangers of fostering dependencies on foreign investment and gentrification processes in the destination countries, and the (re)production of inequalities in relationships and cultural distance. She emphasizes these similarities not just as simple replications from previous processes in the Global North, however, and suggests a need for further research to understand how the similar processes differ. She calls for an approach that is sensitive to the contexts in which those processes occur and how they are affected by countries’ unique cultural histories, social hierarchies and economic bases.

A Final Note This book was written during the Corona pandemic. Many forecasts project that this crisis will have longer-term effects, be it on economics, the work sector, education or people’s well-being. Some of these effects already begin to show. Projections if and how the Corona crisis will affect retirement migrations to the Global South are hard to make. If it has an

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impact on the decision-making process of whether to migrate or maybe even to return, how Corona has impacted the countries of destination and what impact this might have on the lives of retirement migrants, or if Corona even has longer-term effects on borders crossings or travel regulations—factors which could affect retirement migrations—are questions for retirement migration research that open up at this—at least currently— historically quite unique moment.

Notes 1. See Bell, 2017; Bender et al., 2017, 2020; Benson & O’Reilly, 2018; Green, 2014, 2015, 2017; Horn et al., 2016; Howard, 2019; Maher & Lafferty, 2014, 2020; Ono, 2008, 2010, 2015; Sunanta & Angeles, 2013; Wong et al., 2017. 2. See Benson, 2013, 2015; Croucher, 2009, 2012, 2018; Dixon et al., 2006; Hayes, 2015, 2018; Lizárraga Morales, 2010; Miles, 2015; Sloane et al., 2020a; Spalding, 2013; Viteri, 2015. 3. Eurostat (2018) defines at-risk-of-poverty rate as “the share of people with an equivalised disposable income (after social transfer) below the at-risk-of-­ poverty threshold, which is set at 60 % of the national median equivalised disposable income after social transfers”. 4. Pruitt and LaFont (1995) first introduced the concept of romance tourism in their study of female tourists to Jamaica and differentiated it from that of sex tourism. They explain that they use the term “romance tourism” to distinguish the sexual relationships of women tourists with local men from sex tourism because “these liaisons are constructed through a discourse of romance and long-term relationship, an emotional involvement usually not present in sex tourism” (p. 423). 5. What it might mean to import a hitherto unknown form of elder care to Costa Rica is obviously of no concern to Propertyshelf.

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Sunil, T. S., Rojas, V., & Bradley, D. E. (2007). United States’ international retirement migration: the reasons for retiring to the environs of Lake Chapala. Mexico, Ageing & Society, 27, 489–510. Tami, N. (2008). Romancing strangers: The intimate politics of beach tourism in Kenya. ProQuest, UMI Dissertation Publishing. United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). Terrazzoni, L. (2015). Les nouveaux migrants français à Essaouira et Marrakech. In N. Khrouz & N. Lanza (Eds.), Migrants au Maroc. Cosmopolitisme, présence d’étrangers et transformations sociales (pp.  24–30). Centre Jacques-Berque, Fondation Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Toyota, M., & Thang, L.  L. (2017). Transnational retirement mobility as processes of identity negotiation: the case of Japanese in South-east Asia. Identities, 24(5), 557–572. Toyota, M., & Xiang, B. (2012). The Emerging Transnational ‘Retirement Industry’ in Southeast Asia. The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 32(11/12), 708–719. Veress, K. (2009). Vom Sex-Touristen zum ‚Strandpensionisten’? – Eine Fallstudie zur männlichen Altersmigration nach Thailand am Beispiel von Hua Hin und Cha-am. Retrieved February 23, 2021, from http://othes.univie.ac. at/4983/1/2009-­05-­10_0306543.pdf. Viteri, M. A. (2015). Cultural imaginaries in the residential migration to Cotacachi. Journal of Latin American Geography, 14(1), 119–138. Williams, A. M., King, R., Warnes, A., & Patterson, G. (2000). Tourism and international retirement migration: New forms of an old relationship in southern Europe. Tourism Geographies, 2(1), 28–49. Wong, B. K. M., Musa, G., & Taha, A. Z. (2017). Malaysia my second home: The influence of push and pull motivations on satisfaction. Tourism Management, 61(C), 394–410.

PART I

Migrating to the Global South: Making Sense of Change, Differences and Social Inequalities

CHAPTER 2

In Search of a Place Like Me: Making Sense of Character, Boundaries and Later-Life Mobility Pathways in Southeast Asia Paul Green

Introduction Increasing number of older foreigners and retirees, from the US, Australia and various parts of Europe, for example, are relocating to lifestyle destinations in the Global South, a reflection in part of demographic shifts ‘amongst ageing northern populations’ (Gambold, 2013, p. 185). Lifestyle migration scholars have proved adept at highlighting the individual motivations at the heart of these later-life mobility practices. Lifestyle migration has been consistently viewed in this as a middle-class lifestyle practice, built around economic concerns and ‘high levels of cultural capital derived from education, professional skills and cultural knowledge’ (Benson, 2012, p.  1686). Hayes’ (2015) nuanced analysis of largely North Americans retirees in Ecuador reflects belated yet growing recognition of

P. Green (*) School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne, Parkville, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_2

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diversity amongst lifestyle migrants, in terms of socio-economic differences and the presence of working-class foreigners in the Global South. Such concerns are nevertheless filtered through an overarching preoccupation amongst researchers with the structural conditions that perpetuate and reproduce North-South inequalities pertaining to race and class in lifestyle destinations more generally (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018, p. 118). A focus on structural inequalities, however, deflects attention away from a need to devote sustained analytical labour to the peculiarity of case studies, of individuals, and their particular (and peculiar) relationship/s with given places. In constructing a world map through the binary lens of North-South dualities we lose sight of the complexity and diversity of spatial mobility pathways in later life, of what entices individuals to specific places and locales within nation-states, within the Global South. An ongoing fascination with class and structural privilege does not sufficiently explain why individuals of a similar sociological profile—educated, middle-­ class, professional background, for example—are attracted to different lifestyle destinations, with different values and characteristics in mind, in ways that reflect their own evolving sense of who they are as a person. There is also a need to recognise how ageing northern populations also succumb to the impact of social and economic transformations in given locales and places within the Global South. In order to address these concerns I draw on a longitudinal, ethnographic research project involving ‘later-life’ foreigners based in Penang, Malaysia, and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia (see also Green, 2014, 2015a, 2015b, 2015c, 2016, 2017, 2020). Between 2011 and 2018 I made numerous visits to these field sites, conducting close to 12 months of fieldwork in this process. Life history focused interviews with 118 research participants took place in homes, cafés and restaurants. Interviews were extensively complemented by participant observation across a range of social contexts, gatherings and events, and the building of relationships with some foreign residents over several years. The term later life draws attention to the notable presence of 50-something individuals in international retirement communities. It recognises that later-life mobility practices are ‘heavily gendered’ (Croucher, 2014, p. 21). If (some) men in their 50s take early retirement from life-long career paths, we see how (some) 50-something women relocate to cheaper destinations overseas following a life of family responsibilities, intermittent work and limited opportunities to accumulate pension funds (Gambold, 2013; Green, 2015a).

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This chapter, specifically, turns to a concept of character to make sense of the complexity and peculiarity of later-life mobility pathways within the Global South. Focusing on character draws attention to ‘the complex forms of subjectivity and feeling that emerge through geographical mobility’ (Conradson & McKay, 2007, p.  167). It highlights ways in which individuals embrace socially recognised qualities, moral attributes and values of personhood, through endeavours of self-making and interaction with others (Hoey, 2010, p. 239; Reed & Bialecki, 2018, p. 161). Whilst a concept of character acknowledges the relevance of class it nevertheless inspires analytical engagement with broader, embodied aspects and representations of personhood. Here we see how notions, traits and overlapping values of risk-taking, safety, practicality, creativity, love and sensitivity, as examples, provide a conceptual starting point for understanding a diversity of (middle-class) worldviews as they relate to mobility pathways towards Penang and Ubud. Whilst it is important to listen to our interlocutors there is a need to inductively feed such conversations and insights into a broader theoretical framing, that as such draws attention to connections across selfhood, character and boundaries. A focus on boundaries is inspired by a long-held concern in anthropology of the contrasting presence of a bounded self or individual in Western societies, with permeable boundaries of selfhood and dividualism evident in supposedly non-Western societies (Smith, 2012). In a routinely conceived Western context meanings of selfhood are understood ‘to be created “within” the human subject; our responses to the external world are “internal”; there is (or, appears to be) a sharp boundary between self and other, individual and society, subject and world’ (Smith, 2012, p. 59). Such debate has arguably stagnated, as scholars confirm the universality of interior agency and buffered individuality (Amit & Dyck, 2006) or suggest that we are all ‘thoroughly’ permeated or porous human beings now (Smith, 2012, p. 60). Yet a distinction between bounded and permeable forms of selfhood remains of great theoretical value, especially when applied towards understandings of difference across Western subjects and of ‘differing’ forms of later-life lifestyle mobilities (Rickly, 2017). Examining character on these terms highlights how individuals embrace a sense of being open and closed to the world, and are willing or otherwise to incorporate place, culture, community and others into their lifestyle projects, their sense of self (Hoey, 2010). Focusing on boundaries of self and otherness highlights diversity in middle-class dispositions, just as it

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accounts for ways in which individuals of different class backgrounds share commonalities in relation to boundary management and maintenance in lifestyle destinations. An understanding of character can also be applied to place, providing insight into distinctive qualities of natural and built environment (Hoey, 2010, p.  243), the perceived ‘originality’ of local residents, islanders or culture (Bousiou, 2008, p. 14). Such perception is informed by the influence of colonial history in shaping contemporary imaginings of place and character. As Kearney (1991) tells us, the ‘Age of Empire’ is a story of boundaries, and the establishing of sharp cognitive distinctions between colonial nation-states and their colonies. The age of empire, I suggest, has left ‘taken-for-granted’ traces in lifestyle destinations (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018, p. 3) of how to think, act and view otherness. If places are postcolonial in diverse ways (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018, p. 23) there is a need to similarly consider the historical legacy of an ‘End of Empire’ in reconfiguring categorical distinctions between imperial self and colonial other (Kearney, 1991, p. 57). As Kearney suggests, ‘it is not that differentiation at the end of empire lessens, but that it involves a distinctly different spatial and temporal constellation of Self and Other and of the relationship between them’ (1991, p. 65). Yet, the concept of character is relational. It is a dialogic concept which foregrounds the ‘mutually constituting characteristics’ of person and place (Hoey, 2010, p.  238). On these terms, we gain understanding of how mobility pathways are shaped by ‘bits of personal experience,’ or aspects of individual character, ‘that seem resonant with the character of particular geographic locations’ (Hoey, 2010, p. 247). If historical traces tease out potential or subdued aspects of self on these terms we can also appreciate how aspects of character flourish in relation to what I term as ‘boundary rules’ in lifestyle communities, and associated expectations of how to manage and value relations between self, other and otherness. A mutually constitutive approach to self, character and place also unsettles unilinear framings of temporality in lifestyle mobility, of past shaping present, as mobile subjects construct, make sense of and ‘reassemble’ relationships with place on their own innovative terms (Kavedžija, 2016, p. 99). In such circumstances, and with aspects of social change in mind, we see how individuals rewrite colonial scripts according to personal circumstance and experience.  This conceptual framing of self, place and boundaries is crucial as it illustrates how character-driven mobility choices impact in variable ways,

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across time and in place, on experiences and perceptions of ageing, health and belonging. As I suggest in this chapter, making life choices on the basis of character (of self and place) has implications for how individuals access biomedical and other relevant resources, address the challenges of biological ageing (Oliver, 2008) and think about their future self. Such understanding/s of change unfold in lifestyle destinations that are themselves transforming as a result of state- and private-investment-led development strategies and growth relating to trade, tourism and commerce, for example (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018). Focusing on such transformation/s ‘addresses the dialectic of change and constancy’ (Hoey, 2010, p. 242) in people’s lives, amid recognition that understandings of self and place are ‘a shifting pair of social categories that need to be explained’ (Stoler, 2010, p. 23). In this, we see how individuals filter or map understandings of a loss of character in relation to place, people and culture onto imaginings and experiences of one’s evolving or declining life project.

Colonialism and Boundaries Lifestyle migration scholars have proved adept at addressing the historical role of colonialism in shaping and perpetuating global inequalities in lifestyle destinations (Benson, 2013; Hayes, 2018). As I suggest in this section, it is important to examine this legacy through the conceptual lens of boundaries. As Kearney states, the ‘Age of Empire’ is characterised by the emergence of the modern, colonial nation-state, which imposes ‘absolute geopolitical and social boundaries’ on the territory, borders and persons of the colonies (1991, p. 54). When examining the colonial traces of such boundary projects there is a need to also consider what Kearney terms as the ‘End of Empire’ (1991, p.  57), which involves a potentially radical reconfiguring of relationship between imperial self and colonial other. Whilst this relationship still rests on difference and inequality, this ‘categorical reordering … is most visible spatially in that they become interspersed, one in the geography of the other’ (Kearney, 1991, p. 65). This distinction between the age and end of empire, I suggest, is crucial to understanding the varying historical legacy of colonialism as it relates to understandings of tourism, lifestyle mobility and character in Penang and Ubud. Kearney’s understanding of the age of empire and boundaries is particularly relevant to an understanding of British imperialism and its influence in the shaping of contemporary Malaysia. Penang, specifically, is

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home to the oldest British colonial settlement in Southeast Asia. Located in the northeast of the island the entrepôt of Georgetown was established in 1786 by Francis Light to exert British influence over regional trade and the local economy (Hassan, 2009, p. 309). A desire to similarly impose order and control over territory and population was established through urban planning (Hassan, 2009). In an age of both empire and reason the use of straight lines, a gridiron layout and divide and rule policy were applied to the settlement, with immigrant groups of different backgrounds and beliefs placed in allocated settlement zones (Hassan, 2009). As colonial power ‘widened geographically and deepened institutionally’ across the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (Hirschman, 1986, p. 332) ideas about race, racial stereotypes and slurs ‘developed and crystalized’ around three main groupings: the Chinese, Indians and ‘so-called indigenous Malays’ (Kahn, 1997, p.  113). Such imaginings of racial difference and boundaries set the social, economic and political tone for the emergence of an independent Malaysia in 1957. British colonial history has greatly influenced imaginings of Penang, and peninsular Malaysia, as a lifestyle and tourism destination. Understandings of racial differences, reconfigured as ethnic diversity, are at the heart of ‘multicultural’ Malaysia’s marketing of distinct Chinese, Indian and Malay cultures, cuisines and festivals. In Georgetown, imperial design imaginaries are perpetuated through spatialised representations of ethnic enclaves and historic precincts (Kahn, 1997). The striking, often white symmetrical presence of Georgetown’s colonial architecture has contributed to the production of a heritage space, which gained UNESCO World Heritage City Status in 2008 (Goh, 2014). As Kahn suggests, tourism in Malaysia is based primarily on observation, as opposed to more direct forms of exchange evident in the likes of Bali (1997, p.  100). Penang’s heritage tourism industry has undoubtedly contributed to this process, directing a tourist gaze towards ‘features of landscape and townscape’ (Kahn, 1997, p. 102). It is important, however, to recognise how dominant imaginings of an untrustworthy, ‘idler’ or ‘drunkard’ colonial labour force in Malaysia (Hirschman, 1986, p. 357) were excluded from a romantic, pre-war fascination in elite Western society of paradisiacal landscapes and media narratives of Bali, the South Pacific and ‘the East’ (Vickers, 1989, p. 108). Indonesia’s declaration of independence in 1945 was formally recognised by the Dutch colonial government in 1949. Yet, Kearney’s

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understanding of the end of empire as a ‘historic moment’ (1991, p. 57) in Bali, specifically, arguably followed the massacre of thousands of Balinese elites and their followers across 1906–1908. The Dutch gained full control of the island yet faced international condemnation for their actions. Colonial policy was immediately reconfigured, as the Dutch turned to a liberal ‘Ethical Policy’ (Picard, 1990, p. 39) of preserving Balinese culture and promoting elitist tourism on the island, through images of rice fields, palm trees and the enchanting presence of ‘highly artistic’ followers of an ‘old’ Hindu faith (Vickers, 1989, p.  92). By the 1920s, the island and Ubud particularly had attracted a community of foreign writers, artists and anthropologists. Enduring images of Ubud as the cultural heart of Bali crystallised at this time, through the merging of a ‘kind of’ avantgarde self and Balinese other and collaborations between the German aristocrat Walter Spies, for example, and local artists and royalty in Ubud (Picard, 1990, p. 40). Through Spies’ influence came Covarrubias’ definitive text, Island of Bali (1937), with confirmation of a unique society in which everyone is a painter, dancer or musician. Bali’s prestigious cultural ‘product’ became a central foundation of ‘New Order’ government policy, from the late 1960s and beyond, as international tourism was incorporated into its national development plans (Picard, 1990). A ‘touristic culture’ emerged out of a doctrine of Cultural Tourism, blurring ontological boundaries between everyday culture, identity and tourism in Balinese society. As Picard argues, touristic culture was ‘the product of a dialogic construction between the Balinese and their various interlocutors … including the tourists’ (1990, p. 74). Such forms of exchange were especially evident in Ubud, where royalty inspired the growth of a family homestay industry (Picard, 1996, p. 86), with tourists invited to participate in ‘colourful religious ceremonies’ (Howe, 2005, p. 5) across family compounds, temples and streets of the town. Whilst Ubud is now a global tourism and popular lifestyle destination, the ad hoc roadscapes and spatial layout in the centre of town remains constrained by a topography of river gorges, a sacred monkey forest and albeit diminishing rice fields. The town’s artistic history is resolutely embedded in its built environment, in the form of art galleries and prominent museums, with a reminder of its symbiotic cultural roots symbolised in the presence of Spies’ original home in the grounds of a hotel owned by the royal family.

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Lifestyle Destinations and ‘Differing’ Boundary Rules Making sense of colonialism as a boundary project which feeds into post-­ war imaginings of place as a leisure or lifestyle space has important implications for understanding why individuals are attracted to some lifestyle destinations, yet not others. As Kearney informs us, the construction of sharp boundaries between self and other in the age of empire was filtered primarily through an understanding of the nation-state ‘as the supreme unit of order, a social, cultural, and political form’ (1991, p. 54). From this methodologically nationalist perspective we gain appreciation of why individuals are attracted to postcolonial spaces that allow them to feel at ease, to breathe in ontological terms, in both an explicit national identity (Fechter & Walsh, 2010, p. 1199) and a subtler form of banal nationalism (Billig, 1995) that permeates everyday life and their wider understanding of order, boundaries and otherness. This understanding of connections across the age of empire, postcoloniality and boundaries is enriched by recognition that later-life foreigners may already have experience of living in postcolonial settings, or Hong Kong specifically, which experienced handover as a British colony to China in 1997. Penang entices a disproportionate middle-class contingent of older, British nationals and self-proclaimed retirees. It attracts British nationals directly from the UK but also individuals and couples who have spent much of their working and family lives in other parts of Asia, such as Hong Kong or Indonesia. These life and mobility histories, as I term them (Green, 2020), serve as a mark of distinction in what it means to be British. As one ex-Hong Kong resident suggests, a familiarity with expat life, domestic servants and social clubs makes it easier for ‘expat retirees’ to adjust to life in Penang. He especially stresses the social and networking role of clubs in this, a point he argues, that ‘the British’ simply don’t get. In ‘experience-near’ lifestyle community settings, boundaries are often experienced and become valued through a form of ‘social contagion’ (Grøn & Meinert, 2017, p.  165). Individuals embrace what I term as ‘boundary rules’—locally acceptable ways of engaging with various forms of otherness—in ways that may be ‘out of character’ with their experiences of self and life in other places, at other times. Charlotte is a retired French academic in her 70s. Over lunch, she speaks of missing ‘Frenchness’ in people. This was never an issue, she says, in a career working on campuses with colleagues of different nationalities. Her yearning for national

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qualities of personhood and home become clearer as she speaks wearily and in very general terms of ‘the British’ in Penang. They drink too much, she argues, offering examples of inebriated men getting into fights at organised events and women attending a supposedly ‘cultured’ film night before heading to a bar to share three bottles of wine. In Charlotte’s eyes, their penchant for alcohol both reveals and brings out through inebriation, authentic elements of British character in Penang. Older foreigners cite a variety of highly pragmatic reasons for moving to Penang, with little sense of emotion conveyed in this decision-making process. A British woman in her 50s captures the essence of a number of conversations when she says Penang just works, its Asia Lite! This vague sense of a place ‘just working’ feeds off recognition of familiar comforts in the form of air-conditioned shopping plazas, highly valued medical facilities and widespread use of English. Penang attracts individuals that want a relatively simple life, where there are relatively few challenges, financial or otherwise. As one ‘early retiree’ in his 50s blandly suggests, I just want to look at a menu without thinking about the cost. For John, in his 60s, Penang is a relatively safe bet. You can buy property without the legal complications present in other parts of Southeast Asia, such as Thailand. Malaysia is politically stable compared to other countries, he adds. John had invested in a property on the coast yet was not attracted to Penang for aesthetic reasons. As he put it, there are much better beaches elsewhere. This emotional orientation to place (Ahmed, 2014, p. 4) is thrown into analytical relief in Ubud, where there is no dominant national grouping and older Westerners collectively refer to themselves as ‘expats’ or Ubudians. Stories of relocating to Ubud are often filtered through a metaphorical narrative of romantic love (Lengkeek, 2002). Jennifer is a divorced American in her 50s. With limited income and savings, she speaks of the transformational qualities of Bali. It is a place that has changed her life, her sense of who she is, after struggling for some years in the emotional and financial aftermath of an unhappy marriage and fractious divorce process. She feels inspired, she tells me, by the magic of Bali, even if she cannot fully explain or rationalise what this magic is. Romantic love, Lipset tells us, ‘challenges the boundaries of the self,’ propelling self and other into a potential ‘state of total and boundless devotion’ (2004, p. 205). Ubud, in this sense, takes on the qualities of an eternal soulmate. Henry is an American in his 70s and has lived in Ubud for close to 20 years. Like Jennifer, Henry speaks of falling ‘instantly’ in love with Ubud. His only regret is that he did not meet this soulmate

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earlier in life, as younger versions of their current selves, before tourists arrived en masse in Ubud and iconic rice fields started to give way to hotel and villa projects. In contrast to Penang’s continuous association with an age of empire, imaginings of Bali were transformed through an ethical reconfiguration of Dutch colonial policy in 1908. It is a history that has inspired an ‘achingly present’ ontological tone (Muehlebach & Shoshan, 2012, p. 318), built around permeable imaginings of self and other. According to Vickers, many of Spies’ friends thought ‘there was something in his character which drew him to innocent and cultured Bali’ (1989, p.  106). Patricia, an American in her 50s, similarly feels that Bali and its people are sensitive, like her. When asked to elaborate she speaks of food allergies but also of being culturally and environmentally sensitive. She is attuned to early anthropological accounts of Bali and myths of paradise yet remains confident that Bali, and its warm, gentle people, will provide a distinct, geographical filter and location to make sense of and confirm her inherent social qualities and hypoglycaemic flaws as a person. When we met, Patricia was relatively new to Ubud yet over time remained true to these transgressive intentions, moving after one year into a rented property located in a Balinese family compound with the intention to fully immerse herself in local culture and language.

Difference and Boundary Commonalities Within Lifestyle Destinations As participant observers in their own life stories, my interlocutors are adept at evaluating the character of self and others on their own, often well-travelled terms. In Ubud, foreigners I met consistently use adjectives such as warm, creative and open to describe friends and community there. Yet, focusing on an underlying relationship between self, boundaries and others reveals a methodological tension in fieldwork in which an anthropologist must listen closely to interlocutors, yet simultaneously analyse conversations as forms of ‘experience-distant’ data (Brubaker & Cooper, 2000, p. 4). By embracing this tension we draw attention to ways in which individuals of seemingly diverse worldviews and class backgrounds, for example, may have much in common in terms of their appreciation or otherwise of boundary rules and their approach in this towards ‘intertwined processes of person, self and place making’ (Hoey, 2010, p. 237).

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If individuals are variously drawn to places that feel safe, a form of Asia Lite, or artistic, such ‘imagined elements of particularity’ (Hoey, 2010, p. 238) often feed into, sustain or possibly reconfigure lifestyle projects. Ubud, in this, attracts individuals that have long viewed creative or artistic endeavour as central, defining aspects of selfhood. John is in his 60s, and whilst originally from the UK he moved to the US in the 1970s. A self-­ defining artist and painter he moved to Ubud in 2008, paying rent two years in advance on a house there. Under no pressure to ‘make the rent,’ his relative privilege provided him with the freedom and tranquillity, as he puts it, to absorb local Balinese culture, meet like-minded creative people, and engage in painting and meditation. For others, Ubud provides a transformative space to tap into a potential self, that has laid dormant amid commitments to work, careers and family life elsewhere. In important ways Ubud represents an alternative ‘type’ of lifestyle destination, built around bohemian ideals and ‘characterised by certain spiritual, artistic, or creative aspirations and unique “cultural” experience’ (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009, pp. 612–613). Yet I also met individuals that had trodden conventional, middle-class corporate career paths, who would baulk at the suggestion they came to Ubud to find their spiritual self. Take the example of Peter, an American retiree in his 80s. Peter rose to CEO of a regional office of a corporate insurance company in the US. He has lived a good life, he said. It is a life defined by an openness and generosity to others, especially family. Peter splits his time every year between Ubud and the US, where he travels across three states to spend time with children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. This valuing of kinship permeates his time in Ubud, where he is close to one particular Balinese family and feels invested in local village life. Peter, then, thrives in a place that, like him, values family, intimacy and a sense of giving to others. If we return to Penang, it seems that Glyn, in his late 50s, would feel at home in an alternative lifestyle destination. He is a practising Buddhist from the UK, who has spent time in Tibet and met his British wife in an ashram in India. After struggling to get an acupuncture practice off the ground in the UK the couple moved to Penang. As Glyn explained to me when we met, they had experienced problems ‘fitting in’ with an expat community. He felt this was an age issue, with Glyn and his 50-year-old wife positioned between younger, working foreigners with children and an older cohort of retirees. Penang nevertheless attracts numerous 50-­something couples. The challenges of fitting in can arguably be attributed to conservative

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middle-class expectations of how to do life in Penang, a world in which men play golf and couples turn strictly to biomedical resources if they have health issues. It is a social landscape, then, that offers little space or tolerance for alternative lifestyle practices, such as yoga or acupuncture. Yet, what is striking about this couple’s story is that they otherwise have much in common with this wider community, in terms of a desire to construct symbolic, physical and spatial boundaries between self and localised forms of otherness. Like others, Glyn and Janine bought a property in a high-rise apartment building in an area popular with foreigners. The building is situated northeast coast of the island, some 11 km from the heritage zone of Georgetown and away from what are perceived as unsafe local residential areas. The couple are not alone in having little desire to get to know locals, who they feel are rude in asking questions about money. Even the ‘nice ones,’ they argue, are not to be trusted and are after something. They have little interest, similarly, in learning about or engaging with local or national politics. With its perceived Chinese majority, the island location of Penang in the northwest of peninsular Malaysia offers geo-spatial respite for white foreigners from uncomfortable recognition that they are living in a predominantly Muslim nation-state. Peter, on the other hand, a working-class British resident in his late 50s, is happy to live amongst locals, in a predominantly local residential area. He has a cosmopolitan outlook, he asserts, and would never live near ‘that cliquey lot’ on the coast. His story nevertheless reveals a ‘problematic genealogy’ in Western philosophy, of a seemingly inclusive worldview informed by a racist ontology and associated appreciation of boundaries (Uimonen, 2020, p. 97). Peter’s appreciation of life in Penang is shaped by the view that England is ‘going to the dogs,’ with many regulars at his local village pub voting with their feet and leaving the country. This conversation takes place before a Brexit vote, but is an expression of ‘injured white nationalism,’ a feeling that something has not simply been lost but taken away from his country (Franklin, 2019, p. 52). In Peter’s eyes the country has not been the same since the 1950s, a time of strong government and resilient society. With little sense of irony he appreciates the fact that Christmas trees and national flags are displayed in largely Muslim Malaysia, in a way that is problematic in a homeland that now panders to minorities and immigrants.

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Making Sense of Change in Self and Place As individuals and couples variously make sense of evolving life projects across Penang and Ubud, they do so in recognition that such negotiations are ‘sharpened by existential and biological factors of ageing’ (Oliver, 2008, p. 1). It is important to recognise how personal perceptions of ageing are shaped by self, place and boundary-making practices particular to the social and emotional context of Penang or Ubud. Such practices are complicated by awareness that these lifestyle destinations are also undergoing significant change, as Ubud is transformed into a global tourism destination and Penang marketed as both a lifestyle destination and ‘strategic urban centre’ pertaining to property, trade and technology (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018, p. 19). For later-life foreigners such forms of modernity and progress are often equated with a loss of character in relation to place (Green, 2016), as it succumbs to traffic congestion, rising costs and the continuous soundscapes and ‘lifestyle gaze’ of construction work. As I suggest here, there is need to examine how mutually constituting characteristics of self, boundaries and place are shaped by important aspects of change relating to this sense of loss, the ageing process and associated imaginings of the future. Julie is British and has spent much of her adult life working in international schools in various parts of Asia, whilst her husband built a career in middle management. The couple initially took early retirement back in the UK, but struggled to readapt and make sense of change, and the general debauchery of younger generations there. Now in Penang, in her mid-­60s, she talks about an imagined future of bodily decline, temporally marked by an increasing dependency on domestic labour in her home, a role fulfilled by local or Filipina maids. As she explains, she will have to move from employing a part-time maid for four hours, three days a week, to having two maids in her home full-time, across day and evening shifts. If cancer or what is referred to as ‘the big C’ arrives, she will simply go ‘home,’ a term Julie still uses to refer to the UK. As with other older foreigners I met in Penang, Julie’s imagining of a future of biological decline is felt with a strong sense of fear and trepidation. It is a story, also, that speaks to multi-layered concerns of boundary management and control. Such individuals often speak glowingly of consultant surgeons they encounter in local hospitals, whose association with otherness has been symbolically purified by the ‘world class’ training they receive in Europe (Green, 2014). Julie’s sense of control over self,

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independent body and otherness begins to fragment through imaginings of a third-fourth age transition, towards the end point of a long life. Like Kearney’s (1991) end of empire, this end point is marked, in this case uncomfortably, by the continual presence of one (domestic maids) in the geography of other (Julie’s home). Such concern is exacerbated by the extent to which such relationships are viewed in strictly economic, often untrusting terms. I spoke to one British retiree living in a high security apartment complex, for example, who was about to leave Malaysia for a couple of weeks and was concerned about leaving his Filipina maid behind, in terms of access to the property and a perceived threat of burglary. I am sitting in a café with two 80-something friends in Ubud, John and Kate. Neither have health insurance, which they casually point out is very expensive at their age. In keeping with a general fluidity of boundary rules in Ubud and valuing of creativity, their thinking about health issues transcends the solitary influence of Western biomedical ideologies and its emphasis on ‘individualism, rationalism, and objectivity’ (Donnelly & Long, 2009, p. 404). Like other foreign residents I met, these two friends embrace a flexible approach to health, illness and ageing through an appreciation of plant-based remedies, Balinese healers, traditional massages and medical practitioners, that often come through word of mouth recommendations. Their sense of home is very much grounded in Ubud, where they feel the emotional support of foreign friends and have less inclination in this towards thinking of a return to their homeland in the future. Foreign residents often build intimate relations with their domestic servants, viewing them and the servant’s family members as family (Green, 2017). As they age in place their domestic servants often take on an increasingly wide range of informal care responsibilities, in ways then that contribute to the former feeling a sense of emotional attachment to place and relationships in Ubud. If such relationships speak to embedded, structural conditions of North-South inequalities and racial hierarchies (Green, 2017), there is a need to recognise that older foreigners also feel the impact of economic transformation in lifestyle destinations. Such aspects of change are felt in highly personal terms, as a perceived loss of character in place maps onto and permeates evolving understandings of self and lifestyle project. Brian is a British retiree in his mid-60s, based in Penang. Our conversation focuses on ongoing health issues yet also the construction of new apartment buildings in view of the property he has bought. When he arrived

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three years previously in Penang, his apartment came with sea views that are now being obstructed by these new building projects. As older foreigners relocate to lifestyle destinations they often expect that such movement will mark the beginning of a new phase of life, in retirement. In this case, we see how a loss of character and visual aesthetic in Brian’s residential area are reflective of a ‘dialogic and material understanding’ (Hoey, 2010, p. 255) of declining personhood in later life. These transformations have implications for understanding power dynamics that shape relations between foreigners and local business and property owners. In the central areas of Ubud land and rental property prices have increased greatly in recent years. Kate, who I introduced above, has been coming to Ubud since the 1970s. When she relocated to Ubud in 2009 she initially stayed at a family-run guesthouse she knew well, before moving to a larger two-storey unit located in spacious grounds of a small resort-style hotel in the centre of town. She was content there, invested money in renovations and was promised by the owners that she could stay there until her final sunset, as she puts it. In 2016, she was informed she needed to leave, as the owners planned to upgrade all units and the business more generally. Kate was furious. She felt used, describing herself as a resident cash cow in a low occupancy hospitality business. She shared her feelings with friends and other foreign residents in the town through Facebook, with one respondent suggesting that none of it makes sense anymore. Indeed, Kate’s exchanges online are reflective of growing, shared perception amongst older foreigners that local landlords and business owners have become greedy and unscrupulous, in ways that chip away and unsettle long-established historical scripts of ‘the Balinese’ as a universally warm, artistic people and welcoming culture. Such anger is also fuelled by the specific challenges and needs of older foreign residents, in terms of attempts to find alternative accommodation in the central areas of town. Housing costs are increasingly prohibitive for those with limited funds, whilst cheaper rental options away from the touristic centre offer limited proximate access to lifestyle-related services and amenities. As individuals age in place and experience physical mobility issues seemingly benign questions of whether cafés or bakeries are in walking distance of a new home become entangled with fears over loneliness, bodily change and decline, and hesitant adjustments to new surroundings, walkways and neighbours.

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Final Remarks In this chapter, I have examined the diverse mobility pathways and evolving life experiences of later-life foreigners living in Penang and Ubud through the conceptual lens of character. It is a concept that acknowledges the relevance of class yet incorporates broader, embodied aspects of personhood in order to gain a more nuanced appreciation of why individuals in later life are attracted to specific places and destinations within the Global South. Such insight/s emerge at the methodological interface of encounters between researcher and interlocutor/s, as ethnographic reflections on alcohol, love, sensitivity, creativity and rudeness, for example, feed into a broader yet underlying theoretical exploration of boundaries, boundary rules and associated meanings of self, place and character in lifestyle destinations. A focus on boundaries facilitates fresh insight into historical process and its relevance for making sense of later-life mobility practices and experiences of place. Through Kearney’s (1991) understanding of the age and end of empire we gain nuanced appreciation of the ways in which colonial power, policy and design imaginaries set an explicit yet banal ontological tone for imaginings and desirability of place as lifestyle destination and life project. It is a tone that is often perpetuated through the existence of, and at times, contagious insistence of associated boundary rules in lifestyle communities. Boundary rules, I suggest, may encourage subdued understandings of self and character to emerge in later life, in specific places, or impose a methodological nationalist or ‘out of character’ worldview on individuals who have spent much of their working life transgressing such boundaries. The findings of this chapter are also intended to induce fresh conversation/s and analyses of North-South mobility flows. To follow Stoler, terms such as colonial power, relative privilege, postcolonialism and global inequalities in studies of lifestyle migration ‘are often used interchangeably, as if they captured one and the same thing’ (2010, p. 23). If such a focus ‘encourages certain lines of novel inquiry,’ Stoler continues, ‘it closes off others’ (2010, p. 23). Embracing openness on these analytical terms requires scholars to tread carefully in placing taken-for-granted variables such as class at the forefront of a complex global picture of movement, life experience, mobility histories and what I term here as character. There is similarly a need to treat North-South dualities and associated understandings of self, other

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and place as ‘shifting’ social categories that require explanation (Stoler, 2010, p. 23). In this we see how a valuing of boundary maintenance in Penang is compromised, as construction projects infiltrate the lifestyle project and gaze of a person with health issues, whilst in Ubud we witness the emergence of boundaries between a resident cash cow and greedy, unscrupulous other. Such experiences are becoming increasingly common, as lifestyle destinations experience forms of ‘growth’ that variously impacts on the lives of human beings who are all too easily subordinated to a static, conceptual realm of freedom and global privilege. Greater analytical attention is required of the ways in which such aspects of change are felt in the lives of later-life foreigners, at a time in their life when there is often a yearning for a sense of belonging and security in self, home and place, as they move towards what Kate thinks of as a final sunset in life.

References Ahmed, S. (2014). The Cultural Politics of Emotion. Edinburgh University Press. Amit, V., & Dyck, N. (2006). Claiming Individuality: The Cultural Politics of Distinction. Pluto Press. Benson, M. (2012). How Culturally Significant Imaginings are Translated into Lifestyle Migration. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 38(10), 1681–1696. Benson, M. (2013). Postcoloniality and Privilege in New Lifestyle Flows: The Case of North Americans in Panama. Mobilities, 8(3), 313–330. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2009). Migration and the Search for a Better Way of Life: A Critical Exploration of Lifestyle Migration. The Sociological Review, 57(4), 608–625. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2018). Lifestyle Migration and Colonial Traces in Malaysia and Panama. Palgrave Macmillan. Billig, M. (1995). Banal Nationalism. Sage. Bousiou, P. (2008). The Nomads of Mykonos: Performing Liminalities in a “Queer” Space. Berghahn. Brubaker, R., & Cooper, F. (2000). Beyond “Identity”. Theory and Society, 29(1), 1–47. Conradson, D., & McKay, D. (2007). Translocal Subjectivities: Mobility, Connection, Emotion. Mobilities, 2(2), 167–174. Croucher, S. (2014). The Gendered Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration. In M. Janoschka & H. Haas (Eds.), Contested Spatialities, Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism (pp. 15–28). Routledge. Donnelly, T. T., & Long, B. C. (2009). Stress Discourse and Western Biomedical Ideology: Rewriting Stress. Issues in Mental Health Nursing, 24(4), 397–408.

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Fechter, A.  M., & Walsh, K. (2010). Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 36(8), 1197–1210. Franklin, S. (2019). Nostalgic Nationalism: How a Discourse of Sacrificial Reproduction Helped Fuel Brexit Britain. Cultural Anthropology, 34(1), 41–52. Gambold, L. (2013). Retirement Abroad as Women’s Aging Strategy. Anthropology & Aging Quarterly, 34(2), 184–198. Goh, D.  P. S. (2014). Between History and Heritage: Post-Colonialism, Globalisation, and the Remaking of Malacca, Penang, and Singapore. TRaNS: Trans -Regional and -National Studies of Southeast Asia, 2(1), 79–101. Green, P. (2014). Contested Realities and Economic Circumstances: British Later-­ Life Migrants in Malaysia. In M.  Janoschka & H.  Haas (Eds.), Contested Spatialities, Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism (pp.  145–157). Routledge. Green, P. (2015a). Mobility, Subjectivity and Interpersonal Relationships: Older, Western Migrants and Retirees in Malaysia and Indonesia. Asian Anthropology, 14(2), 150–165. Green, P. (2015b). Mobility, Stasis and Transnational Kin: Later-Life Migrants in Southeast Asia. Asian Studies Review, 39(4), 669–685. Green, P. (2015c). Mobility Regimes in Practice: Later-Life Westerners and Visa Runs in South-East Asia. Mobilities, 10(5), 748–763. Green, P. (2016). Biomedicine and ‘Risky’ Retirement Destinations: Older, Western Residents in Ubud, Bali. Medical Anthropology, 35(2), 147–160. Green, P. (2017). Racial Hierarchies and Contradictory Moral Regimes in Lifestyle Destinations: Older, Western Residents in Ubud, Bali. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 26(2), 161–180. Green, P. (2020). Thinking Within, Across and Beyond Lifestyle Paradigms: Later-Life Mobility Histories and Practices ‘in’ Ubud, Bali. Ethnography, 21(2), 241–260. Grøn, L., & Meinert, L. (2017). Social Contagion and Cultural Epidemics: Phenomenological and “Experience-Near” Explorations. Ethos, 45(2), 165–181. Hassan, A.  S. (2009). The British Colonial ‘Divide and Rule’ Concept: Its Influence to Transport Access in Inner City of George Town, Penang. Transportation, 36, 309–324. Hayes, M. (2015). Moving South: The Economic Motives and Structural Context of North America’s Emigrants in Cuenca, Ecuador. Mobilities, 10(2), 267–284. Hayes, M. (2018). Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration Under Late Capitalism. University of Minnesota Press. Hirschman, C. (1986). The Making of Race in Colonial Malaya: Political Economy and Racial Ideology. Sociological Forum, 1(2), 330–361. Hoey, B. (2010). Place for Personhood: Individual and Local Character in Lifestyle Migration. City & Society, 22(2), 237–261.

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Howe, L. (2005). The Changing World of Bali: Religion, Society and Tourism. Routledge. Kahn, J. (1997). Culturalizing Malaysia: Globalism, Tourism, Heritage, and the City in Georgetown. In M. Picard & R. E. Wood (Eds.), Tourism, Ethnicity, and the State in Asian and Pacific societies (pp.  99–127). University of Hawaii Press. Kavedžija, I. (2016). The Good Life in Balance: Insights from Ageing Japan. In I. Kavedžija & H. Walker (Eds.), Values of Happiness: Towards an Anthropology of Purpose in Life. Hau Books. Kearney, M. (1991). Borders and Boundaries of State and Self at the End of Empire. Journal of Historical Sociology, 4(1), 52–74. Lengkeek, J. (2002). A Love Affair with Elsewhere: Love as a Metaphor for Tourist Longing. In G.  Dann (Ed.), The Tourist as a Metaphor of the Social World (pp. 189–208). CABI Publishing. Lipset, D. (2004). Modernity Without Romance? Masculinity and Desire in Courtship Stories Told by Young Papua New Guinean Men. American Ethnologist, 31(2), 205–224. Muehlebach, A., & Shoshan, N. (2012). Introduction: Post-Fordist Affect. Anthropological Quarterly, 85(2), 317–344. Oliver, C. (2008). Retirement Migration: Paradoxes of Ageing. Routledge. Picard, M. (1990). “Cultural Tourism” in Bali: Cultural Performances as Tourist Attraction. Indonesia, 49, 37–74. Picard, M. (1996). Bali: Cultural Tourism and Touristic Culture. Archipelago Press. Reed, A., & Bialecki, J. (2018). Anthropology and Character. Social Anthropology, 26(2), 159–167. Rickly, J.  M. (2017). “I’m a Red River local”: Rock Climbing Mobilities and Community Hospitalities. Tourist Studies, 17(1), 54–74. Smith, K. (2012). From Dividual to Individual to Porous Subjects. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 23, 50–64. Stoler, A. (2010). Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. University of California Press. Uimonen, P. (2020). Decolonising Cosmopolitanism: An Anthropological Reading of Immanuel Kant and Kwame Nkrumah on the World as One. Critique of Anthropology, 40(1), 81–101. Vickers, A. (1989). Bali: A Paradise Created. Penguin.

CHAPTER 3

Coloniality and Retirement Migration to the Global South Matthew Hayes

Retirement migration to former European colonies in the Global South draws attention to structures of global inequality that shape the opportunities, lifestyles and even the perceptions of day-to-day life developed amongst communities of ‘expat’ retirees. The postcolonial context of migration to former European colonies, and especially the continuities they might have with the colonial past, has been the focus of interest amongst scholars of ‘expatriation’ and lifestyle migration (Benson, 2013; Benson & O’Reilly, 2018; Fechter & Walsh, 2010; Knowles & Harper, 2009). These often also include consideration of older adults, who migrate in later life for lifestyle reasons. The field has mostly developed its understanding of postcolonial migration in relation to the self-understanding and life projects of migrants themselves—narratives that accentuate the relative agency of migrants over the migration process. Global inequalities of power are perceived in relation to other structuring concepts, such as the power of ‘migrant imaginaries’ (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018; Benson & Osbaldiston, 2014;

M. Hayes (*) St. Thomas University, Fredericton, NB, Canada e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_3

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Higgins, 2017) to create new or change existing meanings of space. Or, global inequalities and colonial hierarchies are visible through the different categories North-South migrants use to understand their transnational mobilities and distinguish them from other categories of migrant moving North (Fechter & Walsh, 2010; Kunz, 2020). Relatively less attention has been given, however, to the meanings North-South migrants give to the material differences and inequalities that are part of their day-to-day lives, and that affect their emplacement and sense of global position. In many respects, these too express colonial continuities and are often entangled with perceptions of racial and ethnic differences, which have been the focus of more scholarly attention (Cosquer, 2019; Fechter, 2005; Goss, 2019). But what is still mostly absent is how older adult migrants to former European colonies make sense of and give meaning to perceptions of material inequality and difference—a topic which, however, is never far from the surface of qualitative interviews and interactions in older ‘expat’ communities. In this chapter I develop a cultural sociology of global inequality, attending to the cultural codes that are used to make sense of material differences. I develop this approach by focusing on one particular cultural narrative that structures how North-South retirement migrants understand global inequality in day-to-day life. I present a case study of one migrant couple’s experience of mobility in Morocco, a former French ‘protectorate’ from 1912 to 1956.1 This case illustrates a set of narratives common to some (but not all) other participants, which helped make sense of, and give meaning to, their mobility experience and emplacement in Morocco. The case helps situate these meanings within broader cultural understandings of global inequality as seen from the Global North and that dialogue with inherited global hierarchies of wealth, income and symbolic power. This chapter is divided into five sections. First, I wish to point out how lifestyle migration research has illuminated postcolonial contexts from the vantage point of relatively privileged social positions. Rather than merely describing the lifestyles of relatively privileged migrants, this scholarship has engaged in uncovering the postcolonial ways of being in global social spaces, where racialized whiteness and the economic advantages of citizenship in high-income countries have a deep and everyday impact on the meanings of migration. Then, over the following three sections, I explore the experience of one Belgian couple, whom I argue exemplify how older European adults currently position themselves in global social space

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through retirement migration to former European colonies. In the conclusion I theorize cultural codes in relation to global inequalities, looking at how cultural meanings about ethno-cultural difference are intertwined with meanings about economic inequality and how the moral grammars attached to these meanings are unglued through narrative practices that help stabilize material differences and ethno-cultural essentialisms. Participants are not indifferent to the lives of lower-income Moroccans, with whom they interact, but as I point out, the structures of meaning and chains of signification they employ to make sense of their position in Moroccan social space can function to reproduce colonial hierarchies, while obscuring connected histories and mutually constituted social relations.

Coloniality and Lifestyle Migration Scholars of lifestyle migration have been at the forefront of thinking about the meanings of migrations undertaken from high-income countries to lower-income countries, especially former French, Dutch and British colonies in the Global South (Fechter, 2005; Jaji, 2019; Knowles & Harper, 2009; Quashie, 2016a; Therrien & Pellegrini, 2015). Since the field’s inception, scholars have regularly contrasted the motivations and experiences of ‘expatriates’ with those of other migrants moving from East and South to Global North. Karen O’Reilly, for instance, presented the British in Spain as a type of migration whose status and regulation were in stark contrast to most other migrants (O’Reilly, 2000: 39–41). While a desire to improve quality of life appear similar, the freedom of movement enjoyed by migrants from countries like France make comparison difficult with migrants from, say, former French colonies moving to Europe (Therrien & Pellegrini, 2015: 609). However, the difficulty of comparison should not obscure the relational aspects of ‘privileged migration’ (Croucher, 2012), which are extremely pertinent to sociological exploration of the North-South migration of older adults. Their life-courses have often played out within trajectories of unequal global economic distribution—contexts that link these migrants’ lives to those of other migrants from the Global South and Global East. Differences in conceptualization of migrations often reflect different global class positions. Contemporary global hierarchies of social class and status, global patterns of racial distribution of power and wealth, knowledge of the natural and social worlds, and gender orders privilege the

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perspectives of Europeans and reflect European traditions in ways that are referred to as ‘Eurocentrism’ (de Sousa Santos, 2014). As Boaventura de Sousa Santos observes, our ways of thinking about the world are inflected not only by existing global inequalities but more precisely by the colonial forms of global domination that European empires initiated from the late fifteenth century onwards. While formal, political domination has come to an end, colonial extraction persists, reflecting what Aníbal Quijano called ‘the coloniality of power’ (Quijano, 2000), that is hierarchies of wealth, power and status that preserve colonial patterns. From this perspective, the structure of global social relations remains colonial, though no doubt, there have also been important modifications to the nodes of accumulation and ideologies that shape these relations. This is particularly visible and evident in ethnographic studies of lifestyle migration. North-South migrants relocate into different social formations, effectively changing class positions in addition to developing new relations to their whiteness, with which many identify (Benson, 2013; Cosquer, 2019). Migrants from the Global North often attempt to retrieve social status lost in their home countries through economic and cultural changes, as well as through ageing, by moving to communities in the Global South, where, for instance, the cost of living is lower and where whiteness still signals social status that it may no longer signify for older working-class adults in core countries. As Devin Goss (2019) points out, US Americans in a Mexican retirement destination often express nostalgia for the racial hierarchies of pre-Civil Rights era United States. Similarly, Ertuğrul (2016) discusses how critiques of multiculturalism and an admiration for the supposed ethnic purity of Turkey help motivate the relocations of British migrants to Anatolia. Some of these migrations appear to be undertaken as a result of shifting global racial formations, reflecting colonial nostalgia. But even when colonial nostalgia does not directly motivate the migrations themselves, global inequalities and coloniality of power remain structuring conditions that inform migrants’ understanding of their mobility and their emplacement in lower-income global spaces. In the following sections, I focus on a series of statements about ethno-­ cultural difference and economic inequality that are important to the experiences of North-South migrants. These statements are common, though they are by no means universal. They co-exist with other narratives, but I attend to them here as representative of the ways some migrants might make sense of difference and inequality some of the time (and perhaps not all the time, since migrants may also have some critical purchase

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on the contradictions in their own dispositions and ways of thinking about inequality). I argue these narratives articulate a typical cultural structure that shapes the ways relatively privileged migrants experience shifting class positions through migration. In particular, they switch between cultural codes that relate their positions to either cultural or economic factors. By doing so, they justify and legitimize their relative material privilege vis-àvis the receiving community, displacing or eliding consideration of structures of unequal accumulation, or patterns of racist exclusion, from which they have benefitted.

Lifestyle Migration as Cultural Exchange The one interview I focus on here is from 22 conducted in 2017  in Marrakesh and Essaouira, Morocco. These semi-structured qualitative interviews were conducted through convenience and snowball sampling. Interviews focused on motivations for coming to Morocco, impressions of the country, but also on their sense of inequality, ethnic difference and their understanding of the differences between their own migrations and those of other migrants moving to Europe. Interviews typically lasted 50–60 minutes, though a few were longer. They were transcribed and coded using NVivo, from which key themes were selected. In addition to interviews, ethnographic fieldnotes and discussions with Moroccans— often ones I met who worked in the tourist trades and with whom I developed rapport—were an important source of insight. They helped to interpret some of the gaps that exist between migrant imaginaries of Morocco and certain realities. I draw on these fieldnotes sporadically in the text that follows. My main focus, however, is on a Belgian couple from Wallonia, George and Annick (pseudonyms), which frames my analysis of how some relatively privileged North-South migrants interpret their emplacement in lower-income spaces of the Global South. George was a retired manager at a horticulture facility, and his wife Annick, a retired secretary. Both were in their late 60s. I focused on this one interview because of the neat way it illustrates a switch in cultural codes from cultural difference to economic inequality and back, a theme that appears in many other interviews, albeit sometimes in different forms. George and Annick illustrate a common way of ‘living with privilege’ in the postcolony. This is not the only way that relatively privileged migrants move about in former European colonies. But it provides a window into a particular meaning-making narrative that

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is more than merely a description of social reality. It is also, as I argue here, a structuring practice. As I point out below, George and Annick’s North-­ South mobility was deeply imbricated not just in material inequalities but also in symbolic codes that shaped their perceptions of global inequality and that gave meaning to their experiences. George and Annick had travelled extensively in former French colonies and in the Global South during their working years, and especially to Morocco since the 1990s, where they had spent most of the year for the past 20 years, returning to France to visit family in summer and over holidays, a pattern typical of many other French-European migrants (see Le Bigot, 2016). Language was one of the most important reasons for settling in Morocco. They felt there was no language barrier there—French is spoken “by most people,” as they told me. At several points in their interview, they mentioned that they were not good at languages and that their international movements were the product of comfort and familiarity with French—even though it is spoken unevenly amongst subordinate classes in Morocco and is no longer the primary language of instruction in public schools (though it is in private ones reserved for the middle and upper classes, as well as in the universities). For George and Annick, access to care workers who spoke French was part of their imaginary of the ideal destination. As they got older and had health problems, they thought it was important to be able to communicate decisions with health professionals, they said. Relocation to Morocco was intertwined with the couple’s desire to travel—a sort of wanderlust that is commonly found in other accounts of lifestyle migration to Morocco (Therrien & Pellegrini, 2015). It was also motivated by a desire to escape winter. When their children finished high school, George and Annick were in their late 40s and took vacations further afield beginning in the 1990s. As tourism expanded in these years, so did the possibility for George and Annick and others to experiment with new types of vacation and travel, which have continued to morph qualitatively as well as quantitatively in the years since. These increasingly intense international mobilities occurred against the backdrop of growing restrictions in Western European countries against migrant workers from the Global South (Bhambra, 2017; Castles, 2015). What drew George and Annick to Morocco was not merely better weather, which they acknowledged they could have had in the South of France, in  locations with which they were already well familiar. Rather, they sought “opportunities” in another country that they would find

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more stimulating, where they would be able to meet other people, different from themselves. As George put it, “if you travel, it is not to be with Europeans. It’s to be with people from other countries, to learn their culture, their cultural way of living, their food, and all that.”2 This desire for cultural difference evokes emotions of longing, curiosity and pride that connected to social representations of what makes travel and migration worthwhile. Recognizing this desire for cultural exchange and approximation of difference from somewhere else (Hayes & Carlson, 2018), I interjected, “That is the point, isn’t it?” (C’est le but, quoi). In his measured rhythm, George continued, “That is the point (c’est le but), to form a fusion of our culture and theirs. And if we can contribute (leur apporter) something, we contribute to them, and on their side, they contribute lots of things to us as well.” My interjection was leading, but George’s smooth transition indicates that we were drawing on the same cultural tool box (Swidler, 1986), deploying a similar cultural code, that prioritizes novelty and new experience. As George explained, Europe doesn’t feel strange to us! (L’Europe ne nous dépayse pas!) Because in the end (dans le fond), what we wanted, was to learn from different cultures and if we take Europe, all the great cities of Europe are all about the same. […] Okay, the buildings change obviously, but the mentality is always the same.

This desire for what Therrien and Pellegrini (2015) call ‘elsewhereness’ was also mentioned by other participants, often in relation to a desire for a change from routine, or to build a new life. But rather than an expression of a real desire, this statement is a meaning-making practice of migration. Changing one’s life through ‘integration’ or encounters with cultural difference is an important subjective marker of success in the projects of other lifestyle migrants (Benson, 2016; Lawson, 2017). It can also be the source of intense emotions, such as pride and shame, which inform social action. Moreover, these intense emotions and a sense of expanding horizons arise from privileged material circumstances—they are the drama of ‘First World’ travellers, which may also differ from the drama of migration from other vantage points. As with other privileged migrants, who often speak of getting out of their ‘comfort zones’ (see Hayes, 2021), the point here is to overcome limits that exist within the self, in contrast to the

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external border regimes with which other global social classes may be confronted. George’s desire for cultural exchange and contact with difference expresses a binary moral code of action at the heart of retirement migration to the Global South. It references a desire to experience personal growth through dépaysement or a break with routine, but is also an implicit critique of an apparent failure to live up to cultural ideals of the life-course within familiar or traditional contours. As in North American migration to Ecuador, French Europeans express a binary code that privileges a correct form of migration, sustained through practices of encountering and living with difference and of shunning ethnocentrism. But this binary code of good and bad migrants should also be understood in global social space. It is developed in relation to the meanings given to migration in Europe (in this case, French Belgium), where migrants from North Africa are frequently critiqued for apparently not ‘integrating’ (see Odasso, 2016). In this reversed context, a good European migrant in Morocco is not one who simply hangs out with other Europeans (even if they often do, in part because they do not generally speak Moroccan Darija or Amazigh languages, and they do not always easily understand the gender orders of socializing in receiving communities). A good European migrant is one who fits in, respects the local culture and adapts to it as best as possible, producing, perhaps, unique cultural fusions—even when these are sometimes built on relations of dependency and patronage with lower-­ income groups.

The Economic Meanings of Difference A desire for cultural difference was clearly important to George and other French-European retirement migrants, but what did it mean? Though George spoke more often in our interview than Annick did, she nonetheless would support his assertions often, or interject with her own take, which would then lead the discussion. That was the case here, as she interjected in response to my question about what cultural difference was: “Well, it is to learn from people, of their way of life, whether it is how they dress, their homes, their furniture, their cuisine.” As though Annick had pulled the right tool from the cultural toolbox that might provide a bit more content to a question about the desirability of experiencing a new culture, George also exclaimed, “It is the way of life! (C’est la façon de vivre!),” and his wife agreed, “yes, it is the way of life.”

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Yet, this way of life was not just about clothing, housing, furnishings, the material decorations of everyday life. They were, as Annick continued, about material practices and material inequality, and how these were understood. “You realize that there is a lot of hardship (misère), but people don’t complain! At home, people always complain about this or that. … But here, people live with nothing and they don’t fuss about it! You go to their houses, they take you in, they give you bread, honey, everything they have! Even if they have nothing, they give you everything they have!” What stabilizes the cultural difference or ‘way of life’ that attracted them to Morocco are economic inequalities, and the meaning that George and Annick make of them, even when these meanings do not correspond to the ones Moroccans give to the same conditions. Moroccans do make a fuss about the lack of adequate housing and urban sanitation, as well as lack of employment opportunities, and corruption. They regularly protest these conditions, such as in the 20 February movement following the Arab Spring, and the echoes of it in the years since. Annick’s statement reflects her perception of a difference, a difference that is relational, tying together two materially different ways of life. It emerged spontaneously— I had not asked about these inequalities at all, but rather what cultural difference meant. Though there was much cultural difference to notice, what really struck Annick was the hardship many Moroccans faced, linked to a ‘way of life.’ Annick’s statement is meant to praise Moroccans: they are poor, but they don’t complain—in fact, they are even generous. The narrative reference to the happy poor makes sense of global material inequalities, privileging the experience of those who are ‘content with nothing,’ symbolically according lower-income Moroccans a form of equality, which, however, does not alleviate material want. This narrative is a practice of meaning making, which contextualizes differences and the emotions that they might provoke. Annick says they are “disgusted” by all the waste they see in Belgium, noting that people there are never content.3 “Here, the children play with a plastic bottle and they make a ball out of paper!” By contrast their own grandchildren “have too many toys, and they get bored even if they have toys like a toy store!” No doubt, this narrative represents a particular global social position that exists in relation to others, who may view this disparity differently or deploy a different moral grammar, assigning different binaries and affective structures. But Annick’s phrasing is not very dissimilar to that of other European migrants in

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Morocco, and echo themes I had also heard from Americans in Ecuador (Hayes, 2018a: 73). I asked Annick to justify this interpretation: What about Moroccans who protest against unemployment and housing conditions? “Yes, and they are right! Because hey, they work in very difficult conditions,” George said, picking up the dialogue this time. But like Annick, his understanding of relative poverty in Morocco was intertwined with a critique of Belgian modernity, and the tendency of two-income families to spend their money on frivolous things. So hard-working families in Morocco did not appear to be polluted by many of the same problems they perceived in Belgium and sustained the household in ways that contemporary Belgian households did not. “[T]he worry,” George said, “is that it [superficial materialism] will come here too! There are people here who don’t have much to eat but who will still have a smartphone, not the latest model but one that is sophisticated all the same. So, in the end, they are taking our bad habits.” This fear that Morocco was being polluted by European consumerism was related to how they had seen Morocco change over the course of 20 years of living there regularly. “At the beginning, there weren’t all these things for tourists everywhere! There were all the trades, the cobblers, the small trades and the small grocers, and now, when that closes, it is to put up a boutique for tourists or for a maison d’hôte [bed and breakfast].” In the process, George was well aware that the higher incomes that he and Annick and other migrants like them brought to Essaouira posed certain difficulties for local people. For George, European material culture might ‘spoil’ an authentic Morocco. But this understanding also seems to index the material forces of tourist investment and mobility that has progressively transformed the urban spaces of Morocco in recent decades (Gil de Arriba, 2011; Kurzac-Souali, 2013; Kutz & Lenhardt, 2016). Working-­ class Moroccans also find the adoption of new material cultures around social media to be superficial, competitive and expensive. But they do not attribute these changes to the arrival of European migrants. Middle- and upper-class Moroccans also participate in this type of consumption, and indeed, so do lower-income Moroccans. Higher incomes from retirement migrants like George and Annick provided jobs and investment to restore older houses, but it also pushed up housing costs for a population that might not easily be able to afford it— something that working-class Moroccans did attribute to foreign lifestyle migrants. George was not ignorant of this, but emphasized the positive

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aspects of European presence in Essaouira. The old part of the city, the medina, George said, was in need of repair when he first began visiting 20 years prior. These repairs, he said, were mostly undertaken by foreigners. By contrast, Moroccans’ relationship to their housing was assumed to be different. “They spend money on other things,” George said, falling back on assumptions about superficial spending and lack of work ethic which reference colonial hierarchies. This way of understanding economic differences was frequent in interviews, and it allowed migrants to stabilize arbitrary global inequalities in cultures of work, which they perceived to be of different qualities. As George put it, Moroccans in Essaouira “could buy a bit of cement and make repairs, but no! They don’t do anything themselves.” They would hire someone else to do it, he said. Instead, it was Europeans who did repairs, who had more of a habit of ‘bricolage,’ or do-it-yourself improvements. While no doubt European migrants in Essaouira do participate in do-it-yourself home-improvement projects, they also often hire Moroccan day-labourers, sometimes under-employed workers in the tourist trades, to help with restoration projects. In this way, I met one young worker who was upgrading housing for another European family. The riad-style house (a typical Moroccan house built around an inner courtyard) had been previously rented by several Moroccan families who had perhaps moved into the city in recent decades in search of jobs, better opportunity and an easier life—an urbanization process that indexes the lack of adequate agrarian reform in Morocco following independence in 1956 (Bessaoud, 2016; Swearingen, 1987). The house was being renovated as a second home. Many of the large houses in the old medina have been upgraded into boutique hotels and tourist hostels, producing a pattern of gentrification in Essaouira noted in previous studies of developments in Moroccan old cities since the 1990s (Gil de Arriba, 2011; Iorio, 2001; Kurzac-Souali, 2013). The evident transformation of urban spaces had an impact not only on built space but also on the way that European migrants and tourists felt they were perceived in Essaouira. These feelings referenced global inequalities as well. According to Annick, the impact of the considerable restoration work in Essaouira is an impression, apparently false, that Europeans were rich: “They [local Moroccans] imagine that all these Europeans had a lot of money in Europe … that it falls from the sky!” Like other North-­ South migrants, this apparent misperception created some discomfort (see Hayes, 2018b; Quashie, 2016b: 134–135). Annick was not rich in Belgium, and her ambivalence towards being treated as wealthy reflects

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the change of class position as a result of geographical mobility. George, picking up her statement, agreed but added that there was also the problem of the cost of living increasing for Moroccans—again, a topic he was willing to acknowledge and seemed to care about. Rents have increased for Moroccans, he said, making it harder for them. For George and Annick, the people most responsible for this were the businesspeople coming to make money from other Europeans, opening maisons d’hôtes (bed and breakfasts) or boutique hotels. “Before that didn’t exist.” In short, George and Annick had minimal control over how their higher incomes transformed the lives of the people with whom they came to conduct cultural exchange. At the same time, however, they were entangled in unequal economic relations and made sense of their own privilege either by deflection (Moroccans spend money on the wrong priorities) or avoidance (Moroccans think money falls from heaven in Europe, implying, perhaps, that Europeans did not earn it). Thus, while George and Annick seemed concerned about the effects of higher costs of living on Moroccans in Essaouira, the moral grammar they drew on emphasized the fear that Moroccans would be spoiled through contact with excessive European materialism (e.g. they would want things they did not need or did not deserve because they were not wealthy enough—tapping European moral codes that assign merit to class position). On this terrain in which economic differences were understood through a cultural grammar accentuating the meanings of materiality (deserving vs. undeserving), different chains of signification were mobilized that justified relative privilege and elided negative economic impacts on receiving communities.

Economic Inequality and Cultural Authenticity My interviews sought to understand how migrants like George and Annick felt about their potential impact on receiving communities, whether they had any responsibility towards Moroccans and what exactly they did to mitigate their impact. Some respondents did not feel there was much they could do about inherited, global inequalities. One, for instance, asked me “what do you want me to do about that?” This response is not nonsensical. As individuals, unequal global social relations built on histories of colonial exploitation are difficult to mitigate. But George felt differently: “Ah, of course!” he exclaimed when I asked him if he felt any responsibility.

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George worried that Essaouira could become like Agadir, which, he said, was no longer Morocco at all. People would become more materialistic, he feared, and in the process, become ‘spoiled,’ like Europeans. Several respondents reacted in a way similar to George and Annick, switching moral grammars from a concern for economic inequality towards respect for cultural difference. Other research participants mentioned the importance of respecting the local culture and its traditions, even when these went against European morals (though there were degrees of difference on this point, especially with respect to religion and gender ideologies, which Europeans more actively resisted). George said that to minimize their negative impact on the cost of living, he and Annick “try to explain certain things.” The example he discussed centred on demonstrating work ethic to Moroccans and encouraging them to work harder—starting with the way he, George, cared for his home. Many other participants made similar references. This theme also included some participants who discussed showing Moroccan workers the proper ways of working, often focused on conventions of punctuality, rigour, effort and deference to authority. These conventions not only reproduced ideologies of domination and subordination, but stabilized material inequalities between Europe and Morocco on cultural grounds, where a supposed lack of proper work ethic produced different levels of material development. These essentialized cultural differences were what produced economic inequalities. As George put it, “I think, because of their religion, they expect always that everything works out because God is always there.” This was something that I heard in many other interviews with European migrants in Morocco. For George, the Moroccan attitude to getting ahead was ‘Inshallah,’ if God wants it. George, echoing several other interview participants, tried to reckon with Moroccans about this: “if you don’t help yourself, it won’t happen on its own!” For him, it is “better to teach a person to fish than to feed them for a day.” In other words, what Moroccans needed was not charity but rather to develop a work ethic that might help them in new material circumstances, where it would be necessary to work more and work harder in a wage economy dominated by service work for mobile Europeans. These narratives informed how George negotiated his change of class position through international relocation to a lower-income country. He adjusted to the new situation by drawing on widely shared cultural codes (in Europe and beyond), perhaps representative of his class position, which give meaning to material differences of lifestyle and economic opportunity—codes that

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focus on work, merit and asceticism as signs of legitimate ascension, as opposed to illegitimate inheritance or undeserved enjoyment of excess. Of course, George also seemed to assume that he knew how to fish—an assumption no doubt stabilized by his position of economic privilege in Morocco. This privilege was, as Annick had pointed out, not arbitrary (money doesn’t grow on trees), but earned. It was the result of a lifetime of work in Belgium, which, of course, Moroccans do not necessarily see reflected in the leisure lifestyles of Europeans in Essaouira. This also seemed part of what George and Annick felt might spoil Morocco—not their higher incomes per se, but a sense of global inequality from below, whereby Moroccan workers might assume that in Europe money grows on trees. According to George and Annick, this misperception about Europe entices many Moroccans to migrate, when they should actually remain and build their own country—a theme that came up towards the end of our interview. One of the things they sought to explain to people was that “Europe was not all that”; in short, that Moroccans should be encouraged to stay where they are, rather than relocate to Europe where they risk becoming a charge on the state. “We can’t accept people from everywhere,” Annick said. “There are a lot of people in our country [Belgium] who are hard up for housing, who are in slums, whose children are hungry half the month, and we don’t do much for them.” Rather, they both said the government often did more for refugees and migrants than for poor Belgians. As George put it, supporting his wife, “personally, I don’t think this help is a good solution because they are already deprived of their roots [on les prive déjà de leurs racines].” For Annick, it was better if they stayed in Morocco: “I think that instead of helping these refugees and having them come to us by giving them food and this and that, it would be better to help them in their own country so that they can live decently, that they have work and that they can stay in their country because they want to stay there.” Not all research participants shared in anti-migrant narratives, but given the divisiveness of the topic in contemporary European politics, it is perhaps not surprising to find that European migrants to Morocco share anti-­ migrant views, despite a purported interest in cultural exchange and difference (see also Ertuğrul, 2016). However, several other participants mentioned that migrants from North Africa to France or Belgium were “cut off from their roots”—or some other notion of essentialized culture—which was the cause of social problems. Here too, material differences and exclusion were understood primarily in terms of apparently

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natural, essentialized cultural differences, which justified distinctions between different types of transnational mobility, coded as either legitimate and benign, or troublesome and problematic. French-European migrants often associated their mobility with cosmopolitan dispositions and identities, which they did not extend to lower-income Moroccans. These latter are imagined as people who are forced to leave and deprived of agency. By contrast, their own mobility, typically described as other than migration, references life projects, travel and desire for cultural exchange. This incommensurability shaped French-European identities. As George mentioned, for instance, “I feel like a child of the world.” I asked him: did this mean that he too was cut off from his roots? Not according to Annick: “We didn’t want to deprive ourselves [of our roots]! We are the ones who decided to live here. We live normally. It’s not comparable.” Again, the idea of choice and agency references elided relations of power and unequal global social relations, which make distinctions between different types of migration appear self-evident and natural (see also Kunz, 2020, especially pp. 2150–2155).

Conclusion: Structures of Meaning in Global Inequality George and Annick belong to a class of global migrants able to purchase or rent real estate in Morocco for prices they find quite affordable. Yet, this class is co-constituted in global social relations with other global classes in lower-income places like Essaouira, who are often displaced by ‘rehabilitation’ projects favouring higher-income global social classes— just as previous French agricultural modernization projects displaced and dispossessed generations past (Swearingen, 1987). These two groups— French-European retirement migrants and lower-income urban-dwellers in Essaouira—live ‘contrapuntal’ lives (Said, 1993). The freedom of movement of middle-class Belgians to travel and purchase property abroad contrasts with the regulation of migration and marginalization of Moroccans in Belgium (Odasso, 2016), and is the product of historical relations of labour exploitation—both in colonial and postcolonial contexts. Following the 1956 Marcinelle mining disaster that killed 262 workers, most of them from Italy, the Belgian mining industry turned towards Morocco for labour recruitment, as European-born workers left the sector. Moroccan labourers filled the breach, helping support Belgium’s rapid economic

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growth throughout the 1960s, for which they received little credit and perhaps less reward. These lower-paid workers occupied the lowest rungs in Belgian industry, producing patterns of ‘ethno-stratification’ of labour markets that have deeply affected incorporation of immigrant populations, including Moroccans (Martens, 2017; Rea, 2013). While Morocco was a French protectorate, Belgium was also the capital of its own colonial empire, involving the extraction of material resources from Congo— another important source of migrant labour—and the accumulation of large financial and manufacturing surpluses (and lifestyles, including industrial working-class ones) in Antwerp, Brussels and Liège. These histories are part of an inheritance which influences the life-course of George and Annick, as well as the service workers who cater to them in Essaouira. Not surprisingly, these historical relations are not immediately apparent to George and Annick, who saw their lives mostly in autopoetic terms, in which they were the main historical agents. Nor are these historical relations widely discussed in contemporary public debate about global inequalities (though some French-European migrants in Morocco were more attentive to them, and this generated different responses from those discussed here). What was more immediately perceptible to George and Annick, and which occupied much of their consideration of their mobility in Morocco, were the material inequalities of everyday life, and how the increased presence of mobile Europeans overlapped with the material transformation of Moroccan life. George and Annick shifted class position through migration, giving them new insight into global society, one that shed light on the banal materialism of Belgium. This was, apparently, very meaningful to them, as it was for other research participants. But it also gave rise to a desire to be a force for good, helping Moroccans adjust to the changing economic circumstances for which increased North-South mobilities from Europe were partly responsible. The cultural exchange they seemed to find enriching, thus, negotiated global social inequalities, transmitting less materialistic values to their grandchildren, while at the same time demonstrating good work ethics to Moroccans. This focus on transmitting work ethics as a way of mitigating some of the potential negative impacts of European retirement migration (such as the rise in rents and gentrification of historic neighbourhoods) was shared by several research participants—even though it was often based on misrecognition of how hard Moroccans work compared to Europeans, in conditions that are marked by much higher levels of precarity and informality.

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George’s concern that good people could be spoiled by consumerism and that their lot in global capitalism depended on developing better work ethics (and perhaps greater consumer asceticism) traffic in an awareness of global inequalities, but ones that are stabilized by cultural meanings. This is significant for how migrants like George and Annick see their place in global social space and how they might construct solidarities with subaltern groups. George and Annick make sense of their material position in Morocco in terms that focus more on respect for authentic culture, which partly motivated their desire to leave Europe. This switch in moral grammar (from chains of signification related to economic inequalities to ones formed by concerns over cultural authenticity) disrupts a fuller confrontation with the social effects of their higher incomes, and the historical relations upon which they are based. In this respect, they also misrecognize a colonial inheritance, one that connects their own relative privilege to the relative deprivation and ‘hardships’ that they observe. The moral grammar of cultural authenticity and essentialized difference signals a different chain of signification and distinct mode of solidarity from a grammar that might confront the colonial roots of global economic inequality. We might refer to this as a specific type of ‘colonial discourse’—not an authoritative one, but a type of everyday common sense. However, referring to it in these terms is also unlikely, on its own, to help George and Annick switch codes towards a moral grammar of social justice and a common care for a shared global/colonial inheritance. What might help instead would be greater public understanding (especially in Europe and its settler states) of the connected histories and relational biographies of contemporary global society (Bhambra, 2014). Concern for cultural authenticity stabilizes George’s relation to Moroccan particulars as a patron and benevolent ‘guest’—a term several other research participants used to describe their emplacement in Morocco. But it does not approach inherited material relations between Europe and Morocco that have deeply impacted the relative differences in skills development (and labour market value of these skills), of public accumulated wealth, and the expression of wealth inherited over a commercial empire that, in Belgium, included Congo (and that in France included Morocco and Algeria). Nor does it approach ongoing material practices, such as those of the European agriculture industry, which is heavily dependent on the export of Moroccan phosphate, without which the Common Agriculture Policy would be very different than it is (and though I did not

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ask him, as a horticulturalist, no doubt shaped George’s career in one form or another). My intent in drawing attention to the narratives above is to demonstrate the epistemic coloniality embedded in the socially organized cultural codes of North-South migrants. In doing so, I want to be cautious about reproducing distinctions of class and cultural capital (see Oliver & O’Reilly, 2010). I am not arguing there is a correct or better way to migrate as a European or North American retiree. Coloniality is produced as a cultural effect of common ways of stitching together distinct moral grammars to make sense of global inequalities. Code switching from economic to cultural grammars displaces consideration of relational histories of privilege and hardship towards terrains of meaning shaped by essentialized cultural differences that stabilize inherited global inequalities as deserved, and produced sui generis through European socio-historical evolution. Global justice would, of course, require activating other chains of signification, drawing attention to shared histories of material appropriation and maldistribution, and that might foster other patterns of global mobility.

Notes 1. Though many French participants emphasized the difference between the ‘protectorate’ and a colony, Abu-Lughod (1980) points out that the legal status of ‘protectorate’ granted the French military authorities more leverage in the colony, without having to consult the National Assembly, where the anti-colonial French Section of the Workers International (SFIO) was in the ascendant in the decade prior to the First World War. 2. Throughout, quotes are my translation from interviews conducted in French. 3. It is worth noting that in Brussels, one of Europe’s wealthiest cities, 37.8% of the population were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2019 according to Statbel, many of whom would be members of racialized immigrant communities: https://statbel.fgov.be/en/themes/households/poverty-­ and-­living-­conditions/risk-­poverty-­or-­social-­exclusion, accessed November 14, 2020.

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CHAPTER 4

A “Mexican Home”: Defining Belonging Through Taste Among Retired Migrants in Chapala, Mexico Rachel Barber

The growing trend of international retirement migration (IRM) to the Global South invites the question of how retirees are fitting into their new home abroad. As many authors on the topic have noted, retired migrants often do not learn the language of the country they move to and have limited social interaction with local residents (Croucher, 2009, 2018; Hayes, 2014; O’Reilly, 2000). In addition to this lack of social integration, retirees are often found to maintain the cultural practices from their country of origin (Croucher, 2009; King, 2012; King et al., 2000; O’Reilly, 2000). As Croucher describes the North Americans who have moved to the Mexican foreign retirement hubs of Ajijic and San Miguel de Allende: “They live in one locale but continue to speak the language, follow the events, practice the customs and celebrate the holidays of another” (2009, p. 178). The in-between place of belonging Croucher (2009) describes—where retirees are physically in Mexico, but by all appearances, culturally

R. Barber (*) Centro de Investigaciones y Estudios Superiores en Antropología Social (CIESAS), Guadalajara, Mexico © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_4

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grounded in the United States and Canada—is a tension inherent in the experience of many retired migrants. While at first glance this might suggest that retired migrants simply recreate the life they lead in their country of origin, a phenomenon is found in the community of foreign retirees in the Chapala area of Mexico that suggests a significant change in retirees’ sociocultural dispositions: the cultivation of a “Mexican home”. The “Mexican home” reflects retirees’ particular interpretation of a Mexican aesthetic style and signifies the emergence of a new taste that retirees did not share prior to their move to Mexico. While taste tends to be treated as a personal and subjective preference (de gustibus non est disputandum, there is no accounting for taste), closer scrutiny reveals just how socially mediated taste is. As Bourdieu demonstrates in his comprehensive study of 1970s French society, taste is tied to a host of dispositions, practices and judgments that both constitute a lifestyle and serve as a distinctive sign of social belonging. Tastes are “manifested preferences” that affirm the “inevitable differences” that derive from one’s position in a social space (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 49). In this manner, taste can be understood as a “classificatory system, which is the product of the internalization of the structure of social space” (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 170). This understanding of taste as structured and structuring, simultaneously the reflection and construction of one’s belonging in a particular social space, offers a particularly fruitful lens for analyzing the newfound interest among North American retirees in Chapala in cultivating a Mexican aesthetic for their homes. Rather than see this new taste as mere individual preference, an examination of its social significance permits a deeper analysis of retired migrants’ social relations and group belongings. Drawing on fieldwork conducted in the foreign community of Lake Chapala from October 2018 to February 2020, this chapter will examine North American retirees’ cultivation of a “Mexican home” and its connection to their process of defining their belonging abroad. Following an understanding of the “Mexican home” as the manifestation of a particular taste developed within the foreign retirement community, this taste will be analyzed in relation to the social dynamics both within and without the foreign community of Chapala. Through this analysis, I aim to shed light on both the social positions from which retirees construct this taste and the different levels of belonging that it signifies. The research presented is based on a study on American retirees’ consumption of Mexican folk art and its relation to their sociocultural

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adaptation in the Chapala area. Twenty-nine interviews were conducted with retirees (8 couples and 21 individuals) who lived part- or full-time in the Chapala area. The majority of the research participants were contacted through their involvement as organizers, volunteers and, above all, consumers of Mexican folk art at the Feria Maestros del Arte. Additional participants were contacted through the association Democrats Abroad in Ajijic, through blogs dedicated to the experience of retiring in the Lake Chapala area and through friends of selected participants. After this first contact, interviewees were chosen with the aim of attaining diversity in socioeconomic backgrounds, with retirees ranging from those who live exclusively off of their social security checks1 to those who enjoy six-figure retirement incomes. In the interviews, retirees were asked about their move to Mexico, their membership in formal clubs and associations and informal social groups, and their interest and appreciation of Mexican folk art. Interviews were transcribed, lasted between 35 mins and 2 h and 17 mins, and included four follow-up interviews. The majority of interviewees were U.S. citizens, with the exception of two Canadians and one French interviewee, and fell between the ages of 56 and 88.2 In addition, extensive participant observation was conducted at social events and activities geared toward the foreign community in the Chapala area, in particular the Feria Maestros del Arte, an annual Mexican folk art fair organized by North American volunteers, in which the author participated as a volunteer in 2018 and 2019. Following an observation guide, field notes were taken and filming was carried out on the social dynamics of these activities (i.e., seller/buyer relations) as well as the presentation, appreciation and selection of folk art. Finally, information on the “Mexican home” and the presentation of folk art in retirees’ houses was collected through visits to 17 of the retirees’ homes (in three cases virtually, due to COVID-19) following an observation guide geared at identifying patterns in the presentation of folk art and the narratives presented by participants regarding their appreciation of certain artisanal pieces. Participants were asked in these visits to identify the objects they most valued and to describe their decoration choices. Eight of these home visits were filmed, chosen in function of the availability and willingness of retirees to participate in these visits. An additional six interviews were conducted among Mexicans involved in the Feria Maestros del Arte and individuals who ran businesses that catered to North Americans in Chapala.

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The analysis of the data focused on identifying the relationship between retirees’ taste in Mexican folk art and their process of sociocultural adaptation in Mexico. This analysis involved coding interviews, the presentation of folk art in the home, as well as participant observation around the concepts of social groups, divisions in the foreign community, and the value assigned to Mexican folk art. From this analysis, participants’ cultivation of a “Mexican home” emerged as an important feature that illustrates how taste operates to define a new sense of belonging for retirees abroad, one which is nonetheless structured by the concrete sociocultural and economic positions they occupy in their new social setting.

Defining Belonging in International Retirement Migration (IRM) While only a handful of studies have explicitly explored the social significance of cultural consumption and taste in migration (see Arev, 2021; Hadjiyanni, 2009; Mazumdar & Mazumdar, 2016; Mehta & Belk, 1991; Savaş, 2014; Wallendorf & Reilly, 1983), the questions of belonging and the Bourdieusian concept of capital have nonetheless been addressed in previous IRM studies. The subject of belonging is particularly compelling in IRM because retired migrants’ sociocultural position abroad is not immediately apparent; retired migrants “symbolically dangle betwixt and between two cultures and two countries; two economies and two social spaces” (O’Reilly, 2000, p. 194). In addition to inhabiting a social space that proves difficult to ascribe to one nation state or another, retired migrants similarly challenge straightforward categorization in terms of status and class. While they are often privileged in relation to the local population in terms of both their national affiliation and individual affluence (Benson, 2014; Benson & O’Reilly, 2009; Croucher, 2009), they may at the same time occupy a position of economic precarity in their country of origin (Bender et al., 2018; Hayes, 2015). However, in spite of potentially occupying multiple, and at times opposing, social, cultural and economic positions, retirees are shown to be actively engaged in defining their belonging in their new circumstances abroad. Retired migrants assert belonging by emphasizing their local knowledge, allegiances and commonalities with the local population and distinguish themselves from “other” migrants (Banks, 2004; Benson, 2010, 2013; Croucher, 2009, 2018; Hayes, 2014; Hayes & Carlson, 2018; Lawson, 2017; Oliver, 2011; Oliver & O’Reilly, 2010; O’Reilly, 2000).

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Retired migrants’ redrawings of belonging operate on different social levels. On the one hand, certain narrative techniques tie retirees to their new home and unite them with locals: the sprinkling in of Spanish words in casual conversation in the Costa del Sol, for example, which creates a sense of inclusion among the “local” retirees and excludes tourists who are just passing through (O’Reilly, 2000, p.  134), or retirees’ flaunting of their knowledge about the “local rhythms of life” (Benson, 2013, p. 513) in their adopted locale in the Lot region held out as evidence of their authentic experience in France. It could also be argued that retired migrants’ common claim to integration into the local society, despite empirical evidence that suggests otherwise (see Croucher, 2009; King, 2012; O’Reilly, 2000; Lardiés-Bosque et al., 2016), represents a similar strategy for establishing a connection and a sense of belonging (however one-sided this definition of belonging may be) in their new country of residence. However, on the other hand, a different set of narratives and practices also reflect the enduring nature of class and cultural divisions within the community of retired migrants. Oliver and O’Reilly (2010) note how, in spite of retired migrants’ widespread insistence that past professions and status do not matter in the Costa del Sol, class and cultural capital-based distinctions persist among migrants, signaling the engrained nature of dispositions formed in Britain. These studies illustrate that alongside the definition of a new belonging in a new country, are persistent habitus, dispositions formed in retirees’ countries of origin in function of their social position, which serve as distinctive signs of belonging in reference to this former social field (Bourdieu, 1984). As Oliver and O’Reilly (2010) point out, in these circumstances of geographic mobility where belonging has to be reestablished, “the symbolic becomes particularly important: taste, education and other expressions of cultural capital are redrawn as the basis of distinction” (p. 62). Considering the new and old group belongings that are asserted by retired migrants, the question arises of how to comprehend the acquisition of new tastes. Given his view of the enduring nature of habitus, Bourdieu saw limited possibility for the successful transformation of taste (Bourdieu, 1984; Bourdieu & Wacquant, 1992). Nonetheless, it seems natural that in situations where migrants find themselves in a different social field, taste and habitus would require readjustment in order to establish a “‘fit’ between habitus and (residential) field” (Benson, 2014, p. 53). As such, what sort of belonging is asserted by North American retirees in

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Chapala through their taste in a “Mexican home”? Does this taste reflect preexisting class divisions or does it serve to define a new type of belonging in Mexico? What does the “Mexican home” reveal about retirees’ sociocultural adaptation to their new surroundings? In order to address these questions and evaluate the relationship that exists between retirees’ cultivation of a “Mexican home” and their belonging, it is necessary to examine this particular taste in the context in which it was formed: the social space of the foreign community in the Lake Chapala area.

Social Dynamics in the Foreign Retirement Community of Chapala Having started as a small bohemian outpost in the 1920s, Ajijic, the epicenter of the foreign community in Chapala, has since transformed into one of the largest communities of American retirees outside the United States (Schafran & Monkkonen, 2011; Truly, 2002). While there is currently no precise data on the size of the foreign population in Chapala, estimates over the past 20 years have placed the number of foreign retirees in the range of 7500 and 10,000 (Croucher, 2009). This well-established and booming population of primarily American and Canadian retirees is located on the northern side of Lake Chapala and is spread throughout a cluster of nearby towns: Chapala, Ajijic, San Juan Cosala and Jocotepec. The largest concentration of retirees resides in Ajijic, where many of the foreign community’s over 80 clubs and volunteer organizations are also located (Chapala Webboard, 2019). This flourishing community of North Americans makes for a soft landing for retirees who move to Mexico, the majority of whom have had limited travel experience in the country before their move.3 The difficulty of learning a language, of moving to a foreign country and of making new friends are all mitigated by the fact that the path to retirement in Chapala is well-trodden. In addition to the great variety of clubs that allow newcomers to easily connect with other retirees, there are also a number of companies that provide programs designed to orient foreigners who are considering retiring in the Chapala area. Thanks to these clubs and programs, large organizations like the Lake Chapala Society—which has around 4000 members (O’Heffernan, 2020) and “forms the backbone of the foreign community living along Lake Chapala” (Croucher, 2009,

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p.  66), and a general tendency among foreign residents in Chapala to strike up conversations and lend a helping hand to new arrivals, the overwhelming majority of the 29 retirees I interviewed described their adaption to life in Chapala as easy. Chapala’s established foreign community and the absence of the common pressures most migrants face of finding a job or securing better life options for their children that make learning the language of their new country of residence a necessity mean that retirees do not need to learn Spanish—and, for these reasons among others, very few do. Out of the 29 retirees I interviewed, the majority knew only a few phrases in Spanish. Only seven seemed to be able to carry on a basic conversation in Spanish. While all of the retirees I spoke to underscored the positive relationship they have with Mexicans, their difficulty communicating in Spanish tends to restrict their interactions with local Mexicans to waiters at the restaurants they frequent, their neighbors and their domestic employees. As such, these retirees’ relations with Mexicans in Chapala are often economically asymmetrical, with the primary contact with Mexicans being their maids, gardeners, waitstaff or the beneficiaries of the voluntary work that many North Americans engage in. When it comes to their relations with their Mexican neighbors—in the case that they do not live in one of the many gated communities in the area that are populated primarily by other foreign retirees—these relationships, though valued by retirees, are generally superficial, cordial connections. Donna, a retiree who has lived in the Chapala area for 18 years, offers a succinct illustration of the cordial, casual familiarity that marks her relationship with her Mexican neighbors: “I don’t know all their names, but I know all their faces and they all look after us.” In spite of retirees’ social separation from the local community, the limited interest and exposure to Mexican culture most retirees had prior to moving, and the persistent challenge to communication with Mexicans that they face, interviewees frequently made a point of highlighting their appreciation of Mexican culture and the Mexican people. These responses received from research participants echo the findings of a number of previous surveys, which reveal that retirees claim cultural factors as one of the main motivations for moving. In a survey of 258 American residents in Chapala, the two most cited reasons behind the decision to move were cultural, with 98.4% of respondents indicating the importance of the Mexicans’ friendly attitude toward Americans and 95.7% listing the “Mexican lifestyle” (González & Aikin, 2019). In another survey of

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retirees in Chapala, 45% identified “culture” as a reason behind their move (Amin & Ingman, 2010). Given that these surveys were conducted among retirees who had already moved to Chapala, it seems likely that the appreciation for the Mexican culture and lifestyle was acquired once retirees had settled in Mexico. However, this cultural appreciation—and with it, retirees’ widespread adoption of the “Mexican home”—is a phenomenon that must be situated within the framework of North American retirees’ asymmetric relations and communicational barriers vis-à-vis the local Mexican community. These structural circumstances outlined in this brief summary of the social dynamics of the foreign community in Chapala demarcate the baseline from which retirees negotiate belonging in their new surroundings (see Croucher, 2009; Stokes, 1981; and Truly, 2001 for a more comprehensive picture of the foreign community).

Fitting in: The “Mexican Home” as Signifying Belonging in the Foreign Community The seemingly prosaic process of choosing and decorating a home in Chapala in fact represents significant decisions about where and how retirees “fit in” within their new social surrounding. Even in the early stages of figuring out the logistics of moving to Mexico, retirees’ material decisions about what furniture to bring and what to leave behind are molded by how they see themselves fitting into the Chapala area. Pat and Judith, 59 and 56, moved to Ajijic three years ago, enticed by the prospects of an early retirement. After selling their townhouse in the States, they went through the grueling process of getting rid of the bulk of their possessions. Pat and Judith’s choice not to ship furniture involved economic considerations but, as Judith explained to me, it was also a question of aesthetics. We had bought all of our furniture when we were stationed in Germany. So it was all heavy, European oak furniture, which physically wouldn’t have fit down here, but then style-wise wouldn’t have fit down here either. So there were parts of that that were a bit challenging, in terms of letting go of things.

On a personal level, this replacement of important material possessions, linked to places and shared memories, represents an important marker in Pat and Judith’s life course. However, this material transformation also has

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social and cultural importance. After Pat and Judith listed the Mexican folk art they have in their home, Pat summed up their decoration choices: “it just goes with the idea, I mean our furnishings are Spanish colonial. We are living in Mexico, we wanted things that kind of represent that culture. So yeah just, it fits in.” Having furniture, objects and a house that “fit” and “represent” Mexico, or simply “are Mexican”, was often highlighted by the retirees I spoke to. Over lunch, Melody and Jude, two close friends who have been living in Ajijic for five and three years, respectively, discussed their colorful, Mexican-style homes, contrasting them with their other friend’s house, which they described as more “traditional American”. Marianne who has lived in Chapala for over 20 years and is one of the few American retirees who has Mexican citizenship, gushed about making the move to a new rental home: “I finally found my Mexican house!” And Jean and Andrew, a couple who come down three months a year to a condo they own in a gated community populated exclusively by North Americans, felt it was important that their home “have things that are reflective of Mexico”. In these diverse cases, where retirees’ profiles differ in regard to their migration status, the amount of time spent in the Chapala area, and whether they are renters or owners, the emphasis placed on having a “Mexican home” is shared. For all these retirees, the acquisition and cultivation of a “Mexican home” is bound up in the process of establishing their new lives in Mexico. However, before assuming that this cultivation of a Mexican aesthetic is a sign of retirees’ adaptation or acculturation to local Mexican tastes, it is necessary to situate this interest in the circumstances in which this aesthetic is shaped. The foreign community in Chapala, as described above, exists both socially and culturally apart from Mexican society. The idea of the “Mexican home” that is cultivated in this context is not in fact inspired by actual Mexican homes—given that retirees do not tend to socialize with their domestic employees, the waiters that serve them or the locals they provide charitable support for, thus rarely visiting actual Mexican homes—but is instead shaped by retirees’ perception of what a Mexican home should look like. This vision of the “Mexican home” is informed by a number of different factors. One major source of inspiration for the look of the “Mexican home” is found on the internet (on sites like Pinterest) and in interior design magazines (like Architectural Digest). These imaginings of the “Mexican home” sourced from magazines and the internet are not necessarily modified once retirees arrive to Mexico. In

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his study of the contested interpretations different social groups have of Ajijic, Díaz Copado (2013) narrates a fascinating encounter between a retired American and the Mexican painter she hired to paint her home that is worth citing in full. Caroline asked me to tell the painter to use brighter colours than those he had with him. She said she wanted bright colours like those of the Mexican houses. She was insisting on having her façade painted in “Mexican style”. […] I realised that the painter actually understood very well that Caroline wanted brighter colours, however he was confused about Caroline wanting her façade painted in “Mexican style”. The painter told me that most of the houses he knows are not painted in bright colours. […] It was evident that the painter’s view of “Mexican style” was different to that of Caroline. Everything was still in confusion until Caroline brought out a Magazine and showed us a picture that was in it. She said it was an American magazine with a picture of a house in Ajijic. The façade of that house was painted entirely in bright colours and its façade even had some artistic flowers painted on it as decoration. Caroline showed the magazine picture to the painter and me and told me that that was how she wanted her façade painted. (Díaz Copado, 2013, pp. 85–86)

Here we find that the image Caroline had formed of what a “Mexican style” house looks like prevails even when confronted with an opposing image of what a “Mexican style” house is, offered by a Mexican. I observed a similar phenomenon in Melody and Jude’s discussion of fabric shopping in Mexico. After extolling the “beauty of color” in Mexico, Jude describes her disappointing experience visiting La Parisina, a major Mexican fabric store in Guadalajara, the second largest city in Mexico, which is located 45 kilometers away from Ajijic. Jude:

I was just drooling because I thought “they’re going to have wild, beautiful colors!”. Nothing. It was all Americanized, beiges, you know the boring stuff we decorate with at home. […] I’m still disappointed! I still think there’s gotta be a place! In fact, I talked to a lady I was selling a lampshade to and she showed me fabric she bought in Toronto. And I’m going, “you mean I have to go back home to Canada to find!” [laughs] Melody: I had to. My chairs and my pillows on my patio, that all came from the U.S. […] Jude: They want to all be Americanized.

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Like Caroline, Melody and Jude preserve their vision of what Mexican style is, even in the face of direct challenges to this vision from Mexican locals and Mexican stores that primarily cater to Mexicans. The store Jude visited, La Parisina, for example, is a Mexican fabric supplier founded in Mexico City in the 1930s that currently dominates 60% of the fabric market in Mexico, produces 80% of its fabrics nationally and has 193 stores located throughout Mexico (Baruch, 2006). It is difficult to sustain the argument that this historical and massively popular Mexican fabric store, which sells their products exclusively in Mexico, is in fact “Americanized”, as Jude claims. While Mexican culture and Mexicans’ tastes are evolving, as all cultures and people are, Melody and Jude express a vision of Mexican style that remains static; Mexican style is bright and colorful, even if their Mexican surroundings suggest otherwise. In the case of Melody and Jude, it becomes clear that this image of Mexico is not just gleaned from magazines and the internet but socially reinforced within the foreign community of Chapala. This occurs among friends like Melody and Jude who confirm the legitimacy of a shared vision of what Mexican style should be. Cristina, a Mexican interior designer in Ajijic who is hired by foreign retirees like Pat and Judith to help with the logistics of finding furniture items as well as for her design sensibility, notes that many retirees come to her because they saw a particular design or furniture item in another retirees’ home that they want to copy. And on a larger scale, there is a highly popular house tour, almost exclusively of homes owned by or marketed to the foreign population of Ajijic, that takes place monthly during the high season from November to March, Behind the Walls, which circulates and reinforces common perceptions of the “Mexican home”. When I attended the February 2020 Behind the Walls tour, one house was a clear archetype of the “Mexican home” in the foreign community, transmitting “Mexicanness” through bright colors and explicit references to Mexican culture: Oaxacan rugs, multicolored Otomí embroidery, photographs of indigenous women and so on. In spite of this blatant “overcoding” for Mexicanness, I overheard one tour participant describe the house as “very traditional, I love it” and that she was “convinced it was a Mexican house” (Fig. 4.1). In tracing the sources and social reinforcement of the “Mexican style” embraced by the foreign community, its endemic nature becomes apparent. It does not represent a style that retirees had in Canada or the United States, nor is it a style that has been acquired through retirees’ contact with Mexicans or visits to Mexican homes. This taste is fundamentally shaped by and attuned to the particular social terrain where it originates.

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Fig. 4.1  Colorful “Mexican-style” home in Ajijic featured in the Behind the Walls tour [Taste] functions as a sort of social orientation, a ‘sense of one’s place’, guiding the occupants of a given place in social space towards the social positions adjusted to their properties, and towards the practices or goods which befit the occupants of that position. (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 468)

In light of the social, cultural and communicational divides that separate North American retirees from Mexican locals, the “Mexican home” represents a particularly important “sense of one’s place”. The “Mexican home” offers a tangible connection to Mexico in the face of retired North Americans’ weak social and cultural connections to their new country. It is, however, not a connection that is legitimated by Mexicans themselves, nor by the surrounding Mexican culture. Precisely because of retired migrants’ limited interactions with Mexicans, Mexicans do not influence development of the style of the “Mexican home”. As the anecdotes

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mentioned above illustrate, when retired migrants are faced with visions of Mexican style from the local Mexican community that contradict their own, Mexicans are considered to either not understand what Mexican style is or to have been “Americanized”. Ironically, this leaves the determination of “Mexican style” solely in the hands of North American retirees. As a style that is acquired when retirees’ move to Mexico, it serves to mark and make manifest their adaptation to Mexico, and is recognized by other foreign retirees in these terms. The particular taste in the “Mexican home” thus serves as a mark of distinction that operates solely within the social space of the community of retired migrants, signifying a shared belonging to Mexico. However, while the “Mexican home” is unique to the North American community of retirees in Chapala, the following section will explore the different interpretations of what constitutes a “true” Mexican home that point to internal divisions within the foreign community.

Three Models of a “Mexican Home” After having visited the homes of 17 foreign retirees in the Chapala area, certain recognizable patterns emerged that correspond to different interpretations of the “Mexican home”. What I had at first identified as a shared, North American vision of the “Mexican home” appeared to be more accurately understood as one of three general types of “Mexican homes” that are common in the foreign community. Cristina, despite working with a certain economic strata of clients who have the financial resources to hire an interior decorator (the overall cost of her projects ranges from around US $6000–40,000), noted a stratification in decorative tastes that corresponds with my observations of retirees in Chapala, including those with lower financial means. Following Cristina’s classification, the lower tier of spending corresponds to North Americans who want a “Frida Kahlo” house: “they want the pink house, with the green wall, with [the picture of] Frida, with the flowers, and the parrot, like that’s what they think Mexico is like, so colorful”.4 A step above are the retirees who want what she describes as “colonial-style” houses. Like her clients Pat and Judith, they are interested in furniture made with finer woods like mesquite, leather sofas and curved chairs called miguelitos whose design dates back to the colonial period. In these mid-­ tier homes, the wall color tends to be neutral while textiles like rugs and cushions provide accents of color. Cristina observes that the taste of the

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highest-tier clients, Canadians with “oil money” or “very rich gringos”,5 run more modern. While some have “hacienda-style” houses like the mid-­ tier colonial-style group, with the rooms centered around a central patio, others opt for what she describes as a more modern, industrial style: an open layout with the “typical square iron windows” reminiscent of traditional Spanish colonial design “but with a brick wall, a Mexican tiled floor, in other words, an industrial-style house with a Mexican touch”. Like Cristina, despite the common interest in incorporating a “Mexican touch”, I found that interpretations of what constitutes a “true” Mexican style varied in function of class among foreign retirees in Chapala. Melody, who light-heartedly referred to herself and other retirees who live in the town of Ajijic as “po’ folk” (poor folk), in contrast to the North Americans who lived in West Ajijic or in gated communities, offered a prime example of the brightly colored version of the “Mexican home”. While Melody, who has a pension from her career in marketing, is far from belonging to the poorest members of Chapala’s foreign community, her zealous embrace of color in the decoration of her home represents the lower-­ economic tier interpretation of the “Mexican home” in the socioeconomic hierarchy of the foreign community (Fig. 4.2). The connection between socioeconomic level and aesthetic preference reflects prevailing social distinctions that operate within the foreign community. These aesthetic preferences are not seen as neutral or equally valid interpretations of the “Mexican home” in the foreign community. Judith and Pat, for example, distinguish their home in Ajijic as “classic”, in contrast to the “gringo version” of what retirees think Mexican style is. The “gringo version” of Mexican style they discredit is recognizable as the colorful style Melody, her friend Jude and others embrace. For Pat and Judith, this style represents not just a different taste but an illegitimate one: Pat:

Judith: Pat:

Absolutely garish colors. It’s like we’re free from all—it’s like Mexicans will have more color in their houses, but now we can just do anything. So people will just put the brightest loudest mix of colors, and it’s like, really? It’s kind of their vision of what they think Mexican is, is Southwestern, in the United States. And that’s not Mexican. Yeah, that’s not Mexican.

However, while the colorful version of the “Mexican home” is an idiosyncratic understanding of Mexicanness cultivated by North American

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Fig. 4.2  Melody’s colorful “Mexican home”

retirees, the Spanish colonial version is as well. Pat and Judith’s claim to a more authentic Mexican style inherent in their criticism of the colorful version of the “Mexican home” is not grounded in a greater knowledge of or contact with Mexico. The hacienda-style home they own was chosen from a model they saw in a gated community on their first visit to Chapala and the origins of their Spanish colonial decoration style can be traced to their Pinterest, rather than exposure to actual Mexican households. While the references in the Spanish colonial version of the “Mexican home” are subtler, certain materials and objects (a copper table top, leather furniture, artisanal items) as well as the selective use of color are still used to symbolize Mexicanness in a code that is decipherable to other retired migrants (Fig. 4.3).

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Fig. 4.3  Pat and Judith’s Spanish colonial or hacienda-style home

In the highest economic tier of foreign migrants Cristina mentions, the “Mexican touch” that makes retirees’ homes “Mexican homes” is even subtler, to the point of being barely perceptible at first glance. In these homes, there is less interest in cultivating a unified “Mexican style” and a more discrete incorporation of Mexican items or elements under the banner of the owner’s personal style. Whereas Pat describes the incorporation of Mexican folk art items into his home as going with the “idea” of their Spanish colonial furnishings as objects that represent Mexican culture, Regina, who lives with her husband in a large house with a spectacular view of Chapala lake, offers very different explanations for her interest in folk art items. While she has a number of artisanal objects, she appreciates her green glazed ceramic piñas (pineapples) because of their size and “boldness”, and her favorite bowls, made by a potter from the state of Michoacán, remind her of African folk art. In the home of a particularly well-off couple in the center of Ajijic, a similar focus on personal style was

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evidenced which was not designed to emulate Mexican style; in their case, through their wall-to-wall salon-style arrangement of paintings they have collected in the United States over the course of 40 years. However, in spite of the lack of an overall “Mexican style”, this couple underscored the Mexican characteristics of the antique wooden door they installed, the metalwork design they created for the window grates, the tiles in the bathroom and their choice to buy their home because it was “the most Mexican house” they could find. Regina, on the other hand, highlights the terracotta floors, arches, muted colors and dark wood, considering her house to be Mexican style (Fig. 4.4).

Fig. 4.4  Architectural accents and Mexican artisanal objects in Regina’s discreet interpretation of the “Mexican Home”

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Conclusion Examination of the phenomenon of the “Mexican home” in the foreign community of Chapala reveals a rich portrait of North American retirees’ construction of belonging. Moving to Mexico with little background knowledge of the country’s culture and limited communicational means to connect in a significant way with the local Mexican community, the cultivation of a “Mexican home” becomes an important means for North American retirees to signal their interest in Mexican culture. However, given that retirees’ social circles are mainly limited to other foreign migrants, this expression of cultural openness is produced by and for members of the foreign community. As such, while retirees make good faith efforts to connect with Mexican culture through their decoration choices, their social distance from their Mexican surroundings mean that these interpretations of Mexican culture are highly endemic, and the arbiters of this aesthetic are confined to their foreign peers. The “Mexican home” is thus a shared aesthetic taste unique to the foreign community of Chapala that offers insight into retired migrants’ desire to represent their cultural connection to Mexico and, at the same time, the effect that their lack of cultural familiarity and social exposure to Mexico has of firmly circumscribing this cultural expression to the confines of the foreign enclave. The “Mexican home” in this manner reflects retirees’ adaptation not to Mexico, as might be expected, but to their immediate surroundings: the foreign community of retirees in Chapala. Having furniture and a style that “fits” is therefore measured according to rubrics set by retirees themselves within the foreign community. However, while the cultivation of the “Mexican home” is a shared feature among retirees in the Chapala area, the rubrics by which it is judged are not. Preexisting class divisions come to bear on retirees’ endemic creation of “Mexican style”, engendering different interpretations of what the “true” version of a “Mexican home” looks like. In this way, the “Mexican home” operates as a two-way symbol in the foreign community, signifying cultural openness to Mexico as well as expressing belonging to a certain socioeconomic subgroup of the foreign population. While these tastes signify dispositions and cultural attitudes within the foreign enclave, they are not empty, performative gestures. The “Mexican home” marks a significant departure from the style of migrants’ former homes in the United States and Canada, manifesting a readjustment in taste that is tied to their new lifestyle. Returning to Bourdieu, the retirees’

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personal investment in cultivating a “Mexican home”, insofar as it represents a particular taste, is not just a question of interest in the purely strategic sense: it involves a definition of their own idea of themselves, the primordial, tacit contract whereby they define ‘us’ as opposed to ‘them’, ‘other people’, and which is the basis of exclusions (‘not for the likes of us’) and inclusions they perform among the characteristics produced by the common classificatory system. (Bourdieu, 1984, p. 480)

While the “common classificatory system” (i.e., taste) of the foreign community in Chapala is less hermetically hierarchized than that of 1970s French society, Bourdieu’s understanding of taste’s functioning as a form of self-definition and differentiation provides a useful lens for unearthing the social significance of the taste in a “Mexican-style home”. Wrapped up in this taste are retirees’ classifications of themselves and their compatriots in Mexico. As a taste that exists and operates within the social sphere of the foreign community, foreign migrants define their own belonging in Mexico and that of other migrants through their “Mexican homes”, leaving Mexicans conspicuously absent as points of reference in this classificatory system.

Notes 1. The average benefits American retirees received from social security in 2019 amounts to $1503 USD (Social Security Administration, 2019). 2. Participants were informed of the nature of the investigation and all interviewees filled out a consent form agreeing to the use of interview transcripts for academic publications and were given the option to appear under a pseudonym. Consent was given by the participants to use the photos that appear in the chapter (permission was given photo by photo). 3. While the majority of the interviewees had traveled to Mexico before moving, only 5 out of 29 had visited areas that were not all-inclusive beachside resorts, border towns like Tijuana or the foreign community of Chapala. This echoes findings by Rojas et  al. (2014) of retired migrants’ limited ­interest in Mexico prior to their move: while 370 of 375 (98.7%) survey respondents from Chapala and San Miguel de Allende had traveled internationally, only 41.8% of respondents had traveled to Mexico prior to moving. 4. All interviews with Mexican participants were translated from Spanish to English by the author. 5. In Mexico, gringo is a commonly used term to refer to U.S. citizens.

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O’Heffernan, P. (2020, March 24). Are Expats Fleeing Lakeside Because of Coronavirus? We Talk with the Executive Director of Lake Chapala Society. Laguna. Retrieved June 14, 2020, from http://semanariolaguna.com/49784/ O’Reilly, K. (2000). The British on the Costa del Sol: Transnational Identities and Local Communities. Routledge. Oliver, C. (2011). Pastures New or Old? Migration, Narrative and Change. Anthropologica, 53(1), 67–77. http://www.jstor.org/stable/41475730?seq= 1#page_scan_tab_contents Oliver, C., & O’Reilly, K. (2010). A Bourdieusian Analysis of Class and Migration: Habitus and the Individualizing Process. Sociology, 44(1), 49–66. https://doi. org/10.1177/0038038509351627 Rojas, V., Leblanc, H.  P., & Sunil, T.  S. (2014). US Retirement Migration to Mexico: Understanding Issues of Adaptation, Networking, and Social Integration. Journal of International Migration and Integration; Dordrecht, 15(2), 257–273. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12134-­013-­0278-­4 Savaş, Ö. (2014). Taste Diaspora: The Aesthetic and Material Practice of Belonging. Journal of Material Culture, 19(2), 185–208. https://doi. org/10.1177/1359183514521922 Schafran, A., & Monkkonen, P. (2011). Beyond Chapala and Cancún: Grappling with the Impact of American Migration to Mexico. Migraciones Internacionales, 6(2), 223–258. https://doi.org/10.17428/rmi.v6i21.758 Social Security Administration. (2019). Fact Sheet on the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance Program. [Fact Sheet]. Retrieved January 24, 2021, from https://www.ssa.gov/OACT/FACTS/fs2019_12.pdf Stokes, E. M. (1981). La colonia extranjero: An American Retirement Community in Ajijic, Mexico. Doctoral dissertation, State University of New York at Stony Brook. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. http://search.proquest. com/docview/303201222/abstract/F625198DB84FBEPQ/20 Truly, D. (2001). International Retirement Migration: A Case Study of the Lake Chapala Riviera in Jalisco, Mexico. Doctoral dissertation, University of South Carolina. ProQuest Dissertations and Theses Global. http://search.proquest. com/docview/304719859/abstract/F625198DB84FBEPQ/12 Truly, D. (2002). International Retirement Migration and Tourism Along the Lake Chapala Riviera: Developing a Matrix of Retirement and Retirement Migration Behavior. Tourism Geographies, 4(23), 261–281. https://doi. org/10.1080/14616680210147427 Wallendorf, M., & Reilly, M.  D. (1983). Ethnic Migration, Assimilation, and Consumption. The Journal of Consumer Research, 12, 292–302. https://doi. org/10.1086/208968

PART II

Retirement Migrants and Their Relationships with the Local Population: Dominations and Ambiguities

CHAPTER 5

Social Relationships of Retirement Migrants in Kenya with the Local Population: On Devaluation Practices, Re-education Efforts and Disappointments Cornelia Schweppe and Karin Müller

Introduction Retirement migration to countries of the Global South points to the increasing global interconnectedness of aging in relatively affluent countries with economically poorer countries and the intertwinements with global inequalities. Benson and O’Reilly (2018, p. 262) state: “It’s important to study these populations as migrants, precisely because of their privileged standing in the global power relations.” Many studies show the privileged position of retirement migrants in the destination countries (e.g., Croucher, 2009, 2018; Benson, 2014; Hayes, 2014), the related hierarchical positionings of retired migrants vis-à-vis local populations, the reproduction of colonial forms of domination and subordination (e.g.,

C. Schweppe (*) • K. Müller Institute of Education, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_5

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Benson & O’Reilly, 2018; Bell, 2017; Croucher, 2009), and the consequences and effects on the destination countries. These include, for example, processes of gentrification (Hayes, 2018) through rising rents and land prices, and the consolidation or reconfiguration of social inequalities (Viteri, 2015). At the same time, studies show various practices by retirement migrants intended to mitigate differences between themselves and the local population and to relativize or conceal their privileged position. Benson (2013) elaborates on the efforts of North American lifestyle migrants in Panama to cover up the ambivalence of their position within the local population and the economic benefit of living there by signaling through charitable activities that they are giving something back to the local population. Croucher (2018) presents similar findings in her study about North American lifestyle migrants in Nicaragua. Hayes (2014) demonstrates how retirement migrants in Ecuador, due to their unease about their position in the racialized social order of Ecuador, develop a series of practices to diminish the importance of their racial identities and to erase their “Otherness,” for example, by learning the Spanish language, developing friendships with Ecuadorians, and living in areas of the local population (Hayes & Carlson, 2018; see also Green, 2017 for retirement migrants on Bali). At the same time, the limits of such practices are pointed out. They often uphold or reinforce differences and hierarchies between retirement migrants and the local population (Croucher, 2018) and mask and maintain power relations and privilege (Green, 2017). However, studies also indicate that it is not sufficient to consider retirement migrants solely as a privileged group because their experiences and life situations can be much more ambivalent than it may seem from the perspective of privilege (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018; Botterill, 2017). Such ambivalences can also come into play in intimate relationships between retirement migrants and people from the local population. Various studies on intimate relationships of retirement migrants in Thailand show, for example, that men’s experiences can be far more ambivalent and fragile than the concept of the “privileged white man” suggests1 (Bender & Schweppe, 2021; Maher & Lafferty, 2014, 2020). Although the diverse facets of the privileged and powerful position of retirement migrants in relation to the local population and the constructions of difference and power have been explored, studies that analyze concrete relationships between retirement migrants and members of the local community remain rare. Exceptions are the aforementioned studies

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on intimate relationships and relationships with domestic workers (Green, 2017). We will address this research gap by analyzing retirement migration to Kenya, specifically to the Kenyan South Coast. We focus on how the relationships of retirement migrants with people from the local population are shaped and structured, how retirement migrants experience them, and how the respective relationship formations and experiences can be explained.

Kenya’s South Coast Kenya’s South Coast, located on the Indian Ocean, has grown into a prominent international tourist destination since the 1960s and subsequently into a pronounced destination for retirement migrants, mainly from Europe and in large part Germans (Berman, 2017). After gaining independence in 1963, Kenya opened up to foreign investment, and tourism developed as the main sector for such investment (Berman, 2018). The life situation of the local population is marked by extreme poverty and unmet basic needs in all essential areas including healthcare, nutrition, housing, and sanitation (Berman, 2017). Most people do not have access to electricity and running water. The large majority of the local population has neither employment nor a stable income. Many social problems such as a high use of drugs and violence also mark the area. People from richer countries are powerful and financially strong actors with profound impacts on the region. They have become influential economic actors as business owners, landlords, employers, and consumers (Berman, 2017). Tourism and retirement migration came along with the development of an infrastructure that caters to the needs and desires of Europeans (supermarkets with European products, restaurants, bars, entertainment and sports establishments, etc.), mostly owned by Europeans. A bourgeoning real estate market also emerged and led to drastic processes of gentrification that caused members of the local community to lose large parts of their land. With the loss of land, on which many people used to grow food for their own use and some to sell, people have lost not only their homes but also an important means of sustaining themselves (Berman, 2018). Along with tourism and the high presence of Europeans came the vast entry of humanitarian activities by Europeans, locally called “charity.” Berman (2017) states,

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Today Diani2 is characterized by a pervasive ‘culture of charity’ (…). This culture is shaped primarily by expatriate residents and repeat visitors who initially came as tourists (…). The ‘culture of charity’ (…) in one way or another, structures most social and economic relations in Diani, since every single household in the area benefits from some kind of formal and informal humanitarian activity conducted by Germans or other Europeans. (p. 73)

Humanitarian activities are present in almost all social sectors including education, healthcare and family substitute care facilities (e.g., orphanages), as well as in the supply of basic infrastructure such as access to water (e.g., building of wells). Berman (ibid., p. 78) points out that “contraband humanitarianism” is the most widespread mode of humanitarian assistance. She uses this term to indicate that most humanitarian activities take place outside official governmental or non-governmental development structures and without being coordinated with Kenyan governmental agencies. Some of them are simply illegal. These activities are exclusively financed by private donations from the countries of origin, thus creating a high dependence, as, without them, none of the projects could survive or be maintained. The relationship between Europeans and the local population is also substantially structured by the significant role that Europeans play in generating financial means for the local population. Due to the very limited opportunities for employment in the formal work sector, a large informal sector has developed that is oriented toward tourists and retirement migrants. It represents one of the few options for the local population to generate financial resources and secure their livelihoods. The services and strategies that people develop in this context are diverse and wide-ranging (Chege & Schweppe, 2018). They sell all kinds of goods (e.g., fruits, artisans’ products, souvenirs) and prepare food and drinks on the beach. They organize tours, serve as drivers or guides, and take tourists on walks to their neighborhoods or invite them to their homes—so-called village visits as a response to tourists’ desire to see the “real Africa” (Chege & Schweppe, 2018). Many also enter into longer-term intimate relationships with (often older) Europeans, often with the hope of improving their life situation and receiving material support (Berman, 2018; Chege, 2017). Another widespread practice is to seek a sponsor among tourists for their children’s schooling (Chege & Schweppe, 2018). In these livelihood strategies a particular agency of the local population come into play. Studies show how they are significantly informed by the

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local population’s knowledge of the needs, preferences, and attitudes of Europeans and how this is put to fruitful use to generate financial resources (ibid.). For example, pointing out “human needs” proves to be a good strategy for obtaining financial resources from Europeans. In addition to unaffordable medical treatment costs in case of illness or accidents, people have learned that children’s schooling or school-related emergencies are accepted as legitimate reasons for mzungus3 to support them financially.4 From the perspective of tourists, these income-generating strategies are, in many ways, seen as disruptive to what is otherwise considered a paradisiacal region with breathtaking beaches. For example, there are countless Internet sites about the so-called beach boys, a generalized and pejorative term for men who sell their goods and services on the beach. They are described as bothersome and are said to disturb the tourists’ tranquility, use aggressive sales tactics, and “rip off” the tourists. Similar sentiments are also expressed by long-term European residents and retirement migrants (detailed below). Overall, the South Coast is thus characterized by the convergence and powerful intertwinement of blatant social inequalities between the local population and Europeans.

Methodological Approach The chapter is based on data from the project “Retirement migration to Kenya’s South Coast,” which focuses on people’s motives for retiring in Kenya or shuttling between Kenya and the country of origin after retirement, the retirees’ experiences of life in Kenya, and their everyday lives including their social relationships and areas of activity. Data was collected from narrative-generating guided interviews with retirement migrants on the Kenyan South Coast during four 2- to 4-week field trips between 2016 and 2019. The interviews started with a narration-generating stimulus stating our interest in the experiences of retirement migrants in Kenya. There was little pre-structuring of the interviews, in order to allow interviewees to shape the narrations according to their own relevancies. Contacts with potential interviewees were established firstly with the help of a man from the local population who worked for many years in the informal sector of tourism and had many contacts with retirement migrants. Secondly, contacts were made in cafés, bars, and restaurants frequented by Europeans. Further interviewees were recruited by the snowball technique.

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The sampling process followed the principle of theoretical sampling (Glaser & Strauss, 1967, p. 45). According to this principle, data collection and analysis are conceptualized as a simultaneous process in which, ideally, data analysis starts from the beginning of data collection and data gathering continues informed by emerging results. This way, theoretical deductions emerge little by little from the data and are progressively extended and modified. The sampling process is considered to be concluded when the designed theoretical model proves to be “saturated,” that is, “when new cases or new empirical findings can be accommodated under the theory already developed, i.e. when they do not contribute to any further change or development of the theory” (Wiedemann, 1995, p. 441). In this study, this process was pursued by basing the data collection during field trips on the results and concepts emerging from the data analysis back in Germany. They guided the search for new data in Kenya to refine the emerging results. A total of 28 interviews were conducted either in German or in English. The ages of the interviewees range from mid-50s to early 80s. Seventeen are women and 11 are men. Five emigrated with a partner and 23 alone. Their socio-economic and professional backgrounds vary widely including, for example, unskilled workers, craftsmen, teachers, dentists, and architects. Their countries of origin are Germany, Switzerland, Austria, and Belgium. Eighteen live permanently in Kenya, and ten shuttle between the Kenyan South Coast and their country of origin. They have been living in Kenya or shuttling between Kenya and their country of origin for 3 to over 20 years. All interviews were recorded with audio devices and afterward transcribed. For the data analysis, first all segments of the texts related to the relationships of retirement migrants with people of the local population were identified and subsequently interpreted by sequence analysis (Kurt, 2004). Sequence analysis consists of a line-by-line interpretation through which the underlying patterns and processes, as well as the meaning of a social phenomenon, are reconstructed on a step-by-step basis. The results were then condensed into comprehensive case descriptions on the way and reasons of the respective case-typical shaping and structuring of the relationships and how retirement migrants experience them. The analyzed cases were continuously compared with one another. The aim was to identify dimensions of comparison in order to condense the analysis beyond the individual cases and to theorize the results.

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The findings are presented through two case presentations. The cases were selected because they exhibit the maximum difference in the comparative analysis and illustrate the spectrum of relationship structures as well as interpretations and explanations of the relationship experiences, including the positionings adopted by interviewees toward the relationship partners and the consequences for their life situations.

The Case of Georg Georg and his wife have been shuttling between Germany and the Kenyan South Coast at roughly six-month intervals for about 20 years. In the winter months they want to “escape”5 from Germany and live in Kenya. Concerning their life in Kenya, Georg states: “You’re living in a paradise,” referring to the natural beauty of the Kenyan coastal region. However, this statement is directly contrasted with: “but after three years it’s hell.” When explaining how paradise turns into “hell,” he points to the local population: “because you can’t get along with the mentality and the people.” The juxtaposition of “paradise” and “hell” suggests that the Kenyans and their mentality become a disruptive factor for the paradisiacal life that they could be leading in Kenya. From the outset, Georg and his wife did not intend to spend their stay in Kenya “just lying on the beach, basking in the sun,” because in Georg’s view, “if you are here for half a year or so, then […] you also can do something here.” The “something” they can do becomes clear to them after some time. Georg and his wife recognize an “immense need” for education alongside the local population’s high level of poverty. “Need” indicates a lack of something necessary or desired. Consequently, “doing something” is based on a lack identified by Georg and his wife which they intend to transform through their actions into something different and supposedly “better.” Already at this point, the narration suggests Georg’s superior self-positioning vis-à-vis the local population which goes along with the ascription of deficiencies: he and his wife  ascribe to the local population  an “immense need” that  they believe themselves capable of alleviating. His narration also indicates that they have ideas about what will make this change possible and what will not: “We can’t just go there and give everyone a euro or whatever (…) that won’t work at all.” Instead, Georg and his wife establish an education and social center that is financed by donations from Germany. At its heart is an elementary school for grades

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1–8 and a kindergarten. Georg gives a detailed account of their extensive engagement in the center. When in Kenya, they would usually be there every day from 9 am until the early evening hours. When they are in Germany, they also maintain continuous and intensive contact, because “it has to keep running somehow, even then.” This indicates the importance and also the indispensability he attributes to himself and his wife for the functioning and existence of the center. He does not seem to trust Kenyans to be able to keep the school running during their absence. Georg’s superior positioning, which is again indicated here, is also reflected in the organization of the center. He and his wife are in charge of it. A retired primary school director from Germany, now living in Kenya, was engaged as the school’s educational head. The children are taught by Kenyan teachers. Furthermore, the organization of the school is accompanied by devaluations of and a disregard for regulations of the Kenyan school system. Georg regrets that they have to follow the rules of the Kenyan school system, including the 35-minute teaching periods. He finds this “simply stupid,” because: “When will they still have time to learn then?” Therefore, he and his wife had begun timetabling the lessons “according to our German system”—with 45-minute teaching periods. However, someone “shat on” them, resulting in an intervention by a representative of the Kenyan school authorities who prohibited this change. “Shat on” points to Georg’s disapproval of the fact that they were met with resistance and cannot do what they think is right. His attitude and positioning toward the Kenyan staff also become clear when he talks about his and his wife’s plan to transfer responsibility for the school to the staff: “Yes, we also intend that at some point, it will be practically run by—only by Kenyans.” However, this is subject to a restriction: Georg and his wife then “only want to make sure that the money is used properly, (…) that the donations are not misused.” Thus, he and his wife reserve a powerful position for themselves: the control over the use of the money. The perceived necessity for such control seems to be based on mistrust toward the Kenyans who might misuse the money; they are suspected of potential dishonesty. In contrast, he and his wife ascribe honesty to themselves, because, as Georg argues, their control is the way to ensure that the donations “are not misused.” According to Georg, it will be a long time before the center is transferred to the Kenyans: “That is not possible yet at all [emphasized].” He holds the Kenyan staff responsible for this because “they simply don’t understand what you mean, you may well explain it three times, four

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times, but they don’t understand.” Thus, one reason why they have not yet been able to accomplish their plan is, in Georg’s eyes, the limited (intellectual and educational) capacities of the Kenyans, who do not understand what he and his wife want and consider to be right. Further reasons Georg and his wife see in the Kenyans’ inability to assume responsibility, their lack of self-reliance, and their poor ability to plan and make decisions. Here again, the Kenyans’ deficiencies are blamed for the “failure” of their plans up to that point. Georg thinks that the reason for the Kenyan staff’s failure to assume responsibility is their reliance on authorities. He illustrates this with an example. He and his wife would suggest to the Kenyan staff that “if anything is wrong” they should consult with each another and then inform them “what came out of it and a deci-, uh, what they would like to have.” The truncated word “deci-,” presumably part of the word “decision,” is revealing, as it is then replaced with “what they would like to have.” Unlike a “decision,” “what they would like to have” represents a wish which they would need to address to Georg and his wife. The power to make and implement decisions rests with them, not the Kenyan staff. But even this approach “doesn’t work, no suggestions,” Georg complains. “Then they always say: ‘Yes, but you said so,’” referring to the fact that they would just repeat Georg’s ideas of how to shape the center. “Always looking to authority, no self-reliance.” This example highlights Georg and his wife’s paradoxical expectations and relationship structuring vis-à-vis the Kenyan staff. Responsibility and decision-making opportunities are withheld from the staff by not transferring the management of the school to them because they do not understand or do what Georg and his wife want and stipulate. It is a relationship structure between those who are in charge, make decisions and consider themselves competent (Germans) and those who are considered incompetent, and who are supposed to do and learn what Georg and his wife think is right. Within this structure, the Kenyan staff are supposed to become decision-makers and take over the responsibility of the center, a goal set by Georg and his wife, just like they set the competences required in order to assume this responsibility. The space made available for this shift is that of expressing wishes. If within that space the Kenyans take up Georg’s ideas of how to shape the center, they actually act in accordance with his (and his wife’s) expectations. However, this collides with the expectation that they should develop their own ideas. When they do not develop their own ideas, this, in turn, is considered incapability or incompetence. This creates a vicious circle in which the Kenyans are kept in a permanently ascribed

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status of incompetence while Georg and his wife uphold their powerful position, make themselves indispensable, and maintain the Kenyans’ dependence on them. Although Georg reflects that he imposes his ideas onto his collaboration with the Kenyans, he explains that he cannot or does not want to do otherwise. He says: “You can’t just put aside your old culture. You have [emphasized] this way of thinking. How they [the Kenyans] think, you can’t really follow at all.” He also makes clear that the way he relates to the Kenyans is not only due to his inability to understand their thinking. For even when he understands them, he says, “then they are just so un-­ European, or so against our grain, that you don’t want to go along with it.” Evidenced here are powerful, even essentialist “we—they” constructions between “European” and “Kenyan thinking,” which are set in evaluative relation to one another: Kenyan thinking goes “against the grain of European thinking”; that is, it is displeasing. And because it is displeasing, Georg “does not want to go along with it.” This “wanting nothing to do with it,” however, is not expressed through withdrawal. Rather, the rejection and devaluation of Kenyan thinking lead to powerful and contrasting differentiation between “right” and “wrong,” “good” and “bad,” “competent” and “not competent,” “honest” and “dishonest.” The first in each of these pairs of opposites is ascribed to Georg and his wife, and perhaps also other “European-thinking” people, and the second to the Kenyans. Georg’s marking of difference is an expression of his superior self-­ positioning, which results in wanting to subordinate the school and the Kenyan staff to what he and his wife consider to be right. However, they only succeed in this to a very limited extent. In this respect, Georg’s statements that he “can’t get along with the mentality and the people” and that after staying for a while, life in Kenya becomes “hell” can be interpreted as an expression of what they see as a (so far) failed attempt at subjugating and re-educating the Kenyan staff. For Georg and his wife, however, this failure is of meaningful significance. Since they have not (so far) succeeded in bringing the Kenyans round to their way of thinking, their goal is not (yet) achieved. This way, they uphold the reasons for their involvement, which has become a meaningful purpose in life for them. It is a purpose in life that is bound to the construction of power relations, a differentiation between “we” and the “others,” to superiority and subjugation, and can only be maintained by their continuous reproduction.

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The Case of Louise Louise emigrated from Switzerland to the Kenyan South Coast 18 years ago at the age of 51. She lives there all year long except for an annual three-week trip to Switzerland. Before her migration, she worked with children in the social sector. Due to health problems, she had to give up her job at the age of 48. Afterward her family—with the exception of her son—treated her as a “maidservant.” She explains that she felt her family had turned her into a service provider and monopolized her. She felt exploited and degraded. Based on these experiences, Louise says: “The thought came to me that I could emigrate.” Her migration is fueled by the desire not to have to do anything for other people anymore: “I wanted no more children, no more anything. That [emphasized] is what I came here [to Kenya] for.” Her first visit to Kenya was “just a holiday.” In the first days of her vacation, she sees a church of the local population and realizes with astonishment: “That’s my church [i.e., the same faith congregation as Louise’s], that’s not possible. Of course, I went there.” She takes the identified common element between Switzerland and Kenya as an opportunity to enter into friendly relationships with the local population: “And there I made friendships.” After migrating, Louise continuously engages in further relationships with people from the local population. The relationships are always similarly structured and essentially show the same characteristics. Through the church, she also meets a Kenyan priest, falls in love, and moves in with him. Because of his church affiliation, she assumes he is a serious man and believes him when he tells her that he has no family or other women. This turns out to be untrue; after a while she finds out that he has a Kenyan wife with whom he claims to have three children. Although the two of them were “not officially married,” Louise decides: “I will make a divorce, so I’ll pay for them.” She pays money to the priest’s wife and children, which she explains as follows: “because I’ve taken her husband away or whatever, that was simply my attitude.” She considers herself responsible for the changes to how the family is provided for, and she faces up to this by covering the maintenance money that the wife and children have lost due to her partnership with the priest. When she says that this has been her attitude, it shows that it is based on certain values she holds and is self-­ initiated by her. After some time, however, she finds out that “that was a

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lie as well.” The children that the priest said were his own, and for whom he would pay, are not his children. Money and untruths also mark the further course of the relationship. Since “he always demanded more money for the family,” she “really tried everything to help get him a job or become self-employed.” Her extensive efforts bear no fruit. He “always wanted more money,” but “nothing ever came back.” There is discernible discomfort and disappointment with the fact that she is in the role of the permanent and unidirectional financial sponsor without receiving anything in return. Disappointed and frustrated, she ends the relationship after four years and sums it up as follows: “He took advantage of me too much, too many lies.” Self-critically, she reflects on her own part in this: “I paid for everything for him, I was very foolish.” She then enters into further relationships with similar characteristics. Also at church, she finds “quite a good friend” in a 13-year-old girl. The girl becomes pregnant, and because she could not count on any support from the child’s father or from her parents once the child was born, Louise offers to help so the girl can keep the child: “I’ll pay for everything. I am your sponsor for the child. I wanted to pay for everything, clothes, food, then later school and everything.” Once again she voluntarily offers her help without being asked and wants to provide financial to ensure that essential basic needs are provided for. She emphasizes that she never wanted to take the child in permanently or adopt it. But she cannot follow this plan for long. The child is born, but the mother does not want to keep it. She threatens Louise: “Take it or else I’ll throw her in the bush.” In this situation, Louise sees no other option than to act against her motivation for emigrating: “I took the child, because you can’t say ‘no’ when such a young girl comes to you.” She decides to take the child in and bring it up. At the time of the interview, her adopted daughter is 17 years old. Similar to the relationship with the priest, Louise criticizes that the daughter lies a lot although honesty was very important to Louise in her daughter’s upbringing. She also recounts: “She was such a sweet child, when she was little, so grateful for everything [emphasized] and now all of a sudden, everything is just normal.” Her disappointment at no longer receiving gratitude and recognition from her daughter becomes apparent. This desire results from the many efforts that Louise has made in raising her daughter and providing for her livelihood. She would therefore tell her daughter: “You know, it’s my money and I worked hard [emphasized] for that money.” Thus, the issue of money comes into effect in this

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relationship too. Louise criticizes her daughter for not contributing financially to living costs and demands of her: “You have to earn something, you can’t just sit around here, watching television and such.” Ultimately, the experiences from her relationship with the priest are repeated: unidirectional support, someone living at her expense, dishonesty, and a lack of appreciation for her help. These experiences continue when Louise coordinates donations from European donors for up to 30 Kenyan children. Here, too, she encounters dishonesty, not only from the children’s parents but, she reports: “At school even the teachers tell many lies.” When the sponsors’ donations stop flowing, Louise decides that she will meet the children’s school fees so they can complete the school year. She explains: “I couldn’t just take them out of school.” As in her other relationships, she steps in as an assisting actor in emergency situations. But here, too, she experiences the parents as not grateful. And what is more, “then when I stopped with one child, which wasn’t my mistake, all of them turned enemy.” Thus, not only did she not receive any gratitude, but once she stopped the financial support, her relationship with the families she had supported changed drastically. Louise has similar experiences with people of the local population outside the school context, who would visit her at home to ask for financial assistance. She says: “The people all came to me, always with more, more, they wanted more.” When she realizes this, she tells them they can only come if they phone first and have no concerns or problems, whereupon they would tell her: “‘No, no, we don’t have a problem. We just want to say hello’ and so on.” But, “before they left, it was always ‘oh by the way, we still have a little problem.’” Louise is disappointed and annoyed by their interest in her money. She decides: “Finish, no more visitors” and sums up: “Most of them visit less now because they know I’m not giving them anymore.” As she did with the priest, here again she withdraws from unpleasant relationships. When asked whether she has friends in Kenya, she responds: “Not many anymore, no. Here you have friends for as long as you’re paying, as soon as you stop giving them money or whatever, they turn from friends to enemies.” The conflicts and disappointments that Louise experiences in her relationships can be explained more precisely. They reside in a discrepancy between the desires and ideas she has about the formation of relationships and the relationships she experiences. Her narrations about the self-­ initiated (financial) help she provides in her relationships with the priest,

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the pregnant girl, her adopted daughter, and the school children previously supported by sponsors, show that orientations toward helpfulness, solidarity, and the desire to support people in need come to bear. In addition, she wants to take responsibility for the consequences of her actions and compensate people for those circumstances for which she feels at fault. These and other values of interpersonal relationships that are important to her also become apparent when she talks about positively experienced and evaluated social relationships. For example, she mentions that when she fell ill during a stay in Switzerland and could neither walk nor drive, she was driven to the hospital free of charge by friends. She says: “I appreciate that so much now, because it’s absolutely not possible here.” Honesty, reciprocity, and appreciation are further important elements of positive relationships for Louise. Her discomfort at having been treated as a “maidservant” by her family fits in with this. She also deplores it when white people behave arrogantly toward Black people, when Black people “take advantage” of other people, or when better-off Black people behave “arrogantly” toward other Black people. She says, for example: “You know there are so many white people here who behave so arrogantly towards Black people. I detest that. But the same also happens among Black people. The ones who are better off sometimes treat other Black people very badly. I strongly dislike it.” She would like interpersonal relationships characterized by honesty, concern for others, helpfulness, and reciprocity. These values form her basis for evaluating and experiencing relationships, regardless of where they take place and of the external characteristics of the people involved, such as race or place of origin. Her evaluations focus on relationship structures and characteristics. Against this backdrop, Louise is disappointed in her relationships and interactions with people from the local population. Ultimately, the experiences that led her to emigrate from Switzerland are repeated. Similar to her family relationships, Louise also withdraws from unpleasant relationships in Kenya.

Case Comparison Both cases have in common that inequalities and constructions of difference play an important role in their relationships which are closely related to the provision of assistance and support. Nevertheless, the cases differ fundamentally. The differences are manifested in (1) the reasons why Georg and Louise  enter into relationships with people from the local

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population, (2) the structuring of and their self-positionings in these relationships, (3) how, why and which inequalities and constructions of difference come into effect, and (4) the explanations of the difficulties experienced. The starting point of Georg’s relation with people from the local population is an overall need of the community that he and his wife identify, unrelated to specific persons, which they believe they know how to alleviate. From the outset, he assumes a position of superiority toward the local population which goes along with devaluations and ascription of deficiencies. The differentiation he draws between “us” and “them” is based on generalized and evaluative assumptions and is characterized by the positioning of himself and his wife as “right and better-knowing” in relation to the Kenyans, the “ignorant and wrong-thinking and -acting.” The difference between “knowing and unknowing” and “competent and incompetent” is the central structural element that characterizes his relationships. It creates the basis of legitimacy for intervening in the local structures and going on a “rescue mission” (Castro Varela and Dhawan 2020, translation by the authors). It finds its expression in the founding of the social and education center which is organized and shaped according to Georg and his wife’s ideas. The relationships with people from the local population take place within this organizational framework. They are characterized by the differences drawn by him and his wife that are to be compensated by the Kenyans submitting to what he and his wife stipulate and consider to be “right.” He continuously reproduces his constructed position of superiority and the associated dominance structures of the relationships. This shows how the hierarchical positionings of retired migrants vis-à-vis the local population, as pointed out in research, accompanied by the reproduction of colonial attitudes and practices of domination and subordination, are reflected in concrete relationships (e.g., Bell, 2017; Benson & O’Reilly, 2018). In the case of Louise, relationships with people from the local population take a different form. On the one hand, based on shared ideals (religion) or positively connoted feelings, she enters into very personal relationships with specific people. In these relationships, she is confronted with emergencies or crises, which in some instances she feels responsible for causing. Based on her better financial means, this leads her to offer (financial) assistance to the people concerned. In contrast to Georg, whose involvement is based on generalized deficit ascriptions to the local population, the support that Louise provides arise from very concrete

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experiences in personal relationships. Unlike Georg, who wants to change people and their thinking and acting according to his ideas, Louise provides (material) support to help alleviate the difficult situations of the people with whom she is involved in relationships. The difference between “having” and “not having” in terms of material resources, which come into effect here, also manifests on a second level, reflected by the fact that it is repeatedly brought up to Louise by her relationship partners; Louise is continuously confronted with requests for money. In this regard, the structures of the region come into play and are reflected in Louise’s experiences. Generating financial transfers within personal relationships can be understood as another facet of the local population’s survival strategies, which they have found in response to the glaring inequalities between Europeans and the local population, and within which Europeans have become of high significance for generating financial resources. Through the difference of “having and not having,” Louise too holds a privileged and powerful position in her relationships. However, this position involves less, if any, self-positioning as superior or subjugating practices, for example, due to intellectually or culturally assumed superiority, nor do the relationships entail generalized evaluations or devaluations of the local population. The fundamental reason for this is, first, that Louise does not enter into relationships on the basis of preconceived constructions of difference between herself and the local population; rather, inequalities come into play through her experiences in concrete personal relationships and the differences in material resources. Second, it is significant that Louise evaluates and experiences relationships based on specific  relationship characteristics. These characteristics are not tied to external characteristics of the persons involved, such as place of origin or skin color, but to the (social) values inherent to interpersonal relationships. Both Georg and Louise encounter problems in their relationships with people from the local population. However, their explanations of these difficulties and their reactions differ considerably. Georg assesses relationships in terms of how closely the Kenyans reflect what he and his wife considers “right” and “good” for them. Since that is precisely what they do not understand or accept, he categorizes relationships with them as problematic. The difficulties are explained by generalized and even essentialist ascriptions of incompetence to “the Kenyans.” Louise, on the other hand, evaluates and experiences her relationships based on a desired model of

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personal relationships which is grounded in specific values of interpersonal interaction. On this basis, she experiences and evaluates her relationships in Kenya as disappointing for her and does not lapse into generalized evaluations or devaluations of the local population. The consequences that both experience as a result of their actions and decisions, and which have a significant influence on their life situation, are also very different. Louise withdraws in disappointment and has only a few friends or acquaintances left. To this extent, her privileged position is accompanied by vulnerabilities in the form of personal disappointments and a lack of social ties. In contrast, by constantly maintaining and reproducing deficits and incompetency ascriptions of the local population, Georg (and his wife) continuously maintain their reasons for their activities and interventions; they consider themselves indispensable. Through the relations of power and dependence which they construct, they uphold what has become an important meaning for and purpose in life for them in the context of a paradisiacal life, in which only the local population proves to be a disturbing factor.

Discussion Our data show that the cases above represent relationships that can be situated at two ends of a spectrum. They differ in particular in how differences and inequalities in the relationships become relevant and how they are dealt with. At one end, relationships are based on and shaped according to powerfully and hierarchically constructed, generalized differences and inequalities between retirement migrants and people from the local population. They are shaped by the superior self-positionings of the retirees and characterized by the continuous (re)production of domination, subordination, and devaluation of the local population. At the other end of the spectrum are relationships in which such generalized constructions of difference are not brought up to the relationships from the outset, differences or inequalities come into effect in the course of concrete relationships. The structurally inscribed material difference between retirement migrants and people from the local population is of particular importance in this regard. Even if the relationships go along with unequal material resources and power relations, they are less or not linked to positions of superiority and subordinating practices. This type is represented by Louise. However, she is an isolated case in our study.

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The topic of money is present in almost all interviews and occupies a significant place in the narratives about relationships with people from the local population. Many interviewees report similar experiences to Louise’s; they feel reduced to their money, exploited and sometimes deceived. Their interpretations and explanations, however, are different from hers. They draw heavily on very widespread and hardly questioned interpretations and explanations that have become established among Europeans in the region. Examples are: “they take the money out of our pockets,” “they think we’re all millionaires,” “they only want our money,” or “they rip us off.” These interpretations and explanations are reactions to the ways that people have found to cope with living in a region in which the local population is deprived of the means to meet basic needs and dominated by the economic interests and dependencies of Europeans. Due to the high relevance of Europeans for generating financial means for the local population, these answers are reflected in the many practices in the informal sector oriented to tourists and retirement migrants mentioned above, which also permeate personal relationships. The aforementioned interpretations and explanations indicate that these practices meet with disapproval and condemnation from Europeans. They are seen as illegitimate, dishonest, and unfair practices that exploit and deceive Europeans. As in Georg’s case, these explanations and interpretations again show how relationship experiences that are irritating and do not fit into the Europeans’ worldview are handled by the devaluation of Kenyans. The migrants’ worldview is superimposed, to the neglect of seeing and understanding the world from the perspective of the Kenyans, which in turn could challenge their worldview and result in other understandings of their experiences (Hayes, 2015). The widespread dissemination of these unquestioned interpretations and explanations indicates that they go far beyond the individual level and constitute collective patterns of interpretation, in which (re)colonial markings of difference come into effect through hierarchical and superior positionings. Retirement migrations to countries of the Global South are structurally embedded in global inequalities. Within social relationships between retirement migrants and people of the local population, the unequal “here” and “there” meet at the micro-level. Seen in this light, the retired migrants’ relationships can scarcely be conceived independently of inequalities. How the relationships are shaped, and how and which inequalities and differences come into effect, is embedded in and framed by complex processes, interrelationships and interdependencies. They are closely

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related to the migrants’ interpretation patterns of the local social reality and their self-positioning vis-à-vis the local population and their relationship partners. These interpretation patterns have a significant impact on their relationship structures and practices. At the same time, our study points out the importance of the specific history, structures, and developments of the respective retirement migration destination to understand social relationships. As shown, the structures of dominance and dependency of Europeans, which characterize the Kenyan South Coast so much, deeply intrude not only on the living conditions of the local population but also on the concrete relationships between Kenyans and retirement migrants.

Notes 1. This concept has dominated research, especially with regard to intimate encounters between men from relatively wealthy countries and women from less wealthy countries, for example, sex tourism research (O’Connell Davidson & Sanchez Taylor, 1999) and international marriages, including marriages between Thai women and western men (Lapanun, 2018; Thompson et al., 2016). 2. Diani is the main area at the South Coast where European presence and infrastructure concentrate. 3. The term “mzungu” comes from the Swahili language and refers to Europeans or white people. 4. Chege and Schweppe (2018) point out how some of these income-­ generating practices contain strategies that are very similar to those of charity organizations in the region: “(…) the strategies of charity organizations in the region (…), have spread beyond the boundaries of organizations and have been adopted and incorporated into the livelihood strategies of the local population” (p. 116). 5. All quotes from the interviews were translated from German into English.

References Bell, C. (2017). “We feel like the King and Queen”. Western Retirees in Bali, Indonesia. Asian Journal of Social Science, 45, 271–293. Bender, D., & Schweppe, C. (2021). “Between heaven and hell”: Love, Sex and Intimacy. International Retirement Migration of Older Men to Thailand. In C. Schweppe (Ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South. Current Insights and Future Perspectives. Springer Nature.

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Benson, M. (2013). Postcoloniality and Privilege in New Lifestyle Flows: The Case of North Americans in Panama. Mobilities, 8(3), 313–330. Benson, M. (2014). Negotiating Privilege in and Through Lifestyle Migration. In M.  Benson & N.  Osbaldiston (Eds.), Understanding Lifestyle Migration (Migration, Diasporas and Citizenship Series) (pp. 47–68). Palgrave Macmillan. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2018). Lifestyle Migration and Colonial Traces in Malaysia and Panama. Palgrave Macmillan. Berman, N. (2017). Germans on the Kenyan Coast: Land, Charity, and Romance. Indiana University Press. Berman, N. (2018). Scrambling for Africa, Again: Germans in Kenya. Beyond Eurafrica: Encounters in a Globalized World. In H. B. Ducros Beyond (Ed.), Eurafrica: Encounters in a Globalized World. Special Issue of EuropeNow. Retrieved November 24, 2020, from https://www.europenowjournal. org/2018/02/28/scrambling-­for-­africa-­again-­germans-­in-­kenya Botterill, K. (2017). Discordant Lifestyle Mobilities in East Asia: Privilege and Precarity of British Retirement in Thailand. Population, Space and Place, 23(5), e2011. Castro Varela, M., & Dhawan, N. (2020). Postkoloniale Theorie. Eine Einführung (2nd ed.), transcript. Chege, N. (2017). Towards a Deeper Understanding of the Meaning of Male Beach Worker-Female Tourist Relationships on the Kenyan Coast. Journal of Arts and Humanities, 6(02), 62–80. Chege, N., & Schweppe, C. (2018). Tourism, Charity, and Fathers’ Fundraising Strategies for their Children’s Education on the Kenyan South Coast. International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies, 9(3), 100–125. Croucher, S. (2009). The Other Side of the Fence: American Migrants in Mexico. University of Texas Press. Croucher, S. (2018). Rooted in Relative Privilege: US ‘Expats’ in Granada, Nicaragua. Identities. Global Studies in Culture and Power, 25(4), 436–455. Glaser, B. G., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine Transaction. Green, P. (2017). Racial Hierarchies and Contradictory Moral Regimes in Lifestyle Destinations: Older, Western Residents in Ubud, Bali. Asian and Pacific Migration Journal, 26(2), 1–20. Hayes, M. (2014). ‘We Gained a Lot Over What We Would Have Had’: The Geographic Arbitrage of North American Lifestyle Migrants to Cuenca, Ecuador. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(12), 1953–1971. Hayes, M. (2015). ‘It is hard being the different one all the time’: Gringos and Racialized Identity in Lifestyle Migration to Ecuador. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 38(6), 943–958. Hayes, M. (2018). Gringolandia: Lifestyle Migration and the Colonial Geographies of Late Capitalism. University of Minnesota Press.

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Hayes, M., & Carlson, J. (2018). Good Guests and Obnoxious Gringos: Cosmopolitan Ideals Among North American Migrants to Cuenca, Ecuador. American Journal of Cultural Sociology, 6, 189–211. Kurt, R. (2004). Hermeneutik: eine sozialwissenschaftliche Einführung. utb. Lapanun, P. (2018). Masculinity, Marriage and Migration: Farang Migrant Men in Thailand. Asian Journal of Social Science, 46(1–2), 111–131. Maher, K. H., & Lafferty, M. (2014). White Migrant Masculinities in Thailand and the Paradoxes of Western Privilege. Social and Cultural Geography, 15(4), 427–448. Maher, K.  H., & Lafferty, M. (2020). Transnational Intimacy and Economic Precarity of Western Men in Northeast Thailand. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(1), 1–18. O’Connell Davidson, J., & Sanchez Taylor, J. (1999). Fantasy Islands: Exploring the Demand for Sex Tourism. In K.  Kempadoo (Ed.), Sun, Sex and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean (pp. 427–448). Rowman & Littlefield. Thompson, E. C., Kitiarsa, P., & Smutkupt, S. (2016). From Sex Tourist to Son-­ in-­Law. Current Anthropology, 57(1), 53–71. Viteri, M.  A. (2015). Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cotacachi. Journal of Latin American Geography, 14(1), 119–138. Wiedemann, P.  M. (1995). Gegenstandsnahe Theoriebildung. In U.  Flick, H. Keupp, E. von Kardorff, L. von Rosenstiel, & S. Wolff (Eds.), Handbuch Qualitative Sozialforschung: Grundlagen, Konzepte, Methoden und Anwendungen (2nd ed., pp. 440–445). Beltz.

CHAPTER 6

“Between Heaven and Hell”: Love, Sex and Intimacy—International Retirement Migration of Older Men to Thailand Désirée Bender and Cornelia Schweppe

Introduction International retirement migration has become a multifaceted field of research since the end of the twentieth century.1 Existing research provides important evidence on how the search for a better quality of life and for extended options in old age matter during migration in old age (Bender et al., 2018a; Benson & O’Reilly, 2009, 2016). Botterill (2017, 1) points out how retirees perceive their relocation as “mediating negative effects of ageing and enhancing well-being”. Despite the growing research in old age migration, however, motives and experiences related to love, sex and intimacy are largely a desideratum in retirement research. The debates on “emotional” and “sexual turns” in migration/mobility studies (Mai & King, 2009) and on “intimate mobilities” (Groes & Fernandez, 2018) have been mostly overlooked in old age migration research so far. These

D. Bender • C. Schweppe (*) Institute of Education, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected]; [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_6

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debates point to the fact that love, sex and intimacy are often key motivations behind migration. This chapter addresses this research gap by focusing on retirement migration of older men to Thailand, in particular from German-speaking countries. Older men have become a major group of retirement migrants in Thailand (Veress, 2009). Studies show that apart from lower living expenses, a warm climate, the positive attributions of a “laid-back lifestyle” and “Thai culture”, the availability of “attractive” potential sexual partners and/or the search for a longer-term partner relationship can be a decisive factor behind men’s migration to Thailand (Howard, 2008; Husa et al., 2014). The last of these reasons often leads the men to places where burgeoning sex tourism to Thailand, particularly since the 1980s, has given rise to a widespread sex industry (Lapanun, 2018), for example in Pattaya, the island of Phuket or Bangkok (Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016). As other studies and our field visits reveal, the high presence of older men quickly becomes apparent in such places (Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016; Veress, 2009). The results of the study by Veress (2009) indicate that most of the men are not seeking short-term relationships or sex tourism services; rather, they are drawn to Thailand by a desire for longer-term relationships. In this chapter we will look into this motive for migration and the experiences of men from German-speaking countries in their pursuit of and involvement in intimate relationships with Thai women. In concrete terms this chapter is guided by the following questions: why do older men choose to migrate to Thailand? What changes in older men’s opportunities for forming long-term (intimate) relationships occur in Thailand, and how can these be described and explained? How are intimate relationships with Thai women experienced by older men? What opportunities and risks do these relationships entail and what are the underlying structural conditions? These questions are embedded in current discussions within retirement migration research that challenge the frequent reference to retirement migrants as a rather affluent and privileged group by pointing out the relativity of the alleged financial prosperity and privilege (Benson, 2014; Benson & O’Reilly, 2009, 2016; Croucher, 2012). As Benson and O’Reilly (2016, 29) point out: “It is not necessarily the case that such migrants are particularly wealthy or privileged in the countries that they leave, or what we could consider as absolutely wealthy. It is rather the case that they can mobilise capital, assets and resources in ways that make their

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aspirations for a better way of life possible within the destination.” The authors argue that this would also allow “for an understanding of lifestyle migrants as potentially vulnerable and, in some cases, disadvantaged” (29). The value of this argument is that, firstly, it allows for the fact that not all retirement migrants are part of a wealthy and privileged group in the country of origin. Studies, particularly those addressing retirement migration to countries of the “global South”, show that limited financial resources can play a significant role in old age migration (Bender et al., 2018b; Hayes, 2018). It is useful, secondly, because it also allows for the ambivalences that may exist within retirement migration. In this regard, research calls attention to insecurities related to income, health and migrant status (Botterill, 2017), care and support gaps because of “language, cultural, spatial and financial barriers” (Hall & Hardill, 2016, 570), social isolation (Maher & Lafferty, 2014), marginalisation and social exclusion (O’Reilly, 2007), and the “paradoxes of ageing” within retirement migration (Oliver, 2008). In this respect, Benson and O’Reilly (2016, 21) argue “that relative privilege may coexist with precarity and vulnerability”. Botterill (2017) turns to the notion of discordance: “The notion of discordance challenges the dichotomous assumption of lifestyle migrants as either privileged or marginalised (Korpela, 2013) and introduces the idea that privilege and precarity are mutually constitutive” (n. p.). Even though retirement migration to date has not systematically focused on the perspectives, experiences and lifeworlds of older men, some current studies on men who migrate out of the “global North” suggest that their experiences can be far more ambivalent and fragile than the concept of the “privileged white man” suggests.2 This concept has dominated research so far, especially with regard to intimate encounters between men from relatively wealthy and women from less wealthy countries, for example, in sex tourism research (Davidson & Taylor, 1999) and in research on international marriages, including marriages between Thai women and “Western” men (Lapanun, 2018; Thompson et al., 2016). However, isolated studies on men’s North-South migration, and to Thailand in particular, indicate that their experiences within migration and in the partnership between farangs3 (“Westerners”) and Thai women can be far more ambivalent and fragile. Maher and Lafferty (2014) map out the paradoxes of Western privilege within this context and call attention to how men’s privilege may change over time and across social spaces.4

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In this chapter we make this discussion the starting point for analysing the men’s experiences migrating to Thailand in their pursuit of and involvement in partner relationships with Thai women including the potential ambivalences these experiences might involve.

Theoretical Framework As a sensitising theoretical perspective, we will use the works of Pierre Bourdieu (1984) particularly his concept of social fields and his analysis of different types of capital. These concepts enable a deeper understanding of the significance and possible implications of a shift in social fields, as a move from German-speaking countries to Thailand might imply. According to Bourdieu, social fields are spaces characterised by power relations. The actors of a social field each take up specific positions which essentially determine their power in this field, and hence their options for participating and exerting influence within the given field. According to Bourdieu, these social positions are substantially dependent on the respective actors’ capital, which refers to the resources that are considered valuable within the field. Bourdieu differentiates between various sorts of capital, particularly cultural (education and cultural skills), social (access to social relationships/networks), economic (access to money and property) and symbolic (recognition/prestige) capital, which are significant in every field, even if the significance varies according to the field. Relationality is accorded particular significance in Bourdieu’s understanding of social fields and field positions. According to Bourdieu, a field position and the potential of capital alike can only be understood in relation to other actors in the field. Due to the unequal distribution of capital, social fields are generally characterised by a vertical hierarchy of field positions. Accordingly, the interaction between the actors in social fields is marked by social struggles with each other. The amount of capital is essential for the position in the field and the corresponding options for participation and realisation of interests. Positions in a social field are not static by any means. Through the accumulation or loss of capital one can shift one’s own position—both upwards and downwards. In this way it can also be explained how individuals, by virtue of different attributes (such as age, gender etc.), are endowed with specific options for realising their interests. For example, age can function as a sign of something and, in a concrete way, yield greater or lesser chances of prestigious positions, financial wealth, attractive sexual partners and so on. Such

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an attribute never stands alone; rather social positions are characterised precisely through the interlinkage of specific capital endowments. However, these interlinkages can be normalised and naturalised to such an extent that in a specific social space even the aspect of “age” or “gender”, understood as a signal, is capable of invoking assumptions about the distribution of social, cultural and economic capital. Due to the relationality of field positions, a shift of space or field (e.g. through migration) can alter the significance of the respective capital endowments of individuals and their positions in social fields. Even if the absolute capital endowment of the actors remains unchanged, it might be transformed upon transitioning into the other relational context, where— in comparison to the previous context—it can be upgraded or downgraded. Such a sensitising perspective can prove conducive to the analysis of the experiences of older men from German-speaking countries in Thailand, since the capital endowment of the male actors possibly changes relationally upon migration to Thailand, thereby opening different experiential spaces to them in comparison to their context of origin.

The Methodological Approach  Our empirical data were collected during five ethnographically oriented field trips in the years 2013–2018 to different locations in Thailand, principally Pattaya, Hua Hin and the island of Phuket. These locations were chosen because of the high presence of “Western” retirement migrants. The field trips lasted two to three weeks each and were undertaken by two researchers. The main methods of data collection were narrative-­generating guided interviews and participant observations. Data collection was primarily carried out in the sex-tourism districts in the cities visited. In these districts there are innumerable bars, discotheques, restaurants and establishments offering all kinds of shows and are characterised by a pronounced presence of young Thai women. Even though the sexual connotations of these districts are obvious, they are not solely oriented to the purchase of sexual services but offer very diverse forms of entertainment (see below for more explanations). In the following we will refer to these areas as bar districts. In addition, data collection was carried out in German restaurants, which have become established in large numbers in the cities where the study was undertaken and are heavily frequented by German-speaking older men who migrated to Thailand. Further interviewees were also recruited through snowball sampling.

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The narrative-guided interviews conducted with German-speaking older men focused mainly on the men’s backgrounds and motives for migrating to Thailand, and their perceptions, interpretations and experiences in the course of their (intimate) relationships with Thai women. All interviews were recorded with audio devices and afterwards transcribed. We carried out a total of 48 interviews. The age span of the men interviewed ranged from 53 to 79 years. All men were retired and had migrated to Thailand after retirement. They had been living in Thailand for between 1 and 12 years; a smaller proportion had shuttled between Germany or Switzerland and Thailand at 3–6 month intervals for several years. The participant observations were carried out particularly to capture the interactions between the men and women. They were carried out at different times of day, primarily in the locations mentioned above. They were recorded in detailed observation protocols. The sampling process followed the principle of theoretical sampling, which Glaser and Strauss (1967, 45) define as “[…] the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes and analyses his data and decides what data to collect next […] in order to develop his theory as it emerges”. Thus, data collection and analysis are conceptualised as a simultaneous process in which, ideally, data analysis starts from the beginning of data collection and data gathering continues informed by emerging results. In our study, this was pursued by basing the data collection during our repeated field trips on the results and concepts emerging from our data analysis done back in Germany. They guided the search for new data in Thailand to refine our emerging results. Data analysis draws on grounded theory methodology (Glaser & Strauss, 1967). The aim of this methodology is to develop a theory which is grounded in the empirical data and is generated by a succession of different coding procedures. We began with the analysis of the interviews, which were coded and analysed line by line to identify potential key themes. Following the constant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1996), we continuously compared the emerging themes with each other and explored theoretical ideas and concepts. In this way, ideas and concepts were refined, while new ones were also generated. We then analysed the observation protocols, following the same analytical procedure as for the interviews. The findings from the observation protocols and the interview analysis were then related to each other to further deepen our analysis and to specify the emerging theoretical categories (Corbin and Strauss 2008).

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Empirical Results Motives for Male Retirement Migration to Thailand Our empirical data show that the reasons for male retirement migration to Thailand can be inferred from structural discrepancies between subjective-­ biographical life perspectives and the societal-structural possibilities to respond to these desires and perspectives for older men in Germany or Switzerland. The first one refers to the men’s financially constrained living situation in the country of origin, mainly due to low pensions resulting from low-earning positions or career trajectories, as well as early retirement often caused by health problems. Because of the expectation of lower-living costs, migration to Thailand represents a coping strategy and/or a preventive attempt to avert a descent into old age poverty in Germany or Switzerland or into dependency on state support. As one of our interviewees says: “You know I get a pension of € 800. In Germany you can’t live on that. Well, you can survive but you live in a shitty apartment, you have to eat lousy food. I don’t know, maybe I could have applied for social welfare. But that’s embarrassing. And then I found out how cheap life is in Thailand. You can get a great apartment for very little money. So I thought, why should I continue to live in misery.” The search for financial improvement is thus an important motive behind the men’s migration to Thailand. The second discrepancy refers to limitations experienced with regard to sexual and intimate relationships in old age. The majority of the men’s biographies is marked by disappointing and painful experiences of partnerships and often coloured by the breakup of long-standing marriages and partnerships. Despite multiple attempts and efforts, they rarely succeeded in finding a new (sexual/intimate) partner. By way of example, consider the experience of a Swiss man in his early 60s reporting on his attempts to establish an intimate relationship with a woman in his country of origin: “With Swiss women (…) I wrote e-mails for months and months before I eventually made a first contact. You think that would be the easiest thing in the world? Months! Hundreds of e-mails!” Desires for close emotional and intimate relationships with a partner with whom life can be shared, emerged in the interviews as a significant motive for migration to Thailand. For example, a 71-year-old German man says: “I’ve been divorced from my ex-wife for six years now. I did not want to live alone for the rest of my life. I’m not interested in one-night stands. For that, I just could pay a

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prostitute. That’s not what I want. I want a partner. In Germany I didn’t find one and I was fed up. That’s why I decided to move to Thailand.” That Thailand is this destination of choice is no coincidence. Many of the men were already familiar with Thailand from past holidays or knew men who had previously migrated to Thailand. In particular, however, the sex industry that has developed as a consequence of large-scale sex tourism has ensured that Thailand is projected as a country with myriad possibilities for striking up intimate relationships (Lapanun, 2018).5 Older Male Retirement Migrants and Their Experiences in the Bar Districts Our study confirms previous results that the men’s starting point for seeking a new partner is often the Thai prostitution milieu geared to farangs, located primarily in so-called walking streets or bar districts. In most cases, the primary motive that draws men to these districts is not the search for paid-for sexual interactions, but the desire for a longer-term or permanent life partner. These spaces—understood as topoi—form their own field logics and relationalities between the actors. These become visible in repeating patterns of interactions between the actors, and especially when initiating intimate contact between Thai women and male farangs. These interactions reflect field logics which will be described below and elucidated in terms of their significance for the men. The main motive for the men’s search for a partner, which drew them into these spaces, is quite reconcilable with the logics and structures of this field. The vast majority of women working as sex workers come from Isan, a poverty-stricken rural part of Thailand located in the northeast of the country (Sunanta & Angeles, 2012). In contrast to the very limited and poorly paid employment opportunities there, work in the prostitution sector focused on foreigners offers the possibility to earn much higher incomes. The sex trade with farangs has become a mass phenomenon and for numerous women, many of whom are young or very young, it is a search for a way out of poverty for themselves and their (extended) families (Cohen, 1993; Maher & Lafferty, 2014) as well as a way to fulfil their role as a “dutiful daughter”. Based on the culture of gratitude anchored in Buddhism, in which children have to demonstrate lifelong gratitude to their parents, daughters in particular are allocated the role of ensuring their parents’ financial security. Many of the women working in the bar districts are under considerable pressure to earn money not only for

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themselves and their children but also for their parents and often their extended family (Angeles & Sunanta, 2009). In the search for a way out of precarious living conditions, many female sex workers see long-term relationships with farangs, whether as a friend, partner, or husband, as a possible solution (Lapanun, 2012; Sunanta and Angeles 2013; Thompson et al., 2016). Long-term relationships with farangs are expected to provide a financially stable livelihood well beyond women’s earnings from prostitution (Cohen, 2003), as farangs are positioned in this field as actors who are assumed to dispose of high financial resources in relation to Thai average incomes. In other words, in comparison to the country of origin, the men’s financial resources undergo an upgrade in value and position them as desirable men. At the same time, however, Lapanun (2018) rightly points out that even if these relationships are often linked with the women’s hope of material improvement, such relationships can deepen and last, and emotional attachments may develop and play an important role (Lapanun, 2018). Thus, the women’s needs and desires and those of men coming from German-speaking countries fit into an apparent framework of compatibility. Both groups of actors have a common desire for longer-term relationships as they meet their respective needs and desires and imply the possibility of improved life perspectives: the way out of relationship-deprivation for the men, and the way out of a poverty-stricken life situation for the women. I ntimate Relationships: Enchantment In order to analyse the experiences of older men in intimate relationships with Thai women, we begin with an ethnographic sketch of a first meeting between a Thai woman and a German man. The elaborated sketch can be understood as a methodological instrument for the presentation of ethnographic data by reflecting the perspective of a man which emerged as a recurring pattern during the research process. The sketch captures it empirically and reflects it in the condensed form of a narrative (on genres of ethnographic writing, see Breidenstein et al., 2015, 178 ff.). Focusing on the first encounter, it already reveals which structures and factors are in play for longer-term intimate relationships between older men and Thai women to develop. A look into the field: Roland Seidel, 68 years It is his first evening in Bangkok, after finally making the move to live here for three months. To migrate to Thailand when he is retired has been his plan for a while. With his small pension he could barely make ends meet in

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Germany. Moreover, his wife left him four years ago. Since then he has felt rather alone. So far, he has only heard good things about Thailand. His friend Hans flies over every year and says that it’s a good country if you’re travelling alone; a place where it is easy to meet people. Until now Roland could not afford a longer stay in Thailand. He did not yet want to give up his apartment in Germany and continues to pay rent and other costs. But he thinks that after spending three months in Thailand, he should be able to make up his mind about moving there permanently. Having dropped off his suitcase in the hotel room, he decides to go for a beer. His hotel is close to Patpong; there are supposed to be lots of bars and clubs there. Out he goes. …. Wow! Hans wasn’t exaggerating. They look just great! And how young they are … But, well, Hans is probably right, all prostitutes. He takes a seat at the bar. “Hi-i-i-i!” says one of the women behind the counter and smiles at him. “You want drink?” she asks him. “A beer please”, he replies. She brings it to him and smiles at him again. Soon he orders a second one. Again she smiles as she brings him the beer, and strikes up a conversation: “What’s your name?” “Roland.” “From where?” “Germany.” She begins to dance at a pole. Roland is thrilled. Man, she looks great, and the way she moves… Wow. She comes back to the bar and stands facing Roland. “You nice eyes.” Roland feels flattered and raises his glass in a toast. Soon he feels tired from the long flight and heads back to his hotel. He says goodbye to her. She turns down the corners of her mouth. “Why you go? You come back tomorrow?” Of course he intends to come back, but he knows the score… all just prostitutes. Most probably she asks everyone if he’ll come back. The next evening Roland goes back to the bar. She speaks to him straight away. At first it plays out just like the day before, until she gets a board game from behind the bar. “You want play?” She explains the rules to him. They play for a long time, with much laughter; drinks flow for both of them. The woman repeatedly  comments on Roland’s attractiveness; her hands touch his and she strokes his head or pinches his cheek when he loses. This gives Roland butterflies in his stomach every time. He thinks, “Oh man, this doesn’t happen every day. I could fall for her right away … Boy, that hasn’t happened for a long time … But I can’t imagine she’s interested in me. Or is she? She’s flirting with me, after all. It is midnight.” She asks him: “You want eat with me?” Roland’s pulse quickens. They leave the bar; she takes him by the hand, and they stroll into a nearby restaurant. In the restaurant she sits very close to Roland, places her hand on his thigh and pats his belly. Roland is simply thrilled and can hardly believe it. Roland buys her dinner. They

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spend the night together and make arrangements to meet in the bar again the following evening. “Boy, how lucky I am”, Roland thinks. She didn’t ask for money for the night; she just needed a little money to pay for medicines. Which makes sense—you can’t earn much in a bar like that. In any case, she doesn’t seem to be a hooker, he thinks. What does this sketch illustrate? After just a short time, the man is approached and showered with flattery by a young woman whom he perceives as good-looking and attractive, quickly causing feeling towards her. Although he is aware of the presence of sex workers in the bar scene and initially interprets the woman’s approach as an interaction of a prostitute with a potential punter, in the course of the encounter he wonders whether she might in fact be interested in him as a man. The woman’s behaviour, which he interprets as flirtation, the activities which are not directly focused on sexual services, and the monetary transfer not related to the night they spent together, convince him that most likely she is not a sex worker.  he Bar Districts: A Space of Experiencing Intimate Relationships T Our empirical data show that this scenario reflects key experiences of men in the bar districts. To explain these experiences, the specific characteristics of these spaces play an important role. The bar districts and the pronounced presence of young, Thai women offer a low-threshold access for coming into contact with women. This is evident, for example, in the fact that many young Thai women are present in the succession of bars open to the street, initiating conversation with men who pass by or enter the bar. This conversation need not necessarily appear as an approach to sell sex. For example, the interaction around games which was described in the above sketch is a typical entertainment and interaction practice of the women. These are often perceived by men as encounters which are not directly related to selling sex. At the same time, these games provide a framework for encounters in which flirtation can take place, and which can thus be fitted into typical patterns of initiating a relationship. Flattery of the men in different forms, repeated comments about their attractiveness, concern for their well-being, and the constantly reiterated desire to see them again soon prove to be recurrent interaction elements initiated by the women. The specific characteristics of the bar district field, which targets farangs, blur the boundaries between paid-for sex and flirtation, and between

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paid-for sex and the initiation of a (longer-term) emotionally involved romantic partnership. In this regard, the transfer of money also plays an important role. In contrast to procedures in brothels in which the price is agreed to in advance and payment made immediately after sexual services, the amount exchanged in the bar districts is often negotiable and not necessarily agreed upon in advance. Sometimes it is also understood, as described in the above sketch, as a financial contribution for the purchase of particular goods. This deviation in payment procedures can lead to men feeling less like paying clients (Ervik, 2013). The attentions of and interactions with younger women who are not unequivocally understood as approach to sell sex rank among the men’s significant experiences and lay the foundation on which feelings for the woman often develop rapidly. In contrast to the men’s experiences in their countries of origin, migration to Thailand makes establishing an intimate relationship easy. What is more, whereas in Europe the problem was to find a woman at all, Thailand makes it possible—as one interviewee put it—“to go home with the most beautiful woman every night.” This appears to shift men’s perception of their own attractiveness to women. Special importance attaches to the young-looking appearance of these women, who are described by most interviewees as ideally feminine and especially beautiful, small and slender. In terms of character and behaviour towards the men, for the most part the women are presented as loving, caring and attentive. These are qualities which often match the men’s gender preferences and which they often find wanting in the “feminist” European woman who functions as an antithesis. This is reflected in statements like “European women are quite demanding and not so good. Asian women are different; above all they take better care of you” or “Emancipation is OK for me but not in my house. Here you still can find real women.” These new opportunities and new experiences are closely linked to positive effects on the men. Statements like “if you have a young, good-­ looking woman at your side you just feel better” or “That is status, you’re still someone. Potency!” run like a thread through our interviews. It is these experiences that fascinate men so much. As illustrated in the sketch, almost all the men in our empirical data testify to a form of enchantment by the Thai women. As an interim finding, it can thus be said that migration of older men to Thailand entails a shift in position in the field of bar districts, which—in

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comparison with the men’s countries of origin—affords extended scope for experiencing intimate and emotional relationships with women. The experience of exerting an attractive and appealing effect on women and the sense of being endowed with greater chances of interacting with a younger, subjectively perceived as a good-looking woman and developing a partnership with her, are at the core of their initial experiences. The men’s status changes positively for them, precisely because, from their point of view, the developing relationships are not, in most cases, interpreted as interactions with a prostitute. It indicates the interconnectedness between the financial, the symbolic and the social capital in this context, which evokes the men’s shift in position. Farangs, identifiable by physiognomic features, are positioned in this field as desirable men due to their assumed high financial resources in relation to the Thai average income. Financial capital goes hand in hand with the men’s attractiveness as potential partners. For the men, this results in improved opportunities to engage in intimate relationship with women and, what is more, with women whom the men find especially attractive. To borrow Bourdieu’s words, their participation in the network of social relationships of mutual knowing and recognition expands (Bourdieu, 1984).  he Shift in Position and Its Risks T However, this shift in position is ambivalent, as it involves potential risks for the men, which can lead to substantial strains on their life situation as well as on their relationships with their Thai partners. A prominent factor in this regard is the role of money in their relationships with Thai women. The theme of money played a major role in all the interviews, usually mentioned largely unprompted at the very start of the interview, even though the narrative-generating introductory question was aimed at their migration experiences generally. Throughout, our data show the unidirectional and at times large monetary transfers from the men to the women. In addition to paying their common living expenses, the men generally provide the women with a monthly amount for personal spending. Moreover, situations consistently occurred that resulted in the men giving the women further sums of money. Often this is occasioned by poverty-induced crisis situations in the women’s families. The interviewees repeatedly referred to monetary transfers, which were due to the lack of financial resources of the partner’s family to pay, for example, for urgent medical treatments, important equipment to work their land or essential repairs to their houses. The women’s material desires, such as a car or jewellery, or the desire for a

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house of their own or for their families in the region of origin, can also play a role. The following case of 64-year-old Theo Meier is used to illustrate these processes and the consequences that can result for men’s life situation. Theo has lived in Thailand for six years and has been married to a 43-yearold Thai woman for two years. The interview is framed by his now precarious financial situation, which is largely caused by the high flows of money to his wife. Right at the start of the interview, when he was asked very generally about his experiences of migrating to Thailand, Theo refers to “providing money” to his wife as “extremely central”. He gives his wife a fixed monthly amount of 25,000 baht (approx. 600 euros). He justifies this monetary transfer in terms of the woman’s obligation to support her family. Theo Meier talks about many situations which lead to additional monetary transfers to his wife. These are necessitated particularly by situations in which his wife demands additional money from him due to (drastic) family crises, usually poverty-induced, like the lack of financial resources for urgent medical treatment, the purchase or repair of appliances or the purchase of livestock for the parents’ farm. Theo spells out the consequences of not giving his wife the (additional) sums of money: she would react very “emotionally” and “aggressively”, culminating in “vicious arguments”, from which he suffers greatly. Therefore, he concedes that by keeping up the transfers to his wife he will probably “fare best”. Due to the monetary transfers to his wife, Theo now barely has any financial reserves to fall back on, and his pension only just barely suffices to meet everyday costs and living expenses. Besides the high financial pressures, Theo also describes the ensuing severe emotional and health strains. He cites “tension” as the “main theme” of his current life situation, which he sees strongly associated with his currently very beleaguered health status. His doctor confirmed to him the relation  between these problems and, importantly, outlined the negative impacts of stress on his illnesses. Furthermore, because he does not have health insurance in Thailand,6 treatment options for his illnesses are constrained by his lack of financial resources. He also explains that the strain he is under due to high monetary transfers and the resulting arguments with his wife are having considerable impacts on his relationship with her. He says that as a result of “so much stress”, “being permanently under pressure” and “all these emotions and outbursts” he hardly has any feelings for his wife anymore. All

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the strife is consuming so much energy that “there is no room any more for feelings”. He sees few possible alternatives to his current life situation. He does not see separation from his wife as a possibility, as he does not want to live alone. Nor does he see searching for a new partner as much of an option, for in comparison to other Thai women, his wife is still “the best”. Returning to Switzerland is not an option for him either, due to the high costs of living there. Finally, he does not see a job for his wife as a possibility for relieving his financial plight. Here he mentions the low earnings, “which would be gone in no time anyway”.  nidirectional Monetary Transfers Within the Relationships U The monetary transfers, which often go hand in hand with strained finances for the men, are evident in almost all interviews and are often mentioned as an incontrovertible matter of fact. The reasons for these monetary transfers are rooted in complex processes and structures. A significant factor, however, is the inherent material inequality of these relationships. To a great extent, the monetary transfers are based on the inequality between the two partners’ financial resources and the men’s entanglement with the low financial resources of the women, and often also of their families. This is particularly the case when men’s feelings of compassion play a role through being emotionally involved with the partner’s family. For example, one of our interviewees says: “You get involved if you’re in a close relationship, and so you’re into the whole family tragedy, this one’s dying and that one’s sick, if you have an ounce of feeling (…). I don’t want to have to see the daily misery anymore and that’s why I just give more.” Also significant are specific interpretations that men develop about relationships between “Thai women” and “Westerners”, whereby monetary transfers to Thai women and at times to their families are normalised and considered rather incontrovertible. Statements like “that’s how it works here, you have to provide for her and for the family as well”, or Thai women “simply see economic support as a sign of love” testify to this. Specific relationship structures also play a part, particularly when—as in the case of Theo—they are influenced by the man’s feelings of dependency on the woman or by fear of losing the partner. This instils the relationships with a tension which raises the following question: in the context of these relationships characterised by unequal financial resources and the normalisation of monetary transfers, how can monetary transfers be managed so that they can be provided without exceeding the available

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resources? This tension is structurally embedded in the relationships and must be negotiated and coped with in every relationship. If a balance between the monetary transfers and the available resources cannot be established, this can lead to consequences illustrated by the example of Theo. Such a balance can be established if, from the men’s viewpoint, they can successfully maintain boundaries with respect to demands for monetary transfers or other goods. Nevertheless, our data show that the theme of money and disagreements about monetary transfers often persists even in long relationships and has to be negotiated and dealt with continuously. The apparent compatibility, as described above, between the needs and desires of Thai women and German-speaking older men thus turns out to be embedded into a complex set of problems. The various processes prompting the financial flows to the women can place strains on the men’s financial situation, sometimes to the point of existential hardship, the very plight they intended to overcome by leaving their countries of origin. The emotional strains and disappointments resulting from money issues are often present in the narrations about the current or past partnerships.

Conclusion With reference to Pierre Bourdieu’s works on the relational positions of actors in social fields and their capital endowments, the men’s experiences can be explained in terms of a shift in position that they undergo in the field that unfolds between farangs and Thai women in the bar districts in Thailand. In contrast to the men’s experiences in German-speaking countries, which are characterised by difficulties to find a partner in old age, in this field they are positioned as sexually desirable men and sought-after partners for long-term relationships. This shift in position is associated with greater chances of intimate interactions with younger, subjectively considered good-looking women and/or developing a partnership with them. Due to the disparity in living costs between German-speaking countries and Thailand, the men’s incomes are upgraded in value and are above the average Thai earnings. For the women, men’s relative higher income represents a potential way out of their life situation characterised by poverty through long-term relationships with farangs. Because the relationships are characterised by unequal financial resources, in many cases entailing relations of obligation or the normalisation of monetary transfers to the women, this positive position shift by the men is structurally

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pervaded with a tension that can potentially render the men vulnerable when it is not possible to reach a balance between the available financial resources and the monetary transfers. It is this potentially vulnerable position, identified in the studies that draw attention to the coexistence of relative privilege and precarity in the context of retirement migration (see also Botterill, 2017), that constitutes a core element of the men’s experiences in the context of intimate relationships in Thailand. Along with these processes, however, questions are also raised which go beyond the actor level. The men’s expanded scope for sexual, intimate and affective experiences in Thailand in comparison to their countries of origin is closely bound to the emotional and intimate work that has been released on a massive scale by the material precarity of the women. In other words, the men’s sexual and emotional limitations experienced in the countries of origin are relocated to Thailand, where they are addressed by using global inequality and the women’s emotional and intimate work unleashed by poverty. These developments point out the increasing global interconnectedness of intimacy and partnership in old age in relatively affluent countries and interrelate age and ageing in the “Western” world with questions of global inequalities.

Notes 1. Geographically research has paid particular attention to the migration of older people from Northern and Central European countries to the Mediterranean region, in particular to Spain (Casado-Diaz et  al., 2004; Gavanas, 2017; Gustafson, 2008; Hall & Hardill, 2016; King et al., 2000; Oliver, 2007; O’Reilly, 2000). More recently, research has paid some attention to migration processes in old age to countries that make up the “global South”, including countries located in Southeast Asia (Botterill, 2017; Green, 2013; Howard, 2008; Sunanta, 2014; Toyota & Thang, 2017; Toyota & Xiang, 2012) and South and Central America (Benson & O’Reilly, 2018; Hayes, 2018). However, to date these countries play a rather marginal role in retirement migration research. 2. Maher and Lafferty (2014, 427) point out that the theme of “masculinity” in the context of migration has been analysed predominantly with reference to men who migrate from the “South” to “the North”, or to so-called expats. 3. “Farang” is a Thai word for people who come from “the West”. The term is also in frequent use in our field of study. Not only Thais, but also German-­ speaking people use it frequently in their self-description, for differentiation from Thais.

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4. Even though the study samples included older men the studies themselves were not explicitly using an old-age perspective. 5. This connects to many studies that challenge the supposed contradiction between money and love or economy and intimacy (Zelizer, 2005). Zelizer shows in her prominent study how economy and intimacy or money and care are interwoven in personal and intimate relationships, and how money in no way “corrupts” these relationships. Especially in studies on prostitution or sex tourism, which for a long time only focused on the exchange of money for sex, affective dimensions were often ignored or were met with mistrust (cf. Cabezas, 2011). Meanwhile studies show that those relationships are more complex. For example, in her study of sex tourism on Cuba and the Dominican Republic, Cabezas (2011) shows that intimacy and affectivity on the one hand and sex tourism on the other are by no means a contradiction; sex tourism can also lead to new forms of solidarity, affection and love and community (also Brennan, 2004). 6. A large number of retirement migrants in Thailand, including those in our sample, do not have a health insurance. Due to the associated burdens on the Thai health care system, the Thai government is currently discussing the introduction of obligatory health insurance for persons who stay in Thailand for more than one year (WR, 2019).

References Angeles, L., & Sunanta, S. (2009). Demanding Daughter Duty. Gender, Community, Village. Transformation and Transnational Marriages in Northeast Thailand. Critical Asian Studies, 41(4), 549–574. Bender, D., Hollstein, T., & Schweppe, C. (2018a). Old Age Facilities for German-­ Speaking People in Thailand—A New Facet of International Migration in Old Age. Journal for Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46, 1497–1512. Bender, D., Hollstein, T., & Schweppe, C. (2018b). International Retirement Migration Revisited: From Amenity Seeking to Precarity Migration? Transnational Social Review. A Social Work Journal, 8(1), 98–102. Benson, M. (2014). Negotiating Privilege in and Through Lifestyle Migration. In M.  Benson & N.  Osbaldiston (Eds.), Understanding Lifestyle Migration. Theoretical Approaches to Migration and the Quest for a Better Way of Life (pp. 47–68). Palgrave Macmillan. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2009). Migration and the Search for a Better Way of Life: A Critical Exploration of Lifestyle Migration. The Sociological Review, 57(4), 608–625. Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2016). From Lifestyle Migration to Lifestyle in Migration: Categories, Concepts and Ways of Thinking. Migration Studies, 4(1), 20–37.

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Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2018). Lifestyle Migration and Colonial Traces in Malaysia and Panama. Palgrave Macmillan. Botterill, K. (2017). Discordant Lifestyle Mobilities in East Asia: Privilege and Precarity of British Retirement in Thailand. Population, Space and Place, 23(5), e2011. Bourdieu, P. (1984). Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Harvard University Press. Breidenstein, G., Hirschauer, S., Kalthoff, H., & Nieswand, B. (2015). Ethnografie. Die Praxis der Feldforschung. UTB. Brennan, D. (2004). What’s Love Got to Do with It? Transnational Desires and Sex Tourism in the Dominican Republic. Duke University Press. Cabezas, A. L. (2011). Intimate Encounters: Affective Economies in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies, 91, 3–14. Casado-Díaz, M.  A., Kaiser, C., & Warnes, A.  M. (2004). Northern European Retired Residents in Nine Southern European Areas: Characteristics, Motivations and Adjustment. Ageing and Society, 24, 353–381. Cohen, E. (1993). Open-Ended Prostitution as a Skilful Game of Luck: Opportunity, Risk and Security Among Tourist-Oriented Prostitutes in a Bangkok Soi. In M. Hitchcock, V. T. King, & M. Parnwell (Eds.), Tourism in Southeast Asia (pp. 155–178). Routledge. Cohen, E. (2003). Transnational Marriage in Thailand: The Dynamics of Extreme Heterogamy. In T.  G. Bauer & B.  McKercher (Eds.), Sex and Tourism (pp. 57–81). Haworth Hospitality Press. Croucher, S. (2012). Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality? Societies, 2, 1–13. Davidson, J. O., & Taylor, J. S. (1999). Fantasy Islands. Exploring the Demand for Sex Tourism. In K.  Kempadoo (Ed.), Sun, Sex and Gold (pp.  37–54). Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. Ervik, K. (2013). The Superior Thai-Western Relationship: A Culturally Negotiated Re-embedding Practice. In E.  Braten (Ed.), Embedded Entrepreneurship. Market, Culture and Micro-Business in Insular Southeast Asia (pp. 125–146). Brill. Gavanas, A. (2017). Swedish Retirement Migrant Communities in Spain: Privatization, Informalization and Moral Economy Filling Transnational Care Gaps. Nordic Journal of Migration Research, 7(3), 165–171. Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine. Green, P. (2013). Contested Realities and Economic Circumstances: British Later-­ Life Migrants in Malaysia. In M.  Janoschka & H.  Haas (Eds.), Contested Spatialities, Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism (pp.  145–157). Routledge.

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Groes, C., & Fernandez, N.  T. (2018). Intimate Mobilities. Sexual Economies, Marriage and Migration in a Disparate World. Berghahn. Gustafson, P. (2008). Transnationalism in Retirement Migration: The Case of North European Retirees in Spain. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 31(3), 451–475. Hall, K., & Hardill, I. (2016). Retirement Migration, the ‘Other’ Story: Caring for Frail Elderly British Citizens in Spain. Ageing and Society, 36, 562–585. Hayes, M. (2018). Gringolandia. Lifestyle Migration Under Late Capitalism. University of Minnesota Press. Howard, R.  W. (2008). Western Retirees in Thailand: Motives, Experiences, Wellbeing, Assimilation and Future Needs. Aging & Society, 28, 145–136. Husa, K., Vielhaber, C., Jöstl, J., Veress, K., & Wieser, B. (2014). Searching for Paradise? International Retirement Migration to Thailand—A Case Study of Hua Hin and Cha-am. In K.  Husa, A.  Trupp, & H.  Wohlschlägl (Eds.), Southeast Asian Mobility Transitions: Issues and Trends in Migration and Tourism (Edition: Abhandlungen zur Geographie und Regionalforschung, 19) (pp. 137–167). University of Vienna. Jaisuekun, K., & Sunanta, S. (2016). Lifestyle Migration in Thailand: A Case Study of German Migrants in Pattaya. Thammasat Review, 19(2), 89–103. King, R., Warnes, T., & Williams, A. (2000). Sunset Lives: British Retirement Migration to the Mediterranean. Berg. Lapanun, P. (2012). It’s Not Just About Money: Transnational Marriages of Isan Women. Journal of Mekong Societies, 8(3), 1–28. Lapanun, P. (2018). Masculinity, Marriage and Migration. Farang Migrant Men in Thailand. Asian Journal of Social Science, 46, 111–131. Maher, K., & Lafferty, M. (2014). White Migrant Masculinities in Thailand and the Paradoxes of Western Privilege. Social & Cultural Geography, 15(4), 427–448. Mai, N., & King, R. (2009). Love, Sexuality and Migration. Mapping the Issue(s). Mobilities, 4(3), 295–307. O’Reilly, K. (2000). The British on the Costa del Sol: Transnational Identities and Local Communities. Routledge. O’Reilly, K. (2007). Intra-European Migration and the Mobility-Enclosure Dialectic. Sociology, 41(2), 277–293. Oliver, C. (2007). Retirement Migration: Paradoxes of Ageing. Routledge. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1996). Grounded Theory: Grundlagen Qualitativer Sozialforschung. Beltz. Sunanta, S. (2014). Thailand and the Global Intimate: Transnational Marriages, Health Tourism and Retirement Migration. MMG Working Paper 14(02). Retrieved August 15, 2019, from http://www.mmg.mpg.de/fileadmin/user_ upload/documents/wp/WP_14-­02_Sunanta%20Thailand%20and%20the%20 Global%20Intimate.pdf

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Sunanta, S., & Angeles, L. (2012). From Rural Life to Transnational Wife: Agrarian Transition, Gender Mobility, and Intimate Globalization in Transnational Marriages in Northeast Thailand. Gender Place and Culture—A Journal of Feminist Geography, 20(6), 1–19. Thompson, E. C., Kitiarsa, P., & Smutkupt, S. (2016). From Sex Tourist to Son-­ in-­Law Emergent Masculinities and Transient Subjectivities of Farang Men in Thailand. Current Anthropology, 57(1), 53–71. Toyota, M., & Thang, L.  L. (2017). Transnational Retirement Mobility as Processes of Identity Negotiation: The Case of Japanese in South-East Asia. Identities, 24(5), 552–572. Toyota, M., & Xiang, B. (2012). The Emerging Transnational ‘Retirement Industry’ in Southeast Asia. The International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 32(11/12), 708–719. Veress, K. (2009). Vom Sex-Touristen zum ‚Strandpensionisten’?—Eine Fallstudie zur männlichen Altersmigration nach Thailand am Beispiel von Hua Hin und Cha-am. Retrieved August 15, 2019, from http://othes.univie.ac. at/4983/1/2009-­05-­10_0306543.pdf WR (Westfälische Rundschau). (2019): Thailand: Dauergäste müssen Krankenversicherung vorweisen. Retrieved August 15, 2019, from https:// www.wr.de/reise/thailand-­d auergaeste-­m uessen-­k rankenversicherung-­ vorweisen-­id217924535.html Zelizer, V. A. (2005). The Purchase of Intimacy. Princeton University Press.

CHAPTER 7

Transnational Social Relationships of International Retirement Migrants in Morocco: A Typology Claudio Bolzman, Tineke Fokkema, and Danique van Dalen

Introduction The aim of this chapter is to explore the social relationships of Swiss, Dutch and Belgian international retirement migrants (IRMs) in Morocco. More specifically, we analyze the social characteristics of people they have

C. Bolzman Department of Social Work, University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Western Switzerland, Geneva, Switzerland e-mail: [email protected] T. Fokkema (*) Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute (NIDI)-KNAW/University of Groningen, The Hague, The Netherlands Department of Public Administration and Sociology, Erasmus School of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Erasmus University Rotterdam, Rotterdam, The Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_7

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contact with, in Morocco and in the country of origin, as well as the nature of these contacts. Do their social relationships consist mainly of family members and friends left behind, only of IRMs, or do they also include native Moroccans? In other words, are IRMs strongly oriented toward new contacts in the local context or do they hold on to their existing relationships in the country of origin? What kinds of relationships do they establish with these people? Which factors allow elaboration of a typology of IRMs relationships and interactions? The phenomenon of international retirement migration from Global North to Global South is gaining relevance (Hayes, 2014). New mobility and migratory patterns on a worldwide scale, including new tourist, residential and care destinations, are emerging (Bantman-Masum, 2015; Benson, 2013; Botterill, 2017; Horn et al., 2016; Lardiès Bosque et al., 2016; Ono, 2015). Morocco is one of these new geographical destinations in Northern Africa (Berriane et al., 2015). In particular Marrakech, followed by Agadir and Essaouira, attract the highest numbers of foreign tourists (Terrazzoni, 2015), some of whom settle in the country and become IRMs (Bousta, 2007; Therrien & Pellegrini, 2015). They often buy a riad or dar (traditional urban house) in the old towns of tourist cities, and some transform it into a guesthouse for rent. In the medina (old city) of Marrakech, for instance, more than 2500 riads are owned by foreigners from all over the world (Escher & Petermann, 2014). Of all immigrants living in Morocco, 21% come from Western countries, mostly from Europe (OCDE, 2017). The handful of studies on IRMs in Morocco, however, have primarily focused on French pensioners (Terrazzoni, 2015; Therrien & Pellegrini, 2015). This is not surprising: the majority of Europeans residing in Morocco are from France, given the historical and current economic and institutional relations linking the two countries (Berriane et al., 2015; Terrazzoni, 2015). We focus on IRMs of three less-studied nationals from smaller European countries (Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium), whose presence in Morocco is a new social phenomenon and can thus bring new insights into IRMs realities. Thanks

D. van Dalen Department of Political and Social Sciences, Institute of Sociology, Freie Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany e-mail: [email protected]

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to direct low-cost flights from the main airports in the three countries to Marrakech and Agadir, and because French is a widely spoken language in tourist areas, Morocco has become an important tourist destination for these Europeans. This trend—as shown by previous studies (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009a; Williams et al., 2000)—has probably contributed to the subsequent settlement of these specific nationals (Bolzman et al., 2021; Guissé & Bolzman, 2014; Repetti & Bolzman, 2020).1 The interest in the involvement of IRMs in maintaining contact with family and friends in the country of origin appears to be relatively recent. While there are many studies on intergenerational relationships across borders in transnational families (Baldassar & Merla, 2014; Baykara-­ Krumme & Fokkema, 2019; Bryceson, 2019; Bryceson & Vuorela, 2007; Wall & Bolzman, 2014), this is less the case for studies on IRMs (with some notable exceptions, e.g., Lardiès Bosque et  al., 2016). Our study seeks to go deeper into this issue for IRMs moving beyond the European context. We will also analyze the social relationships they develop in the new destination, with other IRMs too but in particular with the local population, in a context of post-colonial imprints as well as of economic asymmetry between them and most locals. We begin with a presentation of the theoretical framework we used to analyze the social relationships of European IRMs in Morocco and in their country of origin. Next, we introduce our research design. The results are presented through a typology that allows identification of four IRMs’ types of social relationships and interactions. We conclude with a summary of our main findings in relation to our theoretical framework, discussing their implications for future research on IRMs.

Theoretical Framework In this study, we adopt an approach that combines the transnational perspective with lifestyle migration, paying particular attention to social relationships. The transnational perspective, developed in the early 1990s, criticizes methodological nationalism (Wimmer & Glick-Schiller, 2002), which limits and naturalizes the analysis of social processes within a single state. Human mobility and communication across state borders, connecting physical, social, economic and political spaces, have accelerated since the late twentieth century. This goes along with globalization processes in different areas and in particular with the development of new technologies like expanded air transportation and the introduction and development of

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cell phones, satellite technology and the internet (Mazzucato, 2008), plus the more recent growth of social media. Everyone today—not only migrants—can be simultaneously engaged in multiple countries regardless of their geographic location (Portes, 1996; Pries, 2001). In this new context, a growing number of people elaborate ways of life across national borders. They may live their lives in more than one country by developing forms of geographical mobility between them and/or by establishing frequent forms of virtual communication with others living abroad (Bolzman & Bridji, 2019; Bolzman et  al., 2017; Ciobanu & Bolzman, 2019). They may also live in a single country most of the time, yet also keep remote emotional and social links as well as resources in their country of origin and also other countries (Baldassar & Merla, 2014; Wall & Bolzman, 2014). However, the kinds and intensity of transnational practices, including social relationships, differ across individuals (Ciobanu & Ludwig-Demm, 2020; Hunter, 2019). International retirement migration is a concept used to describe late-in-­ life migration to other countries covering a wide range of reasons to migrate (King et al., 2021; Sunil et al., 2007), such as looking for amenities (Casado-Díaz et al., 2004; King et al., 2000), getting closer to family (Bolzman et al., 2008) or looking for elder care facilities abroad (Horn et al., 2016). Here we will focus on lifestyle migration or amenity migration. Most lifestyle migrants move from countries or regions that are more affluent to relatively cheaper destinations (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009a, 2009b; Sunil et al., 2007). Hence compared to local populations in their places of settlement, they enjoy better material living conditions and relative privilege (Benson, 2013), even though they are not necessarily rich and sometimes move to escape precariousness in their country of origin (Bolzman et  al., 2021; Botterill, 2017; Repetti & Bolzman, 2020). Lifestyle migrants are in search of a better quality of life. While quality of life covers a broad spectrum of life aspects, previous lifestyle migration studies predominantly underline the advantages of living in a sunny climate and nice landscapes, and a more quiet way of life free from the stress they experience in their home countries (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009b). However, little is known about the social relationships of lifestyle migrants and the kinds of interactions they establish with people they meet or already know. Some studies point out that they move to countries where they already have some social contacts (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009a; Casado-Díaz et al., 2004; Williams et al., 2000) and that they give importance to establishing new friendships (Sampaio, 2017). But what is the

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nature of these links: do they move to places where they already have strong ties, like family or close friends, or rather to places where they have weak ties, that is, only acquaintances (Granovetter, 1973)? Indeed, although they often migrate to places where other compatriots or Europeans have settled, maybe they do not have previous close relationships with them or even know them personally, and are therefore part of what Thomas Faist (1997) defines as their “imagined community”, which would mean that they are not yet socially embedded. Regarding the forms of social interactions in place, the literature on lifestyle migrants from Northern to Southern Europe shows that contact with the local population is rather distant and linked to economic or service relationships (Gustafson, 2008; O’Reilley, 2009). In fact, these migrants tend to seek the company of compatriots or other European migrants who share the same values (Casado-Díaz, 2009; Oliver, 2008; O’Reilley, 2009). Can similar trends be observed in a country outside Europe like Morocco, where retiree enclaves are less important but inequalities of income between older lifestyle migrants and most of the local population are even wider? On the other hand, the literature on older Northern European lifestyle migrants in Southern Europe shows that they maintain transnational links with their families and friends in the country of origin, through reciprocal visits or remote communication (Casado-Díaz, 2009; Gustafson, 2008). Little is known about the nature of these interactions though. Are new forms of “distant intimacy” (Bolzman et al., 2008) and reciprocal support developing, or are relationships disintegrating and tensions appearing? It would therefore be insightful to examine the development of older lifestyle migrants’ social relationships after a few years of residence in Morocco. This topic has been rather neglected by scholars who do not explore it comprehensively by looking at different relationships (with locals, with other Europeans, with left-behind family and friends) and interactions (e.g., egalitarian or hierarchical, trustful or mistrustful, unidimensional or multidimensional) as well as at the factors that influence these relationships. These are the main questions we aim to explore more in detail.

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Methodology Our empirical data was gathered through two qualitative research studies using biographical interviews: one by a Swiss research team from December 2014 to May 2016 among French- and German-speaking Swiss IRMs in Essaouira and the Marrakech area, the other by a Dutch research team from September 2016 to March 2017 among Dutch and Flemish older adults in Essaouira, the Agadir and Marrakech areas, and a small village in southeastern Morocco2. The two studies had a similar focus—migrants who arrived at age 50 and older and live in Morocco3—and a coordinated methodology. The two teams circulated their interview guides and the translated interviews and exchanged systematically on the content analysis of the interviews by establishing a common thematic guide and discussing possible empirical data interpretations. The empirical data of this chapter comes from interviewees’ biographical stories. These stories cover significant periods of the person’s adult life (Bertaux & Kohli, 1984; Rosenthal, 1993), particularly the years prior to migration and life in Morocco. The focus lies mainly on these periods because we introduced ourselves as researchers studying IRMs’ decisions to move to Morocco and ways of life there. Interviewees were invited to speak freely about their migration story while we kept in mind a set of questions, which were built gradually, over the course of the interviews, in order to allow subsequent comparisons. More precisely, the main dimensions of the interviewing guide were as follows: main motivations for moving to Morocco; reason for settling in that particular locality; professional and social situation in the home country before coming to Morocco; economic situation in Morocco; principal sources of income; health situation and access to health services; perception of Moroccan culture; social relationships and interactions; and sociodemographic data. With regard to social relationships and interactions, we asked the interviewees if they already knew someone or had family and friends in Morocco before moving there, and about new friendships in Morocco, their contacts with locals or other migrants, the nature of their various contacts in Morocco, their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with these contacts, and the relationships with family and friends in their country of origin and elsewhere. Interviewees were contacted via the Swiss Consulate in Rabat, websites with information on Dutch and Flemish individuals working in the Moroccan tourism industry (e.g., riad owners), the chairman of a former Dutch-speaking club in Morocco, interpersonal contacts and social media

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(two Facebook groups of Swiss expatriates in Morocco). Snowball techniques allowed us to expand the list of interviewees and to obtain a diversified sample. Overall, we conducted 18 biographical interviews: 8 with Swiss nationals, 8 with Dutch nationals and 2 with Flemish Belgians.4 Most were individual interviews, but in four cases the interviews were carried out with couples. In these last cases the biographical interviews had the same orientation as the individual ones, but also considered the common projects and experiences of the couple. The sample includes 10 men and 12 women. Persons of Moroccan origin who had lived in Europe and later returned to their home country are not included in the sample. Table 7.1 presents the main characteristics of the interviewees, all of whom have been given a pseudonym. They range in age from 53 to 85 years. Several interviewees have been in Morocco for more than five years, others arrived recently. With one exception, all had paid jobs in different sectors before migrating to Morocco. Some are now retired while others still have a vibrant working life, all in the tourism sector with one exception. There is also variation in marital status: some are in a first or second marriage, others are single after a divorce or were never married. As we will explain later, all these characteristics have an impact on their social relationships with other IRMs, the local community and contacts in their country of origin. The languages of the interviews were French for the Swiss and Dutch for the Dutch and the Flemish. Interviews took place mostly at private homes and sometimes in public spaces like cafés and restaurants. All interviews were recorded with the permission of the participants. They lasted between one and three-and-a-half hours. All interviews were transcribed. We subsequently conducted a thematic content analysis based on the interview guide and many repeated readings of the interviews. The main dimensions retained for the analysis were thus the same as what appears in this guide, but for this chapter we focused chiefly on main motivations for moving to Morocco and on social relationships and interactions. The analysis led us to focus on how the motive of moving corresponds to the social relationships and interactions migrants have established. We acknowledge that the migration motive is not the only factor shaping interviewees’ social relationships and interactions. However, in the analysis below we point out similar kinds of social relationships and interactions of migrants that share closely related motives to move to Morocco in the first place.

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Table 7.1  Presentation of the interviewees: Switzerland, the Netherlands and Belgium Country Age of origin

Years in Profession Morocco before Morocco

Profession in Morocco

Marital status

M: 65, F: 63

5

Retired

Married

Participants NL 3+4: Floris (M) and Isabel (F) New affective relationship Participant Chfr 5: Charles (M)

M: 65, F: 63

7

M: Chemistry teacher, F: Never worked M: Chemist, F: Lawyer

Retired

Married

66

6

Secondary school teacher

Retired

Participant 6: Gilles (M)

Chfr

65

2

Manager

Participant 7: Serge (M)

Chfr

64

7

Chef

Affluent retirement Participants NL 1+2: Louis (M) and Olga (F)

Married (second marriage after divorce) to a Moroccan woman (living in Switzerland) Guest house Married owner (second marriage after divorce) to a Moroccan woman Studio flat Married owner (second marriage after divorce) to a Moroccan woman (continued)

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Table 7.1 (continued) Country Age of origin

Years in Profession Morocco before Morocco

BE

66

7

Manager in Riad owner international organizations

Married (second marriage after divorce) to a Moroccan man (much younger)

63

4

Post office worker

Retired

Divorced

67

5

Saleswoman

Retired

Participant 11: Helga (F) Participant 12: Eliane (F)

De 65 (lived in Ch) Chfr 63

2

Employed

Retired

Divorced (lives with a Moroccan man) Single, never married

5

Director of social institution

Retired

Participant 13: Laura (F)

NL

4

Civil servant

Participant 8: Marie (F)

Facing a turning point before migration Participant Chfr 9: Brigitte (F) Participant Chde 10: Rita (F)

Participant NL 14: Nora (F) Participants NL 15+16: Jan (M) and Berta (F)

61

Unspecified 11 (late 60s) M: 62, F: 58

6

Profession in Morocco

Marital status

Divorced (lives with a Moroccan man) Divorced

Tourism (incl. renting out part of her house to tourists) Teacher Retired Married to an Italian man Both worked No job Married in healthcare (second marriage)

(continued)

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Table 7.1 (continued)

Participants 17+18: Klaas (M) and Cora (F) New job or economic opportunity Participant 19: Frédéric (M) Participant 20: Peter (M) Participant 21: Bram (M) Participant 22: Simon (M)

Country Age of origin

Years in Profession Morocco before Morocco

Profession in Morocco

Marital status

NL

M: 85, F: 80

11

M: Project developer, F: Teacher

Retired

Married (second marriage)

Chfr

61

4

Businessman

NL

53

1

Businessman Divorced (lives with a Moroccan partner) Hotel Single, never manager married

NL

72

7

Various jobs in hotel business Worked in IT Riad owner

Divorced

BE

58

8

Worked on a ship

Single, never married

Riad owner

Results In the following we will present the four types of IRMs that we identified from our interviews: those who wanted to enjoy an affluent retirement in a warm country, those who settled in Morocco after finding a Moroccan partner, those who experienced a significant turning point before migration and those who wanted to change their working life. For each type we will discuss a number of specific background characteristics and their contact with locals in Morocco, other IRMs, and family and/or friends living in their country of origin. Affluent Retirement Those belonging to this first type are characterized by the fact that they are not sedentary and have already seen a fair amount of the world before

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deciding to move to Morocco. They would agree to live in many countries as long as the living conditions are in line with their expectations. For example, Dutch couple Floris and Isabel both lived in Morocco as children, and Olga, who now lives with her husband Louis, lived with a Moroccan man in Casablanca. They have also considered other countries (e.g., France, Italy, Canada) to enjoy their retirement, but partly because of low personnel costs they decided to move to Morocco instead. Isabel, who has friends in Italy, said, “Especially that gardener, because he has to maintain the garden every day. Then we found out … his [friend’s] gardener is ten times more expensive than ours.” Both couples live in a luxurious house at one of the golf resorts outside the busy center of Marrakech and employ several staff (cook, maid, gardener, private driver). Their contact with the local Moroccan community is very limited. Neither couple feels the need to immerse themselves in Moroccan culture. Their frequent dwelling in detached houses reinforces how they can live in their own bubble, without experiencing other elements of Moroccan culture. Even if they had the desire or need to integrate socially, they believe that some cultural and religious differences cannot be bridged. In the words of Floris: “You should not try to pretend that a turtle is a hare, a leopard or a tiger.” They praise the friendliness of Moroccans but at the same time do not completely trust them. Louise argued, “They are very jovial, hospitable. You can come and sleep at their place, they always have a meal for you. But there is always something behind it.” Talking about their religion, he even goes so far as saying: “The only thing in Islam and the entire Moroccan community that matters: first is money, second is sex. That’s what it’s all about.” Moreover, their encounters with Moroccans are often limited to their hired household staff (e.g., driver, gardener, chef) and are characterized by a very hierarchical communication and interaction style. Isabel elaborates on how their staff is always very loud by her standards: “Or the gardeners, there and one there, and they [scream]: Mohammed, Mohammed! … They have now understood that we do not appreciate that.” Furthermore, they consider that Moroccan employees are there mainly to serve them and that they should be happy with their jobs and the money they receive. In the above examples and in other situations portrayed by participants we can clearly see that they feel superior toward the local community. This relates back to the neocolonial setting and “master-servant relationship” that Escher and Petermann (2014) describe when studying lifestyle migrants in Marrakech.

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With regard to their contact with other IRMs, they have a big circle of friends that meet on a regular basis for lunch, a walk or playing golf. This is not surprising, as there is a relatively large group of foreigners to choose from in and around Marrakech. Louise says, “I have a lot of Belgian friends, we have a decent Belgian community here. We visit each other, we do a lot of things together. In the morning at 9 am … we usually take a walk. That takes an hour and varies from 2 to 10 people.” His wife, Olga, further explains that “If you want to live somewhere after retirement where the weather is good and especially where you can make friends easily, you have to go far enough from your own country. Otherwise you will get too many family visits.” The international community in Marrakech with likeminded people is so big that Floris even jokes that they meet almost too often: “A very large group of friends … And we all have quite a bit of time, eh, not busy working late at night. So the result is that basically if you’re not careful, you’ll end up having lunch and dinner with friends.” They regularly have family and friends who come to Morocco. It is not surprising that family and friends of the well-off Dutch couple Floris and Isabel love staying with them: their house is very big, nicely located, and every room has its own terrace so all guests can also enjoy privacy. Floris and Isabel do everything they can to make their stay pleasant, even arranging a private driver for them: “You are very welcome, everything is fine … if you want to go somewhere, to Jardin Majorelle [botanical garden and artist’s landscape garden in Marrakech], or you want to go to the mountains or whatever, this is the address of our extra driver.” Like the other couple, they visit family and friends in the country of origin less often than the other way around, although the situation has changed a little recently with the birth of their first grandchild. Isabel says, “For me it has also changed a little bit now because we now have a grandson. And now I actually want to see him every six weeks. And as long as I can commute every six weeks, that’s okay, if at some point that gets to be a bit much, yeah. … Anyway, by then, they can send him here, too.” New Affective Relationship The second type of migrant decides to move to Morocco and start a new life because they found a Moroccan partner. There is a clear gender difference. Most of the men, all Swiss, found their partner online—a partner much younger than themselves—and subsequently decided to move to

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Morocco for them. Marie, the only woman in this group, met her husband in Morocco while traveling. They moved to Belgium together but eventually moved back to Morocco because of the racism and discrimination he experienced. When we look at their contact with the local community, none of them claim to have close friendships with Moroccans. When asked if she has any Moroccan friends, Marie answers without hesitation: “No not really. I certainly don’t and Youssef has his brother and one friend and that’s it.” Gilles also mentions a Moroccan man he met, and they had gone out for coffee or drinks sometimes but in the end they lost contact: “I like to hang out with someone, pay for his coffee, it’s rewarding, but it doesn’t mean that I always have to pay for everything because I’m Swiss.” The fact that they are together with someone who is part of the local Moroccan community impacts their social relationships to some extent. Because they are in a relationship with a Moroccan, they would have to have some sort of contact with their partner’s family. This makes them more likely to get to know elements of Moroccan culture that other migrants might never get to learn. Gilles even lives with his sister-in-law and has a pretty close relationship with her. However, none of the participants speak about a very intense relationship with their spouse’s family, whom they meet occasionally. Charles says, “I get along well with my in-laws. They are Berbers. But they live far from here. So I meet them from time to time, for holidays or when my wife is visiting.” All Swiss men in this second type have relationships with other Swiss or European IRMs. Serge, who owns a riad with his wife, says he has some friends who are in situations similar to his: “Here I have a few friends, Swiss, French, most of them are also married to Moroccan women. We meet together for a beer, we talk about everything. It is important, it allows you to think of something other than work, it changes your ideas.” Gilles has one very good Swiss friend as well as some acquaintances. Charles’ wife now lives and works in Switzerland, but he is enjoying the company of other Swiss and European IRMs. Marie’s few friends are also predominantly European migrants: “And yes, friends yes. I talk regularly with a French-speaking Belgian. There is also a French woman who also has a riad, we see her regularly. We also have contact with a few couples, two from Germany, and a couple he is Flemish, but she speaks perfect French too.” About their relationship with friends and family in their countries of origin, all visit them several times a year. Marie still owns an apartment in

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Belgium and meets her family and friends two to three times a year. Family or friends do visit her, but mostly just once: “Some do come, but we usually go to them. … Some come here sometimes, just once. I mean, they don’t keep coming here, you cannot ask people to do that.” Although Charles’ and Gilles’ Moroccan partners live and work in Switzerland, their situations are very different. Gilles explains, “Now I’ll go to Switzerland by car to join her. I like to drive. I can do 2,000 km without a problem. She has been in no rush to come here on vacation since her mother died. She says she has fewer ties to her country. But it isn’t easy for me to travel to Switzerland. I am not rich, I have just enough to live on. If my golfing friends (from Switzerland) didn’t come, I couldn’t pay my travel to Switzerland. The round trip will cost me 1,000 francs (800 euros).” Charles has a better economic situation, and both him and his wife visit each other on a regular basis and call each other every day. He also travels to Switzerland to see his children because they “don’t like coming here too much, so I go visit them. I also kept a few friends, and this is an opportunity to see them again.” Facing a Turning Point Before Migration The migration motive of the IRMs in this group is different. And yet the common ground is that in contrast to the other three types, it has a rather negative undertone: they all went through a disrupting life event before migrating. Some experienced a divorce or got into financial trouble. Other IRMs decided to move to Morocco for health reasons. It seems that they really made an effort to integrate into society. Neighbors and shop owners know them rather well, and all have one or several local confidants. Rita, a Swiss divorcée that decided to move to Morocco for health reasons and met a Moroccan partner later, is well embedded in the community. She knows Moroccans she can count on and whom she trusts completely: “With some Moroccans, I have relationships of trust. There is the taxi driver. When I need him, he’s there. … His wife comes to do the cleaning. I have a garden here. There is a man who comes to do it. He’s already quite old. I don’t know exactly his age. We can leave him the keys and he takes care of the house and even the dog.” The Dutch couple Jan and Berta even call a Moroccan guy, Ahmed, their best friend, and Laura, also Dutch, calls Aisha her Moroccan sister. These people helped them a lot in their early days in Morocco, both with practical things and by showing them the way in society, and they can still count on their

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support. And there is reciprocity in their relationships: Jan and Berta often play games with Ahmed’s children, and Laura gives her B&B guests the tip to make use of Aisha’s paid services (e.g., going to a local hammam [public bath house], having a traditional dinner at her aunt’s house). Reciprocity can also be found in work-related relationships, like between the Dutch couple Klaas and Cora and their loyal long-time housekeeper Fatima. In return for her faithful service, they regularly give clothes to Fatima’s daughters and mediate problems between Fatima and her husband. Contrary to their relationships with locals, most of them do not have close contact with other IRMs. The Dutch couple Jan and Berta (enjoying retirement in a small village in southeast Morocco) say they do not meet any other IRMs, as does Laura (owner of a small bed and breakfast in Essaouira). The others in this group do know a few IRMs, but contact is very sporadic and superficial. As explained by Helga, a Swiss woman that was never married and decided to move to Morocco for health reasons: “I have some Swiss-German and German friends. We see each other on occasion in the tearoom, we talk about our lives here, we give each other tips, and that’s it. I like to take walks. From time to time we make plans with a friend to go together for a walk.” In terms of contact with people in their country of origin, they receive few or no visits. This is especially true for those who emigrated after divorce and there is little understanding from family and friends for their departure and those who were already at odds with the family. Jan and Berta explain that they do not really miss their family anymore: “We have not missed family for many years, because both sides have declared us to be black sheep. … So it’s one less thing to think about.” They do go back to the Netherlands twice a year, mainly for a health check, but also to visit some friends. Also for the others in this group, visiting family and friends is generally infrequent; instead, they try to maintain contact through social media. Helga does not visit her relatives and friends in Switzerland that often but tries to stay in touch: “I have a sister. We are in contact by Skype or by phone. I try to visit her once a year. I have some friends in Switzerland. We keep in touch, but we don’t really visit each other that much.” New Job or Economic Opportunity The four IRMs in the last group, all men, moved to Morocco for a new job or economic opportunity. Three are single (two divorcés, one never married) and one met his Moroccan partner while living in Morocco.

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Similar to the IRMs in the first group, they were not sedentary before moving to Morocco. They all have a very comfortable life in Morocco and a relatively good economic position. Three of them are not registered in Morocco and consequently have to leave the country every three months. They rarely interact with the local community. They would like to have more contact, but despite all kinds of attempts it is difficult to connect with the neighbors and eventually gain their trust. For example, Simon, a Flemish man who owns a riad in a poor neighborhood of Marrakech outside the medina, always brings chocolates back from Belgium for his neighbors, always tries to be friendly and patronizes the local stores. Like the others in this group, he acknowledges that Moroccans have a different culture and lifestyle, but is willing to adapt to it: “I am really doing my best, but it takes years to get accepted here. … It is a very poor neighborhood, one of the poorest of Marrakech. … You have to have respect for everything here. … It is their neighborhood, we are in their country. … They keep seeing us as tourists and always judge us by that. … There are many tourists who, how should I put it, look down on them.” The contact these IRMs have with Moroccans is work-related. Compared to the IRMs in the first group, this contact is less hierarchical, although they realize that they “shouldn’t be too naïve,” “have to remain vigilant” and sometimes must “take action against an employee.” Nevertheless, they usually feel sympathy for them and try to help them when problems arise. They all have little to no contact with other IRMs. Frédéric is the one in this group who has the most contact with likeminded Europeans, but not as intensively as the ones in the first two groups: “I have some European friends, especially French, because they are in the majority, but also some Swiss. We call each other, have lunch together, share an evening from time to time.” They all expressed a need for (more) contact with other fellows, but seem to be too busy with their own daily activities and live in neighborhoods where there are few other IRMs. Sometimes Simon goes to Agadir, his former hometown, to meet some European friends, and Bram had joined a Dutch club of IRMs mainly working in the tourism sector, but unfortunately that club is no longer active: “So, I went there, too. In the beginning we got together once every three months and we did so every time at someone’s house, so they came here, too. But last year was the last time.” Although family and friends from their country of origin come to meet them occasionally, they visit their loved ones much more often than the other way around. A reason for three of them is that they have to leave

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Morocco every three months because of their tourist visa. However, they also experience it as a very pleasant change—relaxing after working hard— and have the financial means to do so. Moreover, thanks to their reliable staff they can afford to leave their business with peace of mind. Frédéric even considers going to Switzerland to visit a friend as a perfectly normal weekend activity: “The advantage of living in Morocco, especially in Marrakech, is that you are very well connected to the rest of the world, and in particular to Europe. Thus I travel quite often on weekends to see my friends in Switzerland. … So it’s very nice. From time to time I also enjoy seeing my family when I’m in Switzerland.” Peter, a hotel manager that lived abroad before, says about his visits to the Netherlands: “I do take my time when I go to the Netherlands, I will be away for two, three weeks and then I like to see the people I want to see. And if there is a wedding or a funeral I’m there, too.”

Conclusion According to Gustafson (2009), older lifestyle migrants aim to have “the best of the two worlds,” combining a better quality of life in their new country of residence with maintaining significant social ties in their country of origin. Our chapter about the social relationships of Swiss, Dutch and Flemish IRMs in Morocco show that this is not feasible for all of them. Indeed, even though previous research already shows that lifestyle migration covers a great variety of people and situations (Huete et  al., 2013), little attention has been given on how migration motives and related factors (economic, social and cultural resources, turning points before migration) correspond to social relationships and interactions migrants have established. We have observed that IRMs from these three countries experienced different circumstances, needs and opportunities before migrating. They had also various preferences, expectations and time horizons that influenced their relationships and interactions, both in the new destination and in the country of origin. Although previous research observed the existence of distant relationships between lifestyle migrants and the local population (Gustafson, 2008; O’Reilley, 2009), our research allowed for a more nuanced picture. Indeed, the typology developed shows that social relationships can range from almost nonexistent or purely instrumental contacts to interactions with in-laws and neighbors, all the way to close friendships (for a summary of the four types, see Table  7.2). The forms of interactions range from

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Table 7.2  Typology of IRMs Relationship with

Locals

Affluent retirement

Limited to staff Many friends (hierarchical, mistrust) Regular contact Limited to Few friends family-in-law Regular contact Good neighborhood Few or no contact friends Few confidants Irregular contact Limited to staff Few or no (nonhierarchical, trust) friends Irregular contact

New affective relationship

Facing a turning point before migration

New job or economic opportunity

IRMs

Left behinds Receive more visitors than visit Visit more than receive visitors Few or no visitors Visit sometimes

Visit more than receive visitors

very hierarchical and mistrustful modalities to one-dimensional but less hierarchical relationships, and further to multidimensional, more egalitarian and trustful relationships. While scholars observe that lifestyle migrants maintain transnational social relationships with family and friends in the country of origin (Casado-Díaz, 2009; Gustafson, 2008; Lardiès Bosque et al., 2016), our typology shows that the intensity and quality of these relationships are very variable. Hence while some migrants visit and are visited by relatives at regular intervals, others limit themselves to visiting them, often at more distant intervals. In addition, while some migrants do not observe real changes in the quality of relationships with their relatives and friends in the country of origin, some underline a greater distance or complexity in these relationships. Most of the IRMs of our sample are “young older” and do not have significant health problems. However, aging processes can confront them with new difficulties linked to reduced mobility and loss of autonomy (Ahmed & Hall, 2016; Hall & Hardill, 2016). The characteristics of their social contacts and the interactions they develop with them can become a resource or a source of risk. Detailed knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of their social relationships can help get an idea of the possible support these can offer IRMs in the future. Affluent retirees could pay locals for their care, but reciprocal mistrust is not an ideal situation for a

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dependency situation. They still have the option of repatriating to their country of origin. Those married to a Moroccan expect to receive support from their spouse in the future, but their social network is relatively small, and they are at risk of isolation if their partner is not involved in their care. IRMs who experienced a significant turning point before migration seem to have a solid network of support among the local population, who could take care of them in case of necessity. However, their risk of social isolation is high if they return to their country of origin. IRMs who came to Morocco for work or business opportunities have a strong transnational network and it is difficult to predict where and how they will spend their late old age. Our study is exploratory. We obtained a picture of our interviewees’ social relationships at a specific moment in their lives, and these relationships can change over time. It would be interesting to pursue a longitudinal perspective to see how these people’s social ties will evolve in the near future.

Notes 1. Migration of Swiss, Dutch and Belgian nationals is still rather modest though. In 2017 there were 1495 Swiss living in Morocco, 342 (one fifth) older than 65 (OFS, 2017). The only figures we could find on Dutch and Belgians living in Morocco are from 2010. In that year, there were 1018 Belgians and 300 Dutch officially living in Morocco (Khachani, 2011). The number of Europeans living in Morocco is probably underestimated by official figures. Many European residents do not necessarily declare their residence to their home country’s consulate or to the Moroccan authorities. In fact, foreigners have two types of administrative status: either they are officially residents and have a residence permit, which allows them access to local facilities such as opening a bank account in the local currency, or they are “tourists”, in other words they live in Morocco with a tourist visa, which only allows them to stay in the country for three months at a time. The visa is extendable once in theory but many more times in practice, and requires them to leave the country to renew it. Many European residents choose this second option and are invisible to official statistics (Terrazzoni, 2015). 2. The Swiss research team consisted of Claudio Bolzman and Ibrahima Guissé. The Dutch research team consisted of Tineke Fokkema and Danique van Dalen with the collaboration of a pool of students (transcription and coding).

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3. We also interviewed Europeans who arrived at a younger age, but since we focus on IRMs they are not included in the chapter. 4. Francophone Belgians were not included because interviewers from the Dutch team do not speak fluent French.

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Portes, A. (1996). Globalization from below: The rise of transnational communities. In W. P. Smith & R. P. Korczenwicz (Eds.), Latin America in the world economics (pp. 151–168). Greenwood Press. Pries, L. (2001). New transnational social spaces. Routledge. Repetti, M., & Bolzman, C. (2020). Ageing abroad. The case of Swiss nationals in Morocco and Spain. Swiss Review of Sociology, 46(2), 199–217. Rosenthal, G. (1993). Reconstruction of life stories: Principles of selection in generating stories for narrative biographical interviews. In R.  Josselson & A.  Lieblich (Eds.), The narrative study of lives, Volume 1 (pp.  59–91). Newbury Park. Sampaio, D. (2017). Ageing ‘on the edge’: Later life migration in the Azores. Doctoral Dissertation in Geography, University of Sussex. Sunil, T. S., Rojas, V., & Bradley, D. E. (2007). United States’ international retirement migration: The reasons for retiring to the environs of Lake Chapala, Mexico. Ageing & Society, 27(4), 489–510. Terrazzoni, L. (2015). Les nouveaux migrants français à Essaouira et Marrakech. In N. Khrouz & N. Lanza (Eds.), Migrants au Maroc. Cosmopolitisme, présence d’étrangers et transformations sociales (pp.  24–30). Centre Jacques-Berque, Fondation Konrad Adenauer Stiftung. Therrien, K., & Pellegrini, C. (2015). French migrants in Morocco: From a desire for elsewhereness to an ambivalent reality. The Journal of North African Studies, 20(4), 605–621. Wall, K., & Bolzman, C. (2014). Mapping the new plurality of transnational families: A life course perspective. In L. Baldassar & L. Merla (Eds.), Transnational families, migration and the circulation of care: Understanding mobility and absence in family life (pp. 68–96). Routledge. Williams, A. M., King, R., Warnes, A., & Patterson, G. (2000). Tourism and international retirement migration: New forms of an old relationship in southern Europe. Tourism Geographies, 2(1), 28–49. Wimmer, A., & Glick-Schiller, N. (2002). Methodological nationalism and beyond. Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks, 2(4), 301–334.

PART III

Intertwinements of International Retirement Migrations: The State, Markets and Aging Populations

CHAPTER 8

International Living (and Dying). U.S. Retirement Migration to Mexico Sheila Croucher

“You go to Florida to die, but you come to Mexico to live!” is a refrain common among U.S. retirees living in Mexico, and one I heard repeatedly when first starting fieldwork in San Miguel de Allende (Mexico) in 2006 (Croucher, 2009). The refrain means to convey the migrants’ unique spirit of adventure, autonomy, mobility, and zest for life. And, indeed, many of them displayed just that. Few of the Americans I met were thinking about dying in Mexico, nor was I then thinking about aging and dying as significant dimensions of what continues to be a largely overlooked north-south migratory flow. That work began over 14 years ago. The majority of my interviewees were in their late 60s or early 70s. Today, they are in their mid-80s. Some have died. Others face a situation in which they are in need of significant care. Meanwhile, the flow of U.S. citizens migrating southward across the U.S.-Mexico border has persisted. Undeterred by the fixation on the part of some American politicians with building a wall, these U.S. citizens, like their compatriots before them, head to Mexico in search of a new lifestyle S. Croucher (*) Global and Intercultural Studies, Miami University, Oxford, OH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_8

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filled with sunshine, socializing, beautiful homes, friendly maids, and skilled gardeners—all at a fraction of what such amenities would cost in the U.S. Increasingly, however, U.S. seniors moving to Mexico, and those already there, also communicate apprehension, unease, and a longing for security (both financial and healthcare-related) that eludes them in their homeland. That Mexico emerges as a solution for combatting growing vulnerability among aging Americans reflects (1) the stance of a Mexican government that largely welcomes foreigners from the North and, notably, their capital, (2) an array of transnational organizations, such as International Living Magazine [IL], that aggressively market Mexico for both its economic and cultural appeal, and (3) persistent global inequalities that allow migrants of relative privilege to engage in a type of “geoarbitrage,” or the “lifestyle equivalent of corporate offshoring” (Hayes, 2018, 41) in order to circumnavigate the precariousness that currently accompanies aging in the U.S. A growing number of scholars around the world have trained their sights on this border-crossing trend, commonly referred to as “lifestyle migration” or “international retirement migration [IRM]” (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009; Janoschka & Haas, 2014; Rodriguez et al., 2004; Sunil et al., 2007; Truly, 2002). Intersecting in insightful ways is a related body of scholarship on “transnational aging” that has been prescient in terms of its focus on an increasingly critical dimension of north-south mobility (Horn & Schweppe, 2016, 2017). This chapter focuses on the case of U.S. citizens living in Mexico. To date, the role of privilege has been central to understanding the movement and settlement of this unconventional migrant population (Benson, 2013; Croucher, 2009, 2012; Lizarraga-Morales, 2010). The story of privilege still matters, but so too does a deeper understanding of relative precarity (Ormond & Toyota, 2016), and, relatedly, of how the transnational mobility of older Americans is situated in the context of a global political economy of care (Mahon & Robinson, 2011).

Americans in Mexico: Living the Dream An estimated one and a half million U.S. citizens currently live in Mexico, making it home to the largest population of Americans abroad in the world (U.S. Department of State, 2019). Reliable data on the exact number of U.S. citizens living in Mexico at any point in time, and where, is hard to come by, but that the size of this “expat” population has been

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increasing in recent decades is not in dispute (Dixon et al., 2006; Peck, 2013; Wood, 2013). The Mexican government reports that the number of Americans living within its borders has increased four-fold since 1990, and more than doubled since its 2010 Census (Bouleanu, 2019). Specific settlement sites within Mexico that are popular with North American expats saw even greater increases. During a booming two-year period between 2005 and 2007, the coastal community of Mazatlán, Sinaloa, saw its U.S.-born population grew by 95 percent (Paterson, 2011). Also not in dispute is that a sizeable proportion of this foreign population, by some estimates as much as one-third are retirees (Bonello, 2019). Between 2005 and 2012, the U.S.  Social Security Administration reported dramatic increases in the numbers of Americans receiving their Social Security checks south of the border (Wood, 2013). In Lake Chapala, home to one of the largest U.S. communities in Mexico, the population of U.S.-born residents over the age of 55 increased by a staggering 581 percent between 1990 and 2000. In Los Cabos, the increase was 308 percent during that period, and San Miguel de Allende saw an increase of 47.7 percent (Dixon et al., 2006, 1). Coastal towns are a popular draw, but so, too, the mountainous regions of Central Mexico. U.S. migration to Mexico is not new. During the early to mid-1800s, African slaves crossed the southern U.S. border to escape servitude. And at the close of the U.S. Civil War, they were joined by southerners from the defeated Confederacy. During the 1950s when the U.S. was in the midst of anti-communist hysteria, victims of McCarthyism sought refuge in Mexico. Countless American artists, writers, and counter-cultural gurus have long lost and found themselves in Mexico, and transnational business networks have, for over 200 years, spurred U.S. settlement south of the border (Croucher, 2009). Still, by the late 1990s, various factors converged to expand both the size of this migrant population and the proportion of U.S. retirees who comprise it. At the turn of new millennium, globalization was in full swing, fueling cross-border movement of goods, services, and people at unprecedented speeds and distances. In North America, passage of the historic North American Free Trade Agreement [NAFTA] in 1994, eased transnational flows and networks between Canada, the U.S., and Mexico and intensified the integration of these already highly inter-connected economies. Seizing opportunities afforded by economic liberalization, U.S. corporations like Wal-Mart, Costco, and Home Depot expanded their businesses south of the border. As a result, an array of modern appliances and familiar

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amenities became more accessible to the North Americans already living in Mexico and increased the region’s appeal for those contemplating a move (Truly, 2002). North of the border, the U.S. was experiencing its own impressive economic growth and stability during this period. More Americans were flush with cash, and credit, and using both freely to purchase new homes, bigger homes, and second homes—many hundreds of which were located in Mexico. Rental markets in Mexico’s popular expat settlement sites also saw significant growth. In Ajijic, along the shores of Lake Chapala, rental demand increased 40 percent between 1994 and 1997, driven almost entirely by foreigners (Truly, 2002). Globalization intensified cross-border mobility, but a profound demographic shift in the U.S. also meant there were more retired Americans available to cross borders. In 2006, the U.S. Census Bureau issued a report showing that between 2000 and 2030 the U.S. population over the age of 65 would more than double (Dixon et al., 2006). This cohort of older Americans is distinct in its size, but also in that these so-called baby boomers began reaching retirement age in a cultural milieu focused on productive aging, successful aging, and retirement as a third age of vitality. They were technologically savvy, often well-traveled, and primed to absorb the neoliberal message of healthy aging as an individual responsibility (Laslett, 1991). It was during this time period, in the early 2000s, and in this socio-­ cultural context, that the U.S. media focus increased attention on U.S. retirement migration to Mexico, and Mexico began showing up on multiple “best place to retire” lists. In 2002, CNN’s Money Magazine named “San Miguel de Allende” in the mountains of Central Mexico as one of the best places in the world to retire, explaining that “because of its rich culture, slow pace, beauty, proximity to the States and, of course, weather” it offers a perpetual vacation for the growing number of retirees flocking there. The article quotes one U.S. couple who had retired there in 2001 gleefully describing finding their fellow expatriate retirees as “more traveled, more artsy, more open” (CNN Money, 2003). Over the next several years, lifestyle media outlets like Conde Nast Traveler, Travel and Leisure, and Modern Maturity gushed over San Miguel de Allende and other locales in Mexico (San Miguel de Allende. net, 2020). Popular news outlets in the U.S. seized upon the tag-line “The American Dream in Mexico” to portray the lives of growing numbers of U.S. retirees, self-proclaimed pioneers, enjoying peaceful, easy

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living in the Mexican sunshine (Benjamin, 2005; Hill, 2005). Meanwhile, expats themselves began publishing countless “Insider’s Guides” and blogs, posting on expat forums, and creating Yahoo and Facebook groups in order to share tips on “Moving, Retiring or Just Hanging Out” in Mexico (Bower & Bower, 2005) or “Reinventing their Lives in Mexico” (Blue, 2000). Cost savings was a central theme in all of these narratives. Retirees described amazing bargains south of the border, and the ability of an American in Mexico to “live like a king.” One expat author offered this: “The cost is so low that it doesn’t make sense not to employ a maid unless you love cleaning the toilet” (Bower & Bower, 2005, 68). The U.S. migrants also described feeling healthier, happier, and more free. In doing so, they remained largely oblivious to, or in denial of, the privilege that allowed them to opt for migration as a means of lifestyle enhancement (Croucher, 2009, 2012).

From Relative Privilege to Relative Precarity Two watershed events occurred in 2007, with profound and interrelated implications for U.S. retirement migration to Mexico. On October 15, 2007, the first “baby boomer” (an American woman born one second after midnight in January 1946) filed for U.S. Social Security. The move was widely recognized as an initial ripple in an approaching “silver tsunami” of retiring Americans born between 1946 and 1964 (Croucher, 2009, 196). Two months later marked the official beginning of the Great Recession. The economic crisis started with the collapse of the U.S. real estate market and quickly escalated into the most severe financial downturn since the Great Depression. In the U.S., banks failed, while asset prices, the Gross Domestic Product, and household net worth plummeted. Unemployment rose dramatically, trade slowed, and the government eventually spent billions of dollars in deficit spending in an attempt to stabilize markets. The hardship caused by the Great Recession was felt throughout the U.S. and many parts of the world, but that it coincided so closely with the intensifying graying of America brought particular challenges relating to U.S. Social Security, Medicare, and healthcare provision generally. A 2018 U.S.  Census report, “The Graying of America,” forecasted that by the year 2034, and for the first time in U.S. history, older Americans will exceed children in population size (Vespa, 2018). This demographic shift

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has significant implications for the solvency of U.S.  Social Security and Medicare. The U.S. already spends more on healthcare than any other country in the world, and a growing proportion of that spending comes from the federal government (Roosa & Abrams, 2020). According to the U.S. Congressional Budget Office [CBO], in 2005, the U.S. government spent about one-third of its budget on seniors. By 2018, that share grew to 40 percent. And by 2029, the Congressional Budget Office predicts that the federal government will spend half of its budget (not counting interest on the debt) on Americans aged 65 and older. Nearly all of that spending derives from Social Security and Medicare (CBO, 2019). Currently, the cost of Social Security is on track to exceed its income, and the Medicare hospital insurance fund is on track to be fully depleted by 2026 (Rappeport, 2019). Nor will private savings compensate for the lack of government support. Even prior to the economic crisis of 2020, a mere 27 percent of U.S. households had a pension plan, and only 33 percent had invested in a 401(k)-type-plan (Pisani, 2019). Moreover, economic forecasters were already ominously predicting that “It is likely that the outlook for retirement security will become worse much faster in the next recession than in previous ones” (Weller, 2019). The implications of this for U.S. retirement migration to Mexico are somewhat contradictory. On the one hand, in the years immediately following the Great Recession Americans found themselves with less access to credit and cash and, hence, less able to purchase homes in Mexico. On the other hand, more Americans, and particularly older Americans, found themselves in a state of heightened economic precariousness, particularly in terms of being able to afford adequate healthcare in the U.S. Mexico promised a reprieve. At this time and in this context vulnerability surfaced more pervasively as a motivation for north-south migration. News accounts that once began with quips from relaxed retirees lounging in cafes, more often opened with references like these: “millions of baby boomers facing retirement just as their funds are getting hammered by the economic turmoil” (Kofman, 2009), or “Americans having lost a lot of money in the stock market crash and being increasingly worried about retirement” (Wood, 2013), or “recession-battered Baby Boomers lacking opportunities in the U.S.” (Peck, 2013). In these accounts, emigration to Mexico and other parts of Latin America emerges less as a choice of the free-spirited adventurer and more as a survival strategy for older Americans facing limited options for affordable retirement in the U.S.

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The unaffordability of retirement in the U.S. relates closely to the skyrocketing cost of healthcare, which becomes a central focus in interviews with U.S. migrants or prospective migrants (Althaus, 2007; Corchado & IIiff, 2007). By 2017, some Americans in Mexico even began self-­ identifying as “medical refugees,” describing serious health crises and nightmarish experiences in the U.S. with hospitals and insurance companies (Barkan, 2017). By 2020, Americans living in San Miguel increasingly referred to financial concerns and particularly the cost of healthcare in retirement as motivation for their migration. One couple who had been living part-time in San Miguel since 2002 described moving to Mexico as their “Plan B,” and a conscious alternative to investing in expensive long-­ term care insurance in the U.S.: “We have a home here and are familiar with Mexican workers, our maid and our cook. I said to my wife, ‘look, at this price, we could afford to hire two or three of them to take care of us privately for less than anything we’d pay in the States’” (author interview, January 16, 2020). What also became clear in the decade following the Great Recession is that U.S. retirees were not only moving to Mexico to secure more affordable doctors’ visits and prescription drugs, but cash-­ strapped Americans also began seeking refuge for themselves and their family members in Mexican nursing homes (Hawley, 2007).

Marketing Mexicanidad Vulnerability has become more central to the U.S. expat narrative, but that Mexico emerges as a chosen strategy for combatting it is not random. As argued in an analysis on outsourcing the care of elderly Germans to Poland and Thailand, this “new spacing of care and intimacy” is “made more possible by advanced communication and biomedical technologies, made more probable by neoliberal economic pressures of market principles throughout social life, and made more necessary by the crisis of care in the Global North” (Schwiter et al., 2019, 2). In the case of North Americans in Mexico, add to the factors making the transnationalization of care more possible and probable a dizzying array of migration marketers. This includes the Mexican government, Mexican and American entrepreneurs, and a large, complex network of transnational actors that comprises real estate developers, healthcare providers, financial advisors, insurance companies, health and lifestyle consultants, and media conglomerates. For its part, Mexico has generally welcomed Americans, even while harboring understandable resentment for a long history U.S. meddling in

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Mexican affairs and for the distinctly unwelcoming attitude extended toward Mexican migrants moving from south to north. Since the mid1990s, Mexico has actively courted U.S. migrants, and their capital, by firming up real estate laws, liberalizing allowances for foreigners owning property, and streamlining the visa process for temporary and permanent residency. Additionally, foreign residents age 60 and over qualify for Mexico’s senior discount card which allows them to save money on a variety of goods and services, including medical care and devices; airline and bus tickets; entrance fees to concerts, museums, and archeological sites; and even discounts on property taxes (International Living, 2020b). When asked, in 2005, about the influx of American retirees into Rosarito, along Mexico’s northwest coast, the president of the local tourist bureau replied, “People who live and buy a lot, a house in Rosarito, they pay their taxes. So that’s good for our economy” (Benjamin, 2005). In San Miguel—where roughly 10 percent of the city’s 100,000 residents are U.S. citizens—the Mayor routinely delivers his annual State of the Municipality address in English and Spanish. In an interview about that town’s expat community, Mayor Villareal remarked that “Despite the fact that Donald Trump insults my country every day, here we receive the entire international community, beginning with Americans, with open arms and hearts” (Sheridan, 2019). Mexican officials and entrepreneurs began eyeing a growing healthcare crisis north of the border as early as 2007, and preparing for an anticipated tide of U.S. retirees flocking to Mexico for a better healthcare bargain (Althaus, 2007). Flavio Olivieri, a member of Tijuana’s Economic Development Council, explained, “With the right facilities in place, Mexico could give [American retirees] a better quality of life at a better price” (Hawley, 2007). Eduardo Alvarado, Chief Executive Officer of development in the Mexican state of San Luis Potosí, addressed the issue of precarity explicitly, “what we are seeing is that many people will come perhaps not because they want to but out of necessity” (Iliff, 2008). Nationwide, efforts were also made to coordinate the international retirement migration [IRM] industry in Mexico. In 2007, Mexican business man, Javier Govi, founded the Mexican Retirement Assistance Association [AMAR] with the stated goal of elevating the Mexico real estate market for seniors to a consistently high level of service and to regulating the independent- and assisted-living markets in Mexico (AMAR, 2020). In 2009, the Association’s director forecasted that “Maybe we won't be like Miami or Tucson in five years, but in 10 years, believe me, more than 4

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million people will come to live in Mexico” (Kofman, 2009). And, in 2011, a group of companies formed Mexico Real Estate Coalition [MREC]. Their Chairman explained that the overarching goal is “to educate and excite Americans about the many benefits of living, retiring, and investing in Mexico,” and to ensure that Mexico is ready to compete with key U.S. markets for the baby boomers over the next 10–15 years (Gerrity, 2011). These efforts expanded upon an already burgeoning medical tourism industry along the U.S.-Mexico border, including Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim’s healthcare facilities geared specifically toward U.S. baby boomers and characterized by some as “medical maquiladoras”: “A raw product, in this case an ailing U.S. citizen, is imported from US, put together, and then re-exported back to the homeland” (Plans for Healthcare Services, 2008). U.S. corporations similarly geared up to capitalize on the anticipated demographic and economic trends. A group of North Texas-based hospital chains started building hospitals in Mexico, claiming to provide the best of both world: “US-quality health care and low Mexican prices.” A Senior Vice President of one of those hospitals exclaimed: “Our country [the U.S.] will go broke unless we find a health care alternative. Mexico is a wonderful alternative with incredible potential” (Corchado & IIiff, 2007). Add to this an explosion in the number of transnational consultants, insurance groups, and healthcare bloggers all advertising services related to retirement and aging in Mexico.1 Notably, Mexico is not only being marketed as an economic bargain but also as a care paradise where Mexicans themselves are portrayed as inimitably warm, caring, and gladly willing to spend quality time with their foreign clientele. One 2013 promotional video posted by a Continuing Care Community in San Miguel opens with Mexican owner and founder, Eric Cházaro, declaring that he is honored to introduce his dream project of “assisted living with world-class quality … where the Mexicanidad and love would be the main aspects of our project.” The narrator also makes subsequent reference to the “known warmth of the Mexican” (YouTube, 2013). Similar references show up in the marketing campaigns of facilities throughout Mexico and are routinely reiterated by the expat patrons and their family members.2 One Texas couple who relocated to Mexico after a serious motorcycle accident, and equally serious frustration with the U.S. healthcare system, recounted their satisfaction with the quality of care south of the border, they emphasized that “The Mexicans were much more cordial, warmer. …

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They have a cultural thing here in Mexico where you’re not treated like a number” (Corchado & IIiff, 2007). Another Texan living in a Continuing Care Community in Mexico agreed, “Older people are treated better in Mexico than they are in the states. And they’re more respected” (Kocherga, 2010). After initial concern about having to move her mother, suffering from Alzheimer’s, to a Senior Care facility across the border in Mexico, an American woman living in San Diego described the care her mother receives as “excellent.” “The Mexican culture really reveres older people. They are treated with a lot of respect” (Siegel, 2017). Notably, this attitude and approach are assumed to be deeply embedded in an organic to Mexican culture. A 90-year-old American woman living in San Miguel and paying for in-home care explained in January of 2020: “Mexican women are born caretakers. It’s a given here that you take care of Grandma” (author field interview, January 7, 2020). Alongside portrayals of warmth are frequent references to time—and the “quality time” Mexican healthcare workers spend with their patients (EFAM, 2017). One expat website promoting retirement to Mexico mused: “Medical care in Mexico today may remind you of an earlier period in your own life when a doctor took the time to actually sit down and listen to you” (Focus on Mexico, 2020). Recent interviews with older Americans living in San Miguel echo the claim. An American woman, in her mid-70s and living alone in Mexico, said this of Mexican doctors: “They really care—they take time—they look you in the eye” (author interview, January 14, 2020). Describing a recent trip to the emergency room in San Miguel, another American remarked about being “so impressed” with the care he received: “I never felt rushed. We were seen quickly and the doctor spent a long time with me” (author interview, January 16, 2020). There is an irony to this appreciation for the patience of the Mexican people since, for many U.S. expats living in Mexico, the host society’s casual attitude about time is a common source of consternation (Croucher, 2009). International Living Magazine Mexican developers and their U.S. counterpart were prescient in anticipating (and facilitating), the north-south migration trend but in terms of marketing U.S. international retirement migration, few entities have had greater influence than International Living Magazine [IL]. The label “magazine” is deceptive in that in addition to well over 100,000

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subscribers to its 42-page, full-color publication, the IL media machine reaches over 500,000 readers with its electronic Daily Postcards on “how to expand your world horizons beyond U.S. shores,” and its e-newsletters on topics ranging from the “best buys on the international property market” to “how to open a bank account in your new country of residence.” The organization regularly sponsors conferences in both the U.S. and popular destination countries on how to “Fast Track your Retirement Overseas.” And a slickly designed website draws 350,000 visitors per month, 80 percent of whom reside in the U.S. (International Living, 2020a). International Living’s sustained influence on north-south migration cannot be over-stated. One of the earliest studies of the American community living in Mexico identified IL Magazine as “the single publication most commonly cited” as influencing the move abroad (Dixon et  al., 2006, 56). And in the years since, U.S. migrants living in Mexico and other parts of Latin America routinely name IL as having played a significant role shaped their migration process (Croucher, 2009; Hayes, 2018). Economic advantage has always been part of the message and mission of IL, but has become even more integral to the company’s aggressive marketing campaign over the past decade. In addition to lifestyle and leisure, the organization increasingly promotes international living as a pathway to security in a volatile world. Skyrocketing costs in the U.S. are contrasted with south-of-the-border deals on real estate, taxes, and, increasingly, healthcare. Today, IL’s Daily Postcards regularly feature testimony from expats in Mexico and other parts of Latin America emphasizing financial security, or insecurity, as their motivation for migration (Croucher, 2019). One American writes: “Like millions of others during the 2008 recession, Diane and I found ourselves struggling to survive when my executive-level job disappeared and the equity in our home quickly vanished. … The global economic meltdown had forced its way into our family and the consequences were painful and very personal” (Murray, 2016). IL masterfully taps into financial fears and fuels them. Pitching a “Cash Flow Summit” in 2019, the editors sent an email headlined, “The $78 Trillion Pension Crisis: Time to Get Prepared.” They warned readers that “It is no longer enough to save money, as higher inflation and taxes wipe out your earnings.” The U.S. retirement system is broken, and “a pension crisis [is] barreling towards us” (Croucher, 2019). In August of 2019, the magazine sent out a Daily Postcard written by Dan Prescher and Suzan Haskins, the husband and wife team who oversee the publications and

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conferences, titled, “Where We’ll Go if Things Get Weird.” “We lived in Ecuador for about eight years … and we may well live here again … or at least have what we like to call a ‘bolt hole’ here. You know … just in case things back home get weird.” And in November 2019, an IL email ominously asked its readers: “Do You Have your 2020 Escape Plan Yet?” “We put this escape plan together [a package of special resources] because the truth is you don't have to sit idly by and watch your income, your nest egg, or your freedoms erode. You can regain control.” In addition to “escaping” turmoil, financial and otherwise, in the U.S. and establishing “bolt holes” in Latin America, healthcare is now a constant theme, both in IL’s online materials and at the on-site conferences. Expats in Mexico, Panama, and Ecuador recount in IL publications their remarkable experiences with affordable, quality care south of the border, and contrast that with exorbitant costs and maddening bureaucracy in the U.S. IL executive, Dan Prescher, acknowledges that the search for affordable healthcare is not what drove him to Latin America (it was adventure and weather), but he finds that affordable healthcare is now driving many: “As long as there are more affordable alternatives outside the U.S., retirees will keep seeking them out” (Prescher, 2017). At a 2019 seminar on “How to Fast-Track Your Retirement Overseas,” Prescher’s partner, Suzan Haskins, offered tips on “How to Choose your Perfect Place.” Of the eight key factors to consider, “affordability” was number one, and “health care” was number two. “I can’t think of anywhere in the world,” she observed, “where you’re going to find more expensive health care than right here in the States” (Croucher, 2019). Given the level of attention focused on international retirement migration by private and public sector entities, the very limited involvement of the U.S. government is notable. When U.S. academic or media pundits occasionally speak to the issue of international retirement migration, they typically portray it as beneficial to the U.S. (Warner, 1999). Walter Russell Mead, a fellow at the conservative Hudson Institute, frequently promotes retirement abroad as a strategy for revamping a broken U.S. retirement system (Mead, 2004, 2017). U.S. retirement to Mexico and elsewhere is, he argues, “a way to … improve the lives of people in both rich and poor countries. … This is capitalism at work” (Mead, 2017). Mead specifically advocates, as a cost-savings mechanism, making Medicare available abroad—emphasizing that Medicare payments to facilities outside the U.S. should be lower to reflect different cost levels (2017). Also detailing the benefits of foreign economic retirement migration in unapologetically

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neoliberal terms, Nicholas Zeltzer, Associate Editor of the Elder Law Journal, presents the off-shoring of U.S. retirees as a way to capitalize on favorable wage-labor ratios and encourage retirees to “maximize their economic potential through personal purchase decisions” (Zeltzer, 2008, 240). Similar arguments circulate in financial media outlets and on “successful aging” websites.3 Anticipating negative reactions, one proponent of U.S. retirement abroad notes: “Critics often disparage the phenomenon of the aged moving to Mexico for care as ‘elder outsourcing,’ … one could counter that what we often do here [in the U.S.] is not much more than ‘elder warehousing’” (Goll, 2019). In this claim, and many like it, the options for older Americans with financial concerns narrow to warehousing or outsourcing. Outsourcing is gaining in popularity. A 2009 ABC News story on “Retirees Flocking South of the Border,” reported ten assisted-living facilities in Mexico catering to Americans, and ten more in the works (Kofman, 2009). By 2020, Seniors Living Mexico website advertised over 100 different facilities located throughout Mexico ranging from nursing homes and continuing care communities to in-home health aides, rehabilitation services, and medical tourism.

Conclusion As the field of study variably described as international retirement migration, lifestyle migration, and north-south migration matures, so have its subjects. Many of the U.S. retirees whose lifestyles in Mexico at the turn of the millennium captured vividly the notion of a third age of health, vitality, and positive aging are now moving into a fourth age more often characterized in terms of dependence decrepitude and death (Gilleard, 2010). Meanwhile, neoliberalism continues intensifying economic precariousness for seniors, individualizing their responsibility for it, and fueling corporatization of international retirement migration. On a brighter note, the past two decades have witnessed the accumulation of more scholarship, and deepening conceptual and empirical insights, to make sense of the retirement migration trend and the transnationalization of aging. One particularly important insight concerns the need to sort carefully through the relationship between privilege and precarity (and the relativity of both) in the lives of these migrants. There has been a shift among the migrants themselves, and the media narratives about them, from lifestyle enhancement to self-preservation. But just as privilege, as a variable in north-south migration, must be qualified as relative, so too

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with precarity. A 2013 news story on “Why U.S. baby boomers are retiring in Latin America” reported: “With the US economy remaining so tentative, and health-care costs so aggressive, retirees want to live where they can afford greens fees and where a trip to the emergency room won’t bankrupt them” (Wood, 2013). The threat of healthcare bankruptcy is real to thousands of Americans, but yoking it to a concern for affordable green fees puts into perspective the relativity of vulnerability. Equally important to understanding the role of privilege and precarity in individual retirees’ lives is situating it in its broader structural context. Neoliberalism is intensifying economic insecurity for growing numbers of older Americans. Meanwhile, the structural privilege these individuals derive from their national, class, and racial positioning affords them the strategic option of migrating southward to combat precarity. IL made this explicit with a March 2020 Postcard declaring living abroad: “A Savvy Strategy for Combatting Uncertainty.” But while IL and other government and business actors promote international retirement and transnational aging as a win-win for the migrants, the locales that receive them, and the home country that essentially off-loads them, this strategy only works if global inequalities persist to be exploited, and the marketing of culture, fear, and individual responsibility continues to be effective (Hayes, 2018, 57; Schwiter et al., 2019, 14). Global inequalities rendering Mexico an economic bargain for U.S. retirees seem likely to persist. In fact, IRM may exacerbate such inequalities rather than alleviate them. The growth of a higher-paying, expat-oriented, private healthcare industry in Mexico could drain healthcare workers from the struggling public health system—much like the expat real estate market has priced Mexicans out of their homes and established neighborhoods in places like San Miguel de Allende and Lake Chapala (Croucher, 2009). Older migrants arriving from north of the U.S.-Mexico border might also strain local health systems, crowding out Mexican residents since aging populations create greater health-related demands (Snyder & Crooks, 2017). One doctor working at a Guadalajara hospital where U.S. residents living around the popular settlement site of Lake Chapala seek medical care, noted as early as 2007 that the foreigners can present a burden disproportionate to their numbers: “There is a difference in the cultures … and that can be a problem for the foreigner and for us.” He and a nurse colleague at the same hospital identified language as the biggest challenge but also that the retirees typically suffer from

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diseases costly to treat in the Mexican system: diabetes, hypertension, and heart disease (Althaus, 2007). The cultural trope of the warm and patient Mexicans is also likely to persist, and mirrors strategies used in facilities in Thailand and Poland that are marketing care to aging Germans (Bender & Schweppe, 2019). Notably, the trope obscures the limited attitudinal options available to Mexicans and other workers serving foreigners in popular expat settlement sites. In 2006, after being repeatedly assured by the U.S. migrants living in San Miguel that local Mexicans loved them, a Mexican woman teaching Spanish courses to the foreign community told me (in Spanish and with calm resignation), “de ellos comemos,” “from them we eat” (Croucher, 2007). Even more certain seems the likelihood that neoliberalism will continue to construct healthcare and aging in the U.S. as private concerns. One of the proposals mentioned above in favor of foreign retirement migration from the U.S. is indicative in placing the onus exclusively on seniors themselves: “As the cost of retirement in the United States continues to rise, our nation’s elderly will be forced to consider alternative measures to obtain quality health care and suitable living conditions” (Zeltzer, 2008, 212). Finally, it is also possible that one implication of the transnationalization of aging is that the U.S. will export to countries in the Global South its own flawed approach to care-taking. The medical director of San Miguel’s private hospital De La Fe hypothesized just that when he remarked in 2017, “For better or worse, Mexico copies everything the United States does. … I hope I am retired before we copy your health system” (EFAM, 2017).

Notes 1. See, for example, Seniors Living Mexico: https://seniorslivingmexico. com/en/; Mexperience: https://www.mexperience.com/lifestyle/ healthcare/healthcare-­services/; MexPro: https://www.mexpro.com/ blog/affordable-­retirement-­in­mexico/; Expat Focus: https://www. expatfocus.com/mexico/health/healthcar e-­o ptions-­f or-­e xpatretirees-­in-­mexico-­5106. 2. For example, see “In Search of Cheaper Costs, San Diego Seniors Try Assisted Living in Mexico.” YouTube (May 31). https://www.youtube. com/watch?v=_WSdVZjnKQI; “Lake Chapala Nursing Homes. Care Home Tour.” 2019. YouTube (March 29). https://www.youtube.com/

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watch?v=EJHP3_l6Cn8; Tukari House. Assisted Living Puerto Vallarta, Mexico: https://www.casatukari.com.mx/copia-­de-­home 3. For example, Carrel, Wendy (2020). “Mexican Assisted Living Communities of 80+ Residents Set to Attract American, Canadian, and other Retirees.” Senior Living Foresight (Feb 17): https://www.seniorlivingforesight.net/ mexican-­assisted-­living-­and-­life-­plan-­communities-­of-­80-­residents-­set-­to-­ attract-­american-­canadian-­and-­other-­retirees/; AMAR (2019). “How much money do you need to retire in Mexico?” (Aug 17): https://amarfriendsfoundation.wordpress.com/2019/08/17/how-­much-­money-­do-­you-­need-­to-­ retire-­in-­mexico-­4/; Business Insider (2019). “13 Things people should do to save for international retirement.” (Sept 19): https://www.businessinsider.com/retire-­abroad-­international-­retirement-­save-­advice-­tips-­2019-­9.

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Benson, M., & O’Reilly, K. (2009). Lifestyle Migration: Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences. Ashgate. Blue, K. (2000). Midlife Mavericks: Women Reinventing their lives in Mexico. Universal Publishers. Bonello, D. (2019, February 6). Time for Americans Living in Mexico to Go Home? OZY News. Retrieved January 9, 2020, from https://www.ozy.com/ immodest-­p roposal/time-­f or-­a mericans-­l iving-­i n-­m exico-­t o-­g o-­h ome/ 92349/. Bouleanu, A. (2019, June 11). The ‘crisis’ driving some Americans to move to Mexico. Al Jazeera. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://www.aljazeera. c o m / i n d e p t h / f e a t u r e s / c r i s i s -­d r i v i n g -­a m e r i c a n s -­m o v e -­m e x i c o -­ 190609233856534.html. Bower, D., & Bower, C. (2005). The Plain Truth about Living in Mexico. Universal Publishers. CNN Money. (2003, May 5). Best Places to Retire: San Miguel de Allende, Mexico. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://money.cnn.com/2002/05/01/ retirement/bpretire_san_miguel/. Corchado, A., & IIiff, L. (2007, July). U.S. patients choosing Mexican hospitals for price, quality. Banderas News. http://www.banderasnews.com/0707/hb-­ patientschoose.htm. Croucher, S. (2007). They Love Us Here: American Migrants in Mexico. Dissent, 54(1), 23–28. Croucher, S. (2009). The Other Side of the Fence: American Migrants in Mexico. University of Texas Press. Croucher, S. (2012). Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality. Societies, 2(4), 1–13. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc2010001. Accessed 8 November 2020. Croucher, S. (2019). Lifestyle Migrants. Dissent, 66(4), 14–17. Dixon, D., Murray, J., & Gelatt, J. (2006). America’s Emigrants: U.S. Retirement Migration to Mexico and Panama. Migration Policy Institute. https://www. migrationpolicy.org/article/americas-­emigrants-­us-­r etirement-­migration-­ mexico-­and-­panama. Accessed 8 November 2020. Focus on Mexico (2020). Medical Care in Mexico: 2020 Update. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://focusonmexico.com/medical-­care-­mexico/. Gerrity, M. (2011, June 21). Mexico Real Estate Developers Combat Negative Perceptions by American Buyers. World Property Journal. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://www.worldpropertyjournal.com/international-­markets/ residential-­real-­estate/mexico-­real-­estate-­coalition-­mrec-­mexico-­real-­estate-­ report-­mexico-­housing-­market-­homes-­for-­sale-­in-­mexico-­resorts-­in-­mexico-­ mexico-­drug-­wars-­grupo-­questro-­capella-­pedregal-­punta-­mita-­querencia-­rci-­ international-­bancomer-­stewart-­title-­4439.php. Gilleard, C. (2010). Ageing without Agency: Theorizing the Fourth Age. Ageing and Mental Health, 14(2), 121–128.

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Mead, W. R. (2017). Revamping the Retirement System. The American Interest. Retrieved February 10, 2020, from https://www.the-­american-­interest. com/2017/04/06/revamping-­the-­retirement-­system/. Murray, D. (2016, June 18). How a Love Affair With IL Changed My Life. International Living Postcards—your daily escape. Ormond, M., & Toyota, M. (2016). Confronting economic precariousness through international retirement migration. In J. M. Rickley-Boyd, K. Hannam, & M.  Mostafanezhad (Eds.), Tourism and Leisure Mobilities (pp.  134–146). Routledge. Paterson, K. (2011, March 26). The Other Immigration: Will NAFTA’s Boomers Boom Again? Frontera Norte-Sur. U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico. https://fnsnews.nmsu.edu/the-­other-­immigrationwill-­naftas-­boomers­boom-­again/. Peck, D. (2013, July/August). Why So Many Americans are Leaving the U.S. – in 1 Big Chart. The Atlantic. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://www.theatlantic. com/magazine/archive/2013/07/americas-­emigration-­problem/309410/. Pisani, B. (2019, April 1). There’s a retirement crisis in America where most will be unable to afford a ‘solid life.’ CNBC News. Retrieved February 10, 2020, from https://www.cnbc.com/2019/04/01/theres-­a-­retirement-­crisis-­in-­ america-­where-­most-­will-­be-­unable-­to-­afford-­a-­solid-­life.html. “Plans for Health Care Services in Mexico for U.S.  Citizens.” 2008. Banderas News (March). Frontera Norte-Sur. U.S.-Mexico border news Center for Latin American and Border Studies New Mexico State University Las Cruces, New Mexico. Retrieved November 8, 2020, from http://www.banderasnews. com/0803/hb-­slimhealthcare.htm. Prescher, D. (2017, August 2). There is affordable health care available—just not in the US. CNBC. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://www.cnbc. com/2017/08/02/there-­is-­affordable-­health-­care-­available-­right-­now-­just-­ not-­in-­the-­us-­commentary.html. Rappeport, A. (2019, April 22). Social Security and Medicare Funds Face Insolvency, Report Finds. The New  York Times. Retrieved January 5, 2020, from https://www.nytimes.com/2019/04/22/us/politics/social-­security-­ medicare-­insolvency.html. Rodriguez, V., Fernandez-Mayoralas, G., & Rojo, F. (2004). International Retirement Migration: Retired Europeans Living on the Costa del Sol, Spain. Population Review, 43, 1–36. Roosa, Tikkanen, & Melinda Abrams. 2020 “U.S.  Health Care from a Global Perspective, 2019: Higher Spending, Worse Outcomes?” NY: The Commonwealth Fund (January 30). Retrieved November 7, 2020, from https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-­briefs/2020/jan/ us-­health-­care-­global-­perspective-­2019#:~:text=The%20U.S.%20Spends%20

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YouTube. (2013, July 6). Cielito Lindo - Assisted Living Community. https:// www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2pHic4ath4. Zeltzer, N. (2008). Foreign Economic Retirement Migration: Promises, Barriers and Burdens. Elder Law Journal, 16(1), 211–241. http://theelderlawjournal. com/wp-­content/uploads/2015/02/Zeltzer.pdf. Accessed 10 February 2020

CHAPTER 9

Falling Through the Net of Social Protection: The Precarity of Retirement Migrants in Thailand Cornelia Schweppe

Introduction International retirement migration has become a multifaceted field of research since the end of the twentieth century. The search for a better quality of life has been pointed out as a prominent reason for migrating in old age. Better climatic conditions, attractive landscapes, and a lower cost of living are important driving factors for migrating in old age (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009, 2016; Gavanas, 2017; Hall & Hardill, 2016; King et al., 1998; Oliver, 2008; O’Reilly, 2000; Williams et al., 2000). Often, retirement migrants are considered a rather affluent and privileged group. Research, however, points out the relativity of this position (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009, 2016; Benson, 2014; Croucher, 2012). “It is not necessarily the case that such migrants are particularly wealthy or privileged in the countries that they leave, or what we could consider as absolutely

C. Schweppe (*) Institute of Education, Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Mainz, Germany e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_9

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wealthy. It is rather the case that they can mobilize capital, assets and resources in ways that make their aspirations for a better way of life possible within the destination” (Benson & O’Reilly, 2016, p. 29). Benson and O’Reilly (ibid.) point out that this would also allow “for an understanding of lifestyle migrants as potentially vulnerable and, in some cases, disadvantaged.” This is a valuable approach not only because migration in old age is not confined to wealthy and privileged groups, but also because of the ambiguousness found within retirement migration. In this regard, research calls attention to migrants’ insecurities due to low income (Maher & Lafferty, 2020) and lack of long-term provisions for health (Botterill, 2017); care deficits due to linguistic, cultural, spatial, and financial barriers (Hall & Hardill, 2016); social isolation (Maher & Lafferty, 2014); marginalization and exclusion (Benson & O’Reilly, 2016); and the paradoxes of aging within the context of retirement migration (Oliver, 2008). Accordingly, Benson and O’Reilly (2016, p.  21) argue “that relative privilege may coexist with precarity and vulnerability.” Although research thus selectively and rather implicitly points to questions of social protection, the relationship between retirement migration and social protection has not yet been explored systematically. This relationship is examined in this chapter with specific focus on retirement migration from Germany to Thailand, the majority of which is undertaken by older single men. The chapter is based on the study “Retirement migration from German-speaking countries to Thailand,” which initially did not focus on questions of social protection. These questions emerged against the backdrop of the multitude of social problems uncovered during our research stays in Thailand and during our interviews. They are particularly reflected in financial, health, and care-related hardships, including high rates of suicide and alcohol consumption among retired migrants. These problems have also been widely reported in the Thai press and German newspapers in Thailand (e.g., Wochenblitz). Regarding social protection of retirement migrants from Germany in Thailand—as is true for all countries that are not member states of the European Union—it is important to note that, with the exception of pensions, benefits from Germany’s public old age social security system (e.g., covering illness or long-term care needs) are no longer granted. This is explained in more detail below. To analyze the social protection of retirees from Germany in Thailand, the chapter will resort to the concept of “resource environment,” which was developed by Levitt et  al. (2016) to analyze questions of social

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protection in the context of mobility processes. Special emphasis is given in this chapter to whether, how, and in what areas retirement migrants from Germany in Thailand can fall back on which kinds of social protection to protect themselves against social risks (such as illness, need for care, financial hardship) or to alleviate these risks when they occur.

Theoretical Framework For some time, research has examined the relationship between international mobility processes and social protection (Raithelhuber et al., 2018; Sabates-Wheeler & Feldman, 2011). For a long time, social protection was located within the frame of single nation-states and frequently tied to public social security systems. The sole focus on the state sector of social protection has been criticized in discussions about the welfare mix since the 1980s (Evers & Wintersberger, 1990). Pleas were increasingly voiced in favor of a concept that goes beyond the classic entities of state social security to include sectors such as the family, civil society actors, or the market (ibid.). A broadened concept of social protection was proposed, in particular by legal-ethnological research (Benda-Beckmann & Benda-­ Beckmann, 2006; Benda-Beckmann, 2007). According to this concept, social protection covers all social support services and interventions arising in the context of care requirements and constitutes different forms of other-care and self-care (cf. Benda-Beckmann, 2007). Social protection research has been expanded by (trans)migration and mobility research, which has revealed the myriad ways that questions of social protection do not stop at the borders of the nation-state and demonstrated the diverse forms and processes of social protection for people on the move across national borders (Raithelhuber et  al., 2018). These finding are mainly based on research concerning south-north and east-­ west mobilities. Mobilities from richer to poorer countries have seldom yet been discussed. The existing research suggests that people on the move across national borders often resort to a variety of sources in different countries for protection from or alleviation of social risks (MacAuslan & Sabates-Wheeler, 2011). In this context, Faist (2013, p. 9) introduced the concept of “social protection assemblages,” and Levitt et al. (2016, p. 3) describe social protection as a “piec[ing] together” of social protection. Despite the growing attention paid to questions regarding the social protection of people on the move, there is a considerable research gap around the questions: “When and how are people on the move protected and

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provided for outside the traditional framework of the nation-state?” (Levitt et al., 2016, p. 2) and “who is left out?” (p. 10). For further engagement with questions of social protection for people on the move, Levitt et al. (2016) propose the concept of “resource environment” that they define as follows: “An individual’s resource environment is constituted of all the possible protections available to them from (…) four potential sources” (p. 5), namely the state, the market, the third sector, and social networks. They assume that the available cluster of protections which is ultimately available depends upon the nature of the market, the strengths and capacity of sending and receiving states, the third sector organizational ecology (i.e. the number and types of organizations, what they do, and their capacity to provide) and the characteristics of individual migrants and their families. These characteristics include the migrant’s nation of origin, place of residence, and the breadth and depth of his or her social networks, in addition to the individual’s gender, ethnicity, religion, wealth, income, and education. (p. 5 f.)

They presume that all four sectors increasingly cross national borders and that people on the move “look increasingly to each of these sources of provision—sending states, receiving states, and the third sector—in addition to purchasing social provision from the market or request it from family and friends, to cover their needs” (p. 3).

The Methodological Approach This chapter is based on data from a larger research project, “Retirement migration from German-speaking countries to Thailand,”1 which addresses the motives for migration, the retirees’ experiences of life in Thailand and the shaping of their everyday lives. The research was carried out during five ethnographically oriented field trips from 2013 to 2018 to different locations in Thailand—principally Pattaya and Hua Hin as these locations are major centers for retirement migrants. The field trips lasted two to three weeks each and were undertaken by two researchers. The main methods of data collection were narrative-generating guided interviews with older men who had migrated to Thailand from German-speaking countries—mainly Germany and Switzerland—and expert interviews. This chapter draws on data that were collected on retirees from Germany.

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The narrative-generating guided interviews focused on the men’s backgrounds, their motives for migrating to Thailand, their experiences in Thailand and their everyday lives. Access to the interviewees was primarily found in places that are frequented by German or Western retired migrants, including (German) restaurants and bars—which have become established in large numbers in the cities where the study was undertaken and are heavily frequented by German-speaking retirement migrants—as well as German organizations or facilities, like a German church-based leisure center for German-speaking people in Pattaya (detailed below). Further interviewees were recruited through snowball sampling. The sampling process followed the principle of theoretical sampling, which Glaser and Strauss (1967, p. 45) defined as “the process of data collection for generating theory whereby the analyst jointly collects, codes and analyzes his data and decides what data to collect next […] in order to develop his theory as it emerges.” Thus, data collection and analysis are conceptualized as a simultaneous process in which, ideally, data analysis starts from the beginning of data collection and data gathering continues on the ground of the emerging results. In our study, this was pursued by basing data collection during field trips on the results and concepts that emerged from our data analysis particularly carried out in Germany. They guided the search for new data in Thailand to refine our emerging results. All interviews were recorded with audio devices and subsequently transcribed. We carried out a total of 48 interviews. The ages of the men interviewed ranges from 53 to 79 years. Interviewees have been living in Thailand for between 1 and 12 years; a smaller proportion has shuttled between Germany and Thailand at three- to six-month intervals for several years. The expert interviews were carried out with representatives of organizations in Pattaya and Hua Hin that come into relatively frequent contact with retirees from Germany and/or direct their activities at them. The interviews focused on the organizations’ goals, their concrete work, and descriptions of the persons making use of them. The interviews were analyzed as follows. First, all parts of the interviews relevant to questions of social protection were selected. These sequences were then coded and analyzed line by line to identify potential key themes. Following the constant comparative method (Strauss & Corbin, 1996), the emerging themes were continuously compared with one other and theoretical ideas and concepts explored. This way, ideas and concepts were

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refined while new ones were generated to deepen our analysis and specify the emerging theoretical categories.

Biographical Backgrounds and Motives for Migration to Thailand in Old Age Our data show that the motives for migration to Thailand are often rooted in financial or social causes. For many of the interviewees, constrained financial resources are among their central motives for migrating to Thailand. Their source of income essentially consists of their pensions, which they receive from the German pension insurance scheme. Though their economic situations vary, many of the interviewees receive a pension below the average in Germany, which can be explained by their employment histories and the income-dependent pension system in Germany. The interviewees’ employment was mostly in rather low-paid vocational training jobs or unskilled work. Academic professions were the exception. Furthermore, some of the men took early retirement due to impaired health or were dismissed from their jobs before the retirement age and did not find new employment afterward. Due to the income-dependent German pension system that requires 45 years of continuous employment in order to draw a full pension on retirement at the age of 63,2 such employment histories are associated with significant losses in pension income. Against the background of their employment histories, most of the interviewees have little savings to fall back on. Especially for those who have relatively small pensions, and due to the possibility of transferring their pensions from Germany to Thailand and the lower cost of living there, migration is often associated with the hope of increasing the purchasing power of their funds to alleviate financial constraints in old age or to avert financial problems in the country of origin, whether current at the time of the decision to migrate or feared for the future. The mention of early retirement for health reasons also indicates that a proportion of the men already suffered from impaired health prior to migration. Along with sparse financial resources, many of the men interviewed report having conflict-laden and strained family relationships which were often associated with considerable emotional and psychological burdens. Failed partnerships, divorce, and the often-unsuccessful search for a new partner frequently paved the way for migration to Thailand. The desire for

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a close emotional and intimate relationship with a partner, with whom life can be shared, emerges in almost all the interviews as a significant motive. Experiences from past vacations, narrations by other men who had already migrated to Thailand, as well as the image that Thailand projects as a country with a wide range of opportunities for establishing intimate relationships as a result of the established sex tourism play an important role in directing this desire to Thailand. Conflict-laden relationships with adult children are also visible. Contact has often been cut off or is sporadic. Problems are often compounded by limited social networks and feelings of loneliness and solitude in Germany, or the fear of being left alone in the event that they later need care and have no other alternative than moving to an old age residential care facility. In the following section, a case study is used to provide a first insight into questions concerning the social protection of retirement migrants from Germany to Thailand.

The Case of Peter Allenbach3 Peter Allenbach was born in Germany in 1937. He is divorced and has two children. Due to a very conflictive relationship with them, contact was discontinued many years ago. After his divorce, he lived with a new partner for more than three decades. Following what Peter experienced as a very stressful separation from this long-term partner, he decided “on the spur of the moment” to give up his apartment in Germany and move to Pattaya. At this point, Peter already has health problems. He has suffered a stroke and undergone a bypass operation following a heart attack. In Thailand, he lives on a small pension of approximately €800 and does not have any health insurance. After about two years in Thailand, he suffers another stroke. In cooperation with the charitable association Help for Germans in Thailand (HGT), which was initiated by the German Embassy and targets people from Germany who have fallen into hardship (detailed below), Peter’s return to Germany is organized. Back in Germany, after spending time in a hospital and a homeless shelter, Peter is finally admitted to an old people’s home. He feels uncomfortable and patronized there. He leaves the facility without giving notice and travels back to Pattaya on a 30-day visa where he lives in a hotel. After a short time, the staff witness Peter overcome by faintness and have him admitted to a hospital. After treating him, the hospital arranges to accommodate him in a “care resort” in Pattaya. In this facility, Peter once again feels uncomfortable. He reaches

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out by email to a distant relative in Germany, Annette Kaiser. She is one of the few contacts he still has in Germany though contact between them has been very sporadic and limited. He wrote to her that he was being prevented from leaving the resort and that his belongings were being ransacked for money. He also says that a robbery has left him penniless and he cannot afford to pay for the resort. Annette responds by emailing a German church-based organization in Thailand—the existence of which she discovered on television—and requesting help. An employee at the organization, Sandra Lehmann, makes contact with an employee of HGT, who she then asks for assistance in communicating with the resort. After visiting Peter, Sandra reports back to Annette that although Peter is unhappy with his living situation, she cannot confirm his grievances. Even if the resort is not comparable with a German old age care home, his basic needs are met. Furthermore, she informs Annette that Peter is convinced he is in good enough health to take care of himself and that he complains that he has been placed in the resort against his will. Sandra does not agree with this assessment and doubts Peter’s willingness and ability to assess his own health. She sees no alternative for Peter in Thailand other than staying in the resort. Since Peter has no funds to pay for his stay in the resort, however, Sandra and the employee of HGT conclude that Peter has no prospects in Thailand and should return to Germany, because there he could access the benefits of the old age social security system. But returning to Germany is not what Peter wishes to do. Sandra and the employee of HGT decide to “work on” him over the next few days to change his mind. After a few days of “working on” him, Peter agrees to travel back to Germany. However, the decision gives rise to various problems: first, there is a lack of money to pay for the return to Germany, and second, Peter is living in Thailand without a visa (having overstayed the 30-day visa he entered on) and would be subject to a fine or a brief period of imprisonment upon leaving the country. To secure financial support, approaches are first made to Annette and to Peter’s children, who decline to send any money. Annette only has a small pension herself, and his children refuse any contact with their father. Other relatives, acquaintances, or friends in Germany are not available. In Thailand, Peter does not maintain any social contacts who might be identified as actors of support. Finally, Sandra contacts the German pension insurance and, on behalf of Peter, requests an advance from his pension. The advance payment of two months’ pension is approved. Combined with donations from the church-based

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organization and money from HGT, it was possible to pay for his return to Germany and the fine for his expired visa to avoid imprisonment. But from the perspective of Sandra, a further problem arises. Since she assumes that Peter cannot take care of himself alone, she wants to ensure that his care will be covered once he arrives in Germany. Since there are no options within the family network or among friends, Sandra contacts the old age care home where Peter lived before his last departure for Thailand. The care home agrees to his readmission, on the condition that the costs would be covered. This is achieved by sending a pension notification from Peter. Peter agrees to return to the residential care home. Once in Germany, new problems arise. When Peter presents himself at the old age care home in Germany, they refuse to admit him because the costs could not be covered due to the pension prepayment sent to Thailand. The social welfare office—the authority responsible for granting state welfare benefits in Germany—is called in. It agrees that it will meet the costs that are not otherwise covered. Nevertheless, Peter’s admission to the old age care home still fails because he has no health insurance, which is mandatory in Germany. He is taken to a homeless shelter. After extensive negotiations and readmission to the statutory health insurance scheme in Germany, Peter is finally admitted to the care facility. Although this case is particularly dramatic, it is not an isolated one. It draws attention to the structural problems inherent to social protection for retirement migrants from Germany in Thailand, which amount to distinct gaps in healthcare, long-term care, and financial support. These relationships are further explored below with reference to the four potential sources of social protection suggested by Levitt et al. (2016).

The State Questions concerning the social protection of retirement migrants from Germany in Thailand unfold against the backdrop of the relative immobility of Germany’s old age social security system, which is based on three central social insurance schemes: pension insurance, health insurance, and long-term care insurance. There is also a tax-based state welfare assistance program intended to prevent people from sliding into poverty. Although in recent years Germany’s old age social security system has opened up for the transfer of social security benefits to countries abroad, this remains— with the exception of pensions—largely confined to the member states of the European Union. For migrants to Thailand, this means that, apart

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from pensions, state coverage under the social security system is largely non-existent. Neither benefits from the statutory health insurance scheme nor the long-term care insurance scheme can be claimed in Thailand. Likewise, state welfare assistance generally cannot be claimed.4 Upon migrating to Thailand, German people also lose entitlement to (non-­ pension) benefits during temporary stays in Germany because these benefits require German residency, which the majority of interviewees have given up. The loss of benefits from the German social security system therefore means that in the event of health, long-term care, and financial problems in Thailand, it is not possible to fall back on state forms of protection from Germany. Benefits can be reclaimed if a person returns permanently to Germany; however, this is often associated with time-consuming processes and problems of many kinds. The state social security system in Thailand has hardly any relevance for retired migrants since its benefits are limited and linked to employment in Thailand (Schramm, 2002, p. 56).

The Market The market offers a variety of options for protecting against certain risks in Thailand, especially illness, by providing a host of possibilities for purchasing health insurance. For the interviewees, however, this is scarcely viewed as a possible or appropriate option. Health insurances are sometimes tied to conditions that substantially limit admission (e.g., by excluding certain pre-existing medical conditions) but above all, for many of the men they are unaffordable. Health insurance is not a mandatory requirement in Thailand. “I don’t have [health insurance] […] no one here does”—this quote from an interviewee clearly expresses the lack of coverage against health risks of retirement migrants. The large majority of the interviewees has no health insurance. Many men rely on the low costs of (state) healthcare in Thailand, following the assumption that it is cheaper to bear the costs of healthcare than those of health insurance. However, this often turns out to be a fallacy. Lengthy hospital stays and complex medical treatments in particular can result in costs that sometimes exceed the men’s financial resources, especially if they wish for a high quality of care. The retirement migrants’ lack of protection from health risks has become a severe problem for the Thai public health system. Public hospitals in Thailand admit foreigners despite their often-scarce resources,

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resulting in enormous amounts of unpaid bills. Though there are no precise figures, the financial burdens created by unpaid medical treatments are substantial.5 The interviews spell out the consequences of men’s lack of coverage against health risks, including their refraining from seeking medical treatment, even for serious illnesses. For instance, we learn from an interviewee with leukemia that his illness remains untreated due to a lack of financial resources. We also hear about treatment “on the quiet.” Several times during the interviews there is mention of consulting a medical doctor who had lost his license to practice in Germany and moved to Thailand, where he gives diagnoses and recommends medicines and medical treatments. Moreover, the purchase of medicine on the black market is quite widespread, though there is a known risk that the men might end up with adulterated medicines. The situation is similar concerning coverage in the event of a need for long-term care or assistance. In Thailand, a range of nursing and old age care facilities exist which are specifically targeted at German-speaking people (Bender et  al., 2020; Horn et  al., 2016). However, nobody in our sample considered using these facilities in the event of needing long-term care. With monthly prices starting between €1,250 and €1,850 depending on the level of care needed, this alternative is often not a financially viable option, given the resources at the men’s disposal. For all those who cannot afford a high-priced facility, there are a few cheaper facilities that are not specifically aimed at German-speaking  people. The case of Peter shows, however, that even this option is not affordable for everyone.

Social Ties The Family The above-mentioned strained or broken-off family relationships explain why family members in Germany rarely have a bearing on issues of social protection for the interviewees. In accordance with their wishes, at the time of the interviews, each interviewee has a Thai partner. Although these relationships can be considered as new social ties, they are ambivalent concerning questions of social protection. This can be illustrated by the example of financial support and assistance in the event of a need for long-term care. Financial transfers from the men to the women play a major role in these

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relationships (see Bender & Schweppe, in this volume). The transfers and the financial strains they can entail, even among those with relatively good financial resources, are a central topic in all interviews. Almost all of the men’s Thai partners were from Isaan, an impoverished rural part of Thailand in the northeast of the country. The processes of migration from this region, which often lead to the tourist centers of Thailand and especially into the prostitution milieu, have become a mass phenomenon for the search of a way out of poverty for themselves and their families (Cohen, 2003; Maher & Lafferty, 2014). The interviews indicate that the men’s relationships are intertwined with the meager financial resources of the women and their families. The Thai partners (with one exception) are not engaged in paid employment, sometimes at the men’s wish. The men largely finance the couple’s living expenses and usually provide the women with a monthly sum of money for their own use. However, situations constantly occur that result in the men giving the women additional money, often due to poverty-related crises in the women’s families. Many interviews show that these often high and unidirectional monetary transfers are associated with considerable financial burdens and strained financial situations for the men—sometimes to the extent that they can barely cover living costs  (see also Bender and Schweppe in this book). Because the financial flows are unidirectional, the men themselves cannot fall back on their partners in the event of financial shortfalls or crises. Being able to fall back on their partners in the event of needing long-­ term care is also uncertain and by no means reliable. A 75-year-old man with stomach cancer who has had a Thai girlfriend for several years says that she currently cares for him, and he “somehow” thinks she would continue to do so, “but then again, you never know.” In response to our question about their desires and prospects for long-term care, most men do not mention their partners, although the hope of being cared for by their partners can play a role in men’s provision of financial support to the women. For example, Hans Schlesig says: “I also built her [his Thai partner] a nice house in Isan. I gave it to her as a gift, the car I also gave her as a gift […]. So I took care of her, with the thought in the back of my mind, when I get older and maybe get sick, I have a nurse at home.” Friends and Acquaintances The interviewees’ reduced social networks in Germany have already been pointed out; few of the men have any relationships with friends or

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acquaintances from earlier life contexts. In Thailand as well, the men rarely have close social relationships except with their female partners. Friendships or closer relationships with Thai people are impeded by an almost complete lack of Thai language skills (and often other foreign languages as well). The interviewees generally described friendships with Thai people as atypical. Close relationships with Germans or other Westerners in Thailand are also rare. While the men report knowing many other Germans and Europeans, none of them speak about close friendships or relationships with other Westerners. No German or other European person in Thailand was perceived as someone “upon whom an individual can call for (…) supports” (Levitt et al., 2016, p. 5). Relationships among the men are instead marked by social distancing. An expression often used by the interviewees reflects this well: “Beware of storms and wind and the Germans who are abroad.” Different reasons and experiences leading to distancing among the men can be reconstructed. The first reason is a lack of trust, particularly concerning information that men pass on to each other. Interviewees report that, knowingly or unknowingly, incorrect information is passed around: “Two people have a conversation at a bar, one says something wrong, and the other understands it even more wrongly,” states one man, describing how wrong information can be spread via the “bush telegraph” in Pattaya. Mention is also made of dishonest practices involving money among the men. They recount that newcomers to Thailand especially can be at risk if they trust other people from Germany when it comes to financial matters. One of the interviewees describes this as follows: “There are certainly crooks or, uh, attempts to scam their own countrymen when newcomers confide in another German or a Swiss, in most cases they’ll take advantage of them.” The multitude of problems migrants often bring with them to Thailand is also mentioned. Some men say that for their own well-being, they do not want to relate to the many people who come to Thailand with various problems. “There are so many [German-speaking men] here, they just don’t do you any good. They have so much negative potential.” Finally, one notable reason is the “constant chatter about others, putting them down, spreading rumors, envy, and things like that.” The men report that for the lack of topics of conversations, stories about other men and especially about women are the main topics among Westerners where stories are made up and rumors spread. Since they do not want to take part in this, they withdraw from respective social contacts.

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Third Sector Migration research has examined the processes of network- and community-­building among migrants and the development of migrant self-help groups, which are of high relevance for their social protection (Avato et al., 2010). Such processes can barely be found among the men who have migrated to Thailand. Targeted questioning during the interviews and Internet research did not turn up any such initiatives, although the potential they offer in terms of support is far from unrecognized among the retirees. One interviewee who has lived in Thailand for ten years says: “Most of them [retirement migrants] are relatively independent. Hardly anybody supports the other. […] If there would be a community, things could be easier. But that’s an illusion […]. My thought is that when you go to hospital here, it’s often expensive and […] and [if] such a community said: Ok, we’ll club together and each will give 10,000 baht, then it would be easier [but] there’s no community that works.” The relationships between the men outlined above, characterized by distance and mistrust, provide key reasons for the lack of community-building. Thai non-governmental organizations, which could be relevant for men’s social protection, are not mentioned during the interviews or found in our Internet research. The common lack of foreign language skills would also limit the relevance of such organizations. Two organizations were identified, however, which directly target their services to German-­ speaking migrants—mainly older men—in Pattaya. One of these, set up by a German church-based organization in Thailand, is a leisure center for German-speaking people in Pattaya. The center opens six days a week, operates a small café, and, in addition to church services in German, offers group leisure activities such as table tennis, boules, a regulars’ table, a choir and language courses, and discussion circles about religious or social topics. A representative of the German facility provider explains that it was established in response to the “really unique problem situation” in Pattaya, which is a reference to the often precarious life circumstances of the older men. “We wanted to do something about it,” he says. It is nevertheless of little relevance to the men’s social protection. The lack of use of the center is a recurring complaint by the persons in charge of the facility. When asked how or if the center makes any concrete provisions for people who find themselves in difficult life situations, the representative of the German facility provider replies that they have a “listening ear,” but if particularly serious cases come to light, then they would work closely with the

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organization Help for Germans in Thailand (HGT). HGT is described in more detail below because of its special relevance for questions of social protection.

Help for Germans in Thailand: A Charitable Organization HGT was founded in 2006 as an initiative of the then German ambassador in Thailand and is financed through donations and event proceeds. Its board consists of persons who live in Thailand and Germany and work in politics or business. The founding of the association can be explained by the multifaceted social problems and precarious life situations of German retirement migrants in Thailand and the ensuing consequences with which the German Embassy is confronted to a substantial extent. In our expert interviews with representatives of HGT, it is explained that the embassy is confronted by these problems on two levels: first, the retirement migrants themselves increasingly turn to the embassy with requests for help due to severe financial, health, and social difficulties. Second, the Embassy is also  increasingly been appproached  by  Thai authorities, especially from the health sector, due to the above-mentioned problem of high amounts of unpaid bills from German older migrants. In addition, law enforcement authorities also increasingly have turned to the embassy due to the sometimes illegal stays of retirement migrants in Thailand or their involvement in other illegal activities, or because migrants are found in a state of severe neglect. The interviewees explain, that due to the limitations of the German social security system in providing coverage against social problems in Thailand, the German embassy has very limited possibilities to respond to these problems. As stated on the HGT homepage: “The abundance of social problems in Thailand far exceeds the capacities of the German embassy to help” considering that “German social law (with just a few exceptions) stops at the German border.” One of the interviewees comments on the foundation of HGT as follows: “It is an attempt to delegate the embassy’s problems, so that the mass of depressed Germans can be sent away from its own waiting room.” HGT mainly focuses on men enduring considerable (health and/or financial) hardships which they cannot alleviate on their own. In most cases, HGT is contacted by hospitals, the police, the German embassy, or the German consulate who are confronted with men in such situations and

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ask for help to solving the respective problems. In other words, it intervenes when it is contacted by authorities for which the men have become a problem. In such cases, a fairly standardized procedure can be identified concerning HGT’s interventions, which was already indicated in the case of Peter Allenbach. Per its policy of only providing help when all other potential support options have been exhausted, HGT first checks possible sources of assistance at the disposal of the respective person. This usually consists of trying to contact relatives or other close social contacts in Germany. Due to the limited social networks and burdensome relationships in Germany, however, these possible sources of assistance are frequently non-existent. In such cases, as with Peter Allenbach, the following alternative is seen as the priority option: “He should return to Germany, yes, that’s what we often do. It’s best for him to return.” In other words, returning is seen as a universal solution and the right or best way, irrespective of the particular person and his specific life situation. Little consideration is given to the men’s  perspectives, or the implications for them returning to the very country they left on account of often-problematic life situations, and where they barely have social ties anymore. The idea that returning is the best option is justified in terms of qualifying for reintegration into Germany’s public social security system. Although one of the employees states that any decision to return to Germany is left to the person concerned, the example of Peter Allenbach suggests that it is questionable how much of a free choice this option actually is. In the event of a return to Germany, HGT usually organizes the return journey, often including the provision of financial resources for the return plane ticket and, as in the case of Peter Allenbach, sometimes arranges follow-up care in Germany. If a return to Germany is refused or not possible due to health reasons, there is a second alternative. HGT maintains a list of low-cost old age care facilities in Thailand. One of the HGT’s employees points out the limited quality of these facilities and that they are not in any way comparable with the quality of those in Germany: “That isn’t 24-hours care but someone comes now and again to support.” Care in these facilities can also be difficult due to the lack of communication in a common language. As with Peter, in the employee’s experience, many men being cared for in such facilities feel uncomfortable. But in her opinion: “The man must accept his position where he belongs, the man himself needs to accept his position that he can afford.”

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Contrary to the assumption that returning to Germany is best, the interviews with the men show that for many of them, returning to Germany is not an option even if their life in Thailand places considerable strain on their health or finances. The lack of social ties in Germany, the high cost of living, and the loss of the conveniences of life in Thailand— for example, the climate—are significant reasons for this. For instance, Klaus Krüger, who has been living in Thailand for ten years and has hardly any money for medical treatment for his serious heart disease, says: “What am I supposed to do in Germany? Sure, maybe I could go into hospital but what is the point if nobody visits me? Here at least I have my girlfriend.” Another interviewee fears that if he returned to Germany, the high costs of living would force him to spend money “hand over fist” so that it would not change his precarious financial situation much either. A considerable discrepancy is thus apparent between HGT’s assumption and practices and the men’s perspectives. This is also evident in the case of Peter Allenbach, where it was needed “to work on him” so that he would agree to return to Germany. The statement from the interviewee who sees the founding of the HGT as an attempt by the embassy to delegate its problems and “to send away the mass of depressed Germans from its own waiting room” can be further accentuated at this point. It is not only a problem delegation but ultimately an attempt to get rid of problems by shifting difficulties from the German embassy in Thailand back to Germany without taking into account the perspectives of the persons concerned.

Discussion When Levitt et  al. (2016) ask who among mobile people is left out of social protection, older men from Germany who have migrated to Thailand can be identified as a potential group. It is a group whose life situation after the end of their working lives in their country of origin is characterized by burdensome life circumstances, particularly by sparse financial resources, and falls through the net of social protection in their migration. The assumption made by Levitt et al. (2016) that all four sources of the resource environment (state, market, social ties, and the third sector) are increasingly crossing national borders and that individuals “increasingly look to each of these sources of provision” (p. 3) cannot be confirmed for this group. All four sources of social protection, both in the countries of

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origin and in Thailand, offer hardly any relevant and reliable resources for the social protection of German retirement migrants in Thailand. These results extend the theoretical debate on retirement migration and questions of the vulnerability of retirement migrants by issues of social protection. They point to the complex intertwinements of social protection between men’s life circumstances in their countries of origin and their life situations in Thailand. Although certainly not true for all, it shows that men migrating to Thailand tend to be a vulnerable group, given the not inconsiderable proportion of them with relatively low incomes, along with burdens of poor health and social ties. Faced with burdensome lives in Germany due to social and financial strains, migration aims to reduce these pressures and create greater scope for action in old age. Therefore, migration in this context can be seen as a “social protection tool” (Avato et al., 2010, p. 463, cited in Levitt et al., 2016, p. 4). In Thailand, however, men are confronted with living conditions that have the potential to perpetuate or further accentuate their vulnerabilities or even cause new ones, due to the lack of protection against key risks. This concerns financial, health, and care-related risks particularly, that is, precisely those risks that arise as a result of the discontinuation of benefits from the old age security system in Germany when migrating to Thailand and which are not replaced. The German old age social security system has reacted to the mobility processes in old age, but—with the exception of pensions—this stops at the borders of the member states of the European Union. HGT’s priority option of returning men to Germany in the event of serious problems is logical in that, given the lack of other alternatives, this is the only way to establish protection in the areas of health, long-term care, and financial hardship because returning to Germany opens up the possibility of claiming benefits from Germany’s old age social security system. A return to Germany, however, does not correspond to the life prospects of many men—not even in the event of serious problem situations in Thailand. The return to Germany prioritized by HGT can be interpreted as a stopgap for the social problems of older people from Germany in Thailand and the ensuing substantial consequences with which the German Embassy is confronted. It has traits of coercion and deportation processes, and raises questions about potential violations of the right of self-determination of those affected. The findings point back to Germany in two respects and pose critical questions of its old age social security system. Given the diverse retirement migrations from Germany to countries of the Global South that can

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already be observed, these are questions of urgent concern. Reliable forecasts indicate that, despite envisaged pension reforms, poverty in old age can be expected to increase significantly in years to come as pensions continue to fall (DIW, 2017). Due to the increasing evidence that low pensions—not only in Germany (for Japan: Ono, 2008, 2010,  for North America: Hayes, 2014)—constitute a key factor of retiring in the Global South, this most likely will push this development further. Social problems in Germany (or other countries of origin) are thus transferred to countries of the Global South. Furthermore, when retirement migration is associated with highly precarious life situations in the destination country due to the loss of social benefits from the old age social security system of the country of origin thereby creating a burden on the countries of the Global South—as exemplified by the pressures on the health system in Thailand— this points to global interdependencies in which countries of the Global South not only become the backyard for unsolved problems of old age and aging in the countries of origin but also have the consequences foisted on them. For the case of Germany, opening up its social security system internationally beyond the EU is a matter of urgent concern.

Notes 1. The research team included Désirée Bender and Sonja Großmann. 2. This law changed in 2014. Before that, the retirement age was 65 years. 3. The account presented was  reconstructed from  email correspondence between the parties involved. 4. One exception is Book 12 of the German Social Code (SGB 12, section 24, para. 1, first sentence), which makes reference to the exceptional provision allowing the receipt of social welfare assistance abroad if “extraordinary hardship” can be demonstrated while at the same time providing evidence that returning to Germany is impossible. Such reasons are as follows: (1) the care and upbringing of a child who has to stay abroad for legal reasons; (2) long-term inpatient care in an institution or severity of care need; or (3) sovereign authority. We did not come across any recourse to this regulation in our data. 5. There are numerous media reports on this issue. See, for example, Powell, 2019, Hua Hin Today, 2019.

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Glaser, B., & Strauss, A. L. (1967). The Discovery of Grounded Theory: Strategies for Qualitative Research. Aldine. Hall, K., & Hardill, I. (2016). Retirement Migration, the ‘Other’ Story: Caring for Frail Elderly British Citizens in Spain. Ageing and Society, 36, 562–585. Hayes, M. (2014). ‘We Gained a Lot Over What We Would Have Had’: The Geographic Arbitrage of North American Lifestyle Migrants to Cuenca, Ecuador. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 40(12), 1953–1971. Horn, V., Bender, D., Hollstein, T., & Schweppe, C. (2016). “Moving (for) Elder Care Abroad”: The Fragile Promises of Old Age Care Facilities for Elderly Germans in Thailand. In V. Horn & C. Schweppe (Eds.), Transnational Aging. Current Insights and Future Challenges (pp. 163–177). Routledge Publications. Hua Hin Today. (2019). Authorities to Track Down Foreigners Who Fail to Pay Medical Bills in Thai Hospitals. Retrieved December 15, 2020, from www. huahintoday.com/health-­n ews/authorities-­t rack-­d own-­f oreigners-­ who-­fail-­to-­pay-­medical-­bills-­thai-­hospitals King, R., Warnes, A.  M., & Williams, A.  M. (1998). International Retirement Migration in Europe. Population, Space and Place, 4(2), 91–111. Levitt, P., Viterna, J., Mueller, A., & Lloyd, C. (2016). Transnational Social Protection: Setting the Agenda. Oxford Development Studies, 45(1), 2–19. MacAuslan, I., & Sabates-Wheeler, R. (2011). Structures of Access to Social Provision for Migrants. In R. Sabates-Wheeler & R. Feldman (Eds.), Migration and Social Protection (pp. 61–87). Palgrave Macmillan. Maher, K. H., & Lafferty, M. (2014). White Migrant Masculinities in Thailand and the Paradoxes of Western Privilege. Social & Cultural Geography, 15(4), 427–448. Maher, K.  H., & Lafferty, M. (2020). Transnational Intimacy and Economic Precarity of Western Men in Northeast Thailand. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 46(1), 1–18. O’Reilly, K. (2000). The British on the Costa del Sol: Transnational Identities and Local Communities. Routledge. Oliver, C. (2008). Retirement Migration: Paradoxes of Ageing. Routledge. Ono, M. (2008). Long-Stay Tourism and International Retirement Migration: Japanese Retirees in Malaysia. In S. Yamashita, M. Minami, D. W. Haines, & J. S. Eades (Eds.), Transnational Migration in East Asia: Japan in a Comparative Focus (pp. 151–162). National Museum of Ethnology. Ono, M. (2010). Long-Stay Tourism: Elderly Japanese Tourists in the Cameron Highlands. Powell, S. (2019). Thailand To Impose Mandatory Health Insurance For Tourists & Long-Term Elderly Retirees. Retrieved December 10, 2020, from www. loyaltylobby.com/2019/05/24/thailand-­t o-­i mpose-­m andatory-­h ealth-­ insurance-­for-­tourists-­long-­term-­elderly-­retirees-­will-­it-­happen-­this-­time

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Raithelhuber, E., Sharma, N., & Schröer, W. (2018). The Intersection of Social Protection and Mobilities: A Move Towards a ‘Practical Utopia’ Research Agenda. Mobilities, 13(5), 685–701. Sabates-Wheeler, R., & Feldman, R. (Eds.). (2011). Social Protection and Migration. Claiming Social Rights Beyond Borders. Palgrave Macmillan. Schramm, B. (2002). Der Aufbau eines staatlichen Systems sozialer Sicherung in Thailand. Internationales Asienforum, 33(1–2), 47–65. Strauss, A., & Corbin, J. (1996). Grounded Theory: Grundlagen Qualitativer Sozialforschung. Beltz. Williams, A.  M., King, R., Warnes, A., & Patterson, G. (2000). Tourism and International Retirement Migration: New Forms of an Old Relationship in Southern Europe. Tourism Geographies, 2(1), 28–49.

CHAPTER 10

Care as a Right and Care as Commodity: Positioning International Retirement Migration in Thailand’s Old Age Care Regime Sirijit Sunanta and Kwanchanok Jaisuekun

Introduction Studies of international retirement migration (IRM) often focus on those who move, that is, older citizens from wealthier countries in the global North. The phenomenon has been analyzed from the perspective of transnational aging (Horn & Schweppe, 2017), the transnationalization of care (Ormond & Toyota, 2018) and retirement industry (Toyota & Xiang, 2012). Existing studies explore IRM from three scales of analysis: (1) Micro-scale where agency, identity, subjectivity, motivations, behaviors, and experiences of retirees from the Global North are explored (e.g., Howard, 2008, 2009; Husa et  al., 2014; Botterill, 2017; Jaisuekun &

S. Sunanta (*) • K. Jaisuekun Research Institute for Languages and Cultures of Asia, Mahidol University, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_10

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Sunanta, 2016; Tangchitnusorn, 2016; Scuzzarello, 2020); (2) Mesoscale—studies on private facilities in the Global South that have been developed for IRM and catering to older clients from the Global North (Bender et al., 2018; Vogler, 2015); and (3) Macro-scale analysis—studies of the global push and pull and structural factors in sending and receiving countries that contribute to the emergence of a transnational retirement industry (e.g., Toyota & Xiang, 2012; Hayes, 2015). What is still underdeveloped in the literature of IRM is the perspective from receiving destinations (except for a few studies that examine implications of IRM on local destinations, e.g., Spalding, 2013, Raditsch, 2015, Moralez, 2010, Hayes, 2018). Thus, the literature on IRM tends to reinforce the understanding that population aging and the care crisis is a problem restricted to the Global North. Although started in high-income countries, population aging has now been experienced by a growing number of middle- and low-income countries. The World Health Organization warns of a concerning fact that more old people will live in middle- and low-­income countries where long-term care systems are not yet established (Pot et al., 2018). Thailand is a popular IRM destination. The Thai government has actively promoted medical and wellness tourism, which include long-stay tourism and IRM, as a new direction for the tourism industry—Thailand’s key foreign income earner for the past 50 years (Kogiso, 2012; Nuttavuthisit, 2007). According to the UN classification, Thailand became an aging society in 2006 when 10 % of the population is 60 years and older (National Statistic Office, 2018). With 16.7% of the population aged 60 years and older in 2017 (National Statistic Office, 2018), Thailand ranked second after Singapore as the most aged nation in the Association of Southeast Asian Nation (ASEAN). The Kingdom is aging at an accelerating rate and is expected to become a complete aged society in 2021 with over 20% of the population aged (National Statistic Office, 2018). This chapter will illustrate that the rapid population change and heavy emphasis on national economic development have shaped the Thai government’s bifurcated approach to population aging. On the one hand, the government seeks to improve public support for older persons albeit with a slow pace compared to the rapid rate at which the Thai population is aging. On the other hand, the government and the private sector have developed care as commodity for wealthier Thais and older citizens from the global North who have relatively high purchasing power. As far as policies and public discourse are concerned, ideological gaps between the two approaches toward eldercare have not been directly addressed. Old

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age care as social protection for Thai citizens and commodified services for foreigners are planned and developed separately. Our ethnographic study of medical and social care provision in Pattaya, a Thai beach resort and Western migrant enclave, reveals that foreign retirees and local Thais share the same care resources. Drawing on feminist insights on the political economy of care, we analyze the implications of IRM, a form of care transnationalization, on social justice in global aging.

Theoretical Framework: The Political Economy of Care in a Global Context Our problematization of the bifurcated approach to eldercare in Thailand is informed by feminist insights on the political economy of care in a global context. Feminist scholars have contributed to the theorization of care work, pointing out that care activities are indispensable for society and the economy but often overlooked and devalued because they are traditionally carried out unpaid by women within the private household (Razavi, 2007; England, 2005). England (2005, p. 383) defines care work as “providing a service to people that helps develop their capabilities.” She further elaborates that “capabilities refer to health, skills, or proclivities that are useful to the individuals themselves or to others. These include physical and mental health, and physical, cognitive and emotional skills such as self-­ discipline, empathy and care” (England & Folbre, 2003, p. 64). Scholars of care work emphasize the overlapping space between healthcare and social care and the continuum between paid and unpaid care work, care carried out at home and in institutional settings, care provided by friends, family, volunteers, and care by paid professionals such as teachers, nurses, childcare workers, eldercare workers, therapists, and others (England & Folbre, 2003; Razavi, 2007; Hochschild, 2003; Yeates, 2012; Williams, 2014). The share of care provision, conceptualized as care diamond, is divided among the family/households, markets, the public sector, and the not-­ for-­profit sector (including voluntary and community provision) (Razavi, 2007, p. iv). Generally, the care diamond is differently configured in each country depending on socio-economic context and political-economic ideologies of care provision (Williams, 2014). The notion of welfare provision and the socialization of care work, in particular, are developed within the territoriality of the nation-state (Shutes & Chiatti, 2012). However,

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recent studies on care work have paid attention to the increasing commodification, privatization, and transnationalization of care. The global care chain (Ehrenreich & Hochschild, 2004) and the international division of reproductive labor (Parreñas, 2005) were conceptualized to analyze the migration of women from poorer countries to take up paid care work in the households in wealthier countries, leaving their own families’ care needs to be fulfilled by other women in the sending community. Analyzing the transnationalization of the retirement industry, Toyota and Xiang (2012) underscore the role of the state and corporate actors in the relocation of retirees from Japan to Southeast Asia where social care is more affordable. For Ormond and Toyota (2018), the transnationalization of health and long-term care encompasses transnational mobilities of both care providers—nurses, care, and domestic workers— and care seekers—medical travelers and retirees. The literature highlights the global interconnectedness in which health and social care policies in one country contribute to transnational mobilities of care seekers and care providers to and from another country (Toyota & Xiang, 2012; Williams, 2014; Hayes, 2015; Bender et  al., 2018). In neoliberal logics in which care has increasingly been commoditized and privatized, care mobilities are driven by cost differentials between the global North and South (Sunanta, 2020). The transnationalization of health and social care has implications on social justice because it has been embedded in and further exacerbating inequalities (Ormond & Toyota, 2018; Williams, 2014). The relocation of older citizens from wealthier countries to receive lower-cost care in Thailand could be viewed as a form of global care chain in which care labor is outsourced from the global North to the global South (see also Sunanta, 2020). Through the promotion of medical tourism and the IRM industry, the Thai government has marketized competitively priced Thai care internationally while the growing care needs in the country has been partly met by the import of even lower-priced care and domestic labor from poorer neighboring ASEAN countries (Boontinand, 2010).

Methodology This chapter draws on document and statistic materials related to policies and practices around eldercare for Thai citizens and IRM development for foreigners in Thailand. We study primary documents such as economic development strategic plans produced by the Thai government, Cabinet

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Resolutions, government websites, as well as official reports by the Thai government and international organizations such as the WHO and ILO. We also incorporate relevant secondary data from existing studies. In addition, to understand the impact of Western retirees on the local Thai old age care landscape, ethnographic fieldwork and interviews were conducted in Pattaya, a tourism destination and Western migrant enclave, from October 2019 to August 2020. Pattaya has a population of 119,122 with an estimate of 4–5 times unregistered population (Registration and Citizen ID section, Office of the Chief administrator of Pattaya City 2019, cited in: Bureau of Strategy and Budgeting, no date). There are two public and four private hospitals in the city. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 41 informants including 8 representatives of the public sectors (public hospitals, Pattaya City Municipality, local police department and the Tourism Centre), 13 representatives of private sectors and non-­ governmental organizations (private hospitals, private nursing homes, private insurance company, foundations working with Western foreigners and tourists, and a rescue foundation1), and 20 local Thais living in Pattaya. The interviews lasted between one and two hours and were recorded and transcribed. All interviews were anonymized. For data analysis, all interviews were first manually coded under three major themes: experience of engaging with Western long-stayers, concerns over the negative impacts of IRM on local populations and infrastructures, and recommendations for the future planning of IRM in Thailand. The coded data were then transferred into the data analysis software, MAXQDA, and interpreted further to finally connect them with theoretical frameworks.

Care as Rights: Old Age Care for Thai Citizens Considering old age care as right, The World Health Organization (WHO)’s world report on aging and health (2015) and the global strategy and action plan on aging and health (2016) state that every country should have a sustainable and equitable long-term care system for older people. While high-income countries in the global North have established some forms of welfare and long-term care systems for their senior citizens, many middle-income countries including Thailand have not yet formulated a national long-term old age care system to cope with the rapidly aging population (Khongboon & Pongpanich, 2018). The lion share of eldercare in Thailand (90%) has been shouldered by the family especially by female family members—wives, daughters, and daughters-in-law (Knodel

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et al., 2018). State assistance in the form of tax credits and loans for adult children caring for aging parents reifies the notion that children take the responsibility as main carers for elder persons. Although the Thai society places great importance to family piety, when it comes to eldercare, the practice will be unsustainable as family size decreases, more women join the work force and family members are dispersed (Khongboon & Pongpanich, 2018; Sasat & Bowers, 2013). Thai national and local governments are aware of the challenges posed by population aging. To respond to the immediate challenge of population aging, the Department of Older Persons was set up in 2015 under the Ministry of Social Development and Human Security to oversee policies and practices about senior citizens in Thailand. The formation of a long-­ term care system in Thailand is underway but a baby step in its formation that does not match the Thai rapid population aging. As of 2016, a budget of 900 million baht (approximately US $30 million) has been allocated to the National Health Security Office (NHSO), the public health department, to work with local governments in providing long-term care assistance for the elder. Under this program, community health volunteers, an existing workforce under the Ministry of Public Health, were given 70 hours training in eldercare. Community health volunteers are now assigned to survey the number and needs of older persons in the community on top of their regular duty. Their services of home visit and providing support in the ratio of one caregiver to ten dependent older persons (National Health Security Office, no date) only supplement family care, which remains the key source of eldercare provision. In Thailand, many citizens are not financially secured. Over 54% of the Thai labor force is outside the formal sector and therefore not covered by a pension system (National Statistic Office, 2019). Around 25.4% of those over 60 years have no savings and 18% have savings of less than US $1660 (National Statistic Office, 2018). Old age cash allowances of aprox. US $20–30 monthly provided by the state is not enough to live by and intended to supplement financial support from the family. Economic vulnerability of older people in Thailand can be identified by the low-income level, lack of assets, lack of family support, low levels of social and human capital, and lack of social entitlements, that is, state pensions and other forms of public support (Lloyd-Sherlock, 2006). In the realm of healthcare, Thai citizens are covered by the Universal Healthcare Coverage, which came into effect in 2002. Extending the healthcare coverage to the entire population considerably over-stretched

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the existing publicly funded, the primary healthcare system, and diluting the benefits of the scheme for older people (Lloyd-Sherlock, 2006, p. 94–95). The cost for the Universal Healthcare scheme rose from 55.3 billion baht (US $1.84 billion) in 2003 to 165 billion baht (US $5.5) in 2017 raising the question of sustainability (Chantanusornsiri, 2017). The ratio of 8.1 medical doctors per 10,000 population places Thailand behind most middle-income countries in the availability of healthcare personnel (World Health Statistics, 2020). Thai public hospitals are overcrowded and patients have to endure long waiting hours. The anthropologist, Bo Kyeong Seo (2016), illustrates that healthcare provided by the state under the Universal Healthcare program is seen as a gift rather than entitlement, for which poor citizens reciprocate by enduring long suffering before receiving treatment. In addition, the shortages of health care and social care personnel pose a great problem in the rapidly aging Thai society. Calculating from available data, Siriphan Sasat et al. (2019) estimate that to support long-term care for older persons in Thailand, there is an additional need of 2041 physicians, 58,841 nurses, 3649 physiotherapists, 412 practical nurses, and 82,528 care assistants. Care labor shortages in Thailand contribute to the migration of predominantly female migrant workers from neighboring Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, and Vietnam (CLMV) to provide care and domestic labor in Thailand. Records from the Thai Foreign Worker Administration Office, Ministry of Labour, show that around 50,000 migrant domestic workers are employed in the Kingdom (Lephilibert & Chenphuengpawn, 2019). The actual number is expected to be much higher because there are migrant workers who did not go through official channels to register their employment. Homenet Thailand, a non-governmental organization working with homeworkers and domestic workers in Thailand, estimates that up to 90% of domestic workers are documented or undocumented migrants from neighboring countries (ILO, 2013). They provide low-­ paid, low-skilled care and domestic labor in a live-in arrangement not desirable for Thai workers (Boontinand, 2010). Strategies to cope with population aging in Thailand require significant financial support, which in turn depends on national economic performance. The Thai government has put much effort on driving the growth of the economy to take Thailand off the “middle-income trap.” As will be illustrated in the next section, one important source of foreign income for the Thai economy is the tourism industry, which has now been geared toward medical tourism, long-stay tourism, and IRM.

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Care as Commodity: Global Aging as an Opportunity for the Thai Economy The Thai government has promoted Thailand as a desirable retirement destination since the late 1990s. In 1998, the Ministry of Commerce initiated the “Long-Stay and Health Care Project” with an aim to encourage older-aged tourists with funding resources to stay longer in Thailand and contribute to the national revenue (Toyota & Xiang, 2012). The policy has continued despite two military coups and changes in the government over the past 20 years. In 2018, the Thai military government under the administration of Prayut Chan-Ocha introduced “Thailand 4.0,”2 a new model that aims to accelerate Thailand’s economic development, and transform the country from a middle-income to a high-income country. Its key components emphasize “security, wealth, and sustainability.” The “Medical Hub” was identified as part of New S-Curve industries3, an important mechanism to attract revenue into the country. Similar to other Asian countries, Thailand facilitates long-stay tourism in combination with health tourism (Sujarittanonta & Khemapayana, 2014). In order to promote long-stay tourism, the Thai government created a new visa category, the renewable one-year non-immigrant O-A Long-stay visa. In addition, the non-immigrant O-X Long-stay visa was introduced in 2016, for nationals of 14 countries—Denmark, Norway, Netherlands, Sweden, France, Finland, Italy, Germany, Switzerland, Australia, US, UK, Japan, and Canada—who wish to stay in Thailand for up to ten years. To obtain a long-stay visa, foreign nationals have to be over 50 and meet financial requirements in the forms of fixed amount of deposit in a Thai bank account and/or proof of a fixed amount of a monthly income4 (Department of Consular Affairs, 2017). The Thai government, through the Tourism Authority of Thailand, directly participates in the long-stay industry by setting up and being a shareholder of long-stay tourism companies. The Thailand Longstay Management Company Limited and the Thailand Privilege Card Company Limited were launched in 2001 and 2003, respectively, with the Tourism Authority of Thailand as the sole shareholder. The companies target high-­ spending foreign customers who are willing to pay tiered membership fees for special services during their long stay in Thailand. These include fast track at airport immigration, visa arrangement, fast track for driving license application (The Thailand Longstay Company, no date) and access to golf courses, spas, hotels, clubs, annual health checkup, airport limousine

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services and so forth (Thailand Elite Card Company Limited, n.d.). The main markets for long-stay tourism are Japan, Europe, and the US (Korkietpitak & Pinyaphund, 2009), demonstrating the Thai government’s attempts to court affluent pensioners from countries with reliable pension systems. For a few decades, Thailand has become a second home for many Westerners. Estimating the number of foreign retirees from wealthier countries in Thailand is difficult due to the diverse visa statuses of the long-stayers. Statistics of foreign nationals who applied for extension of temporary stays in Thailand in 2017 revealed that 72,969 identified “retirement” as their purpose to stay while over 16,276 stated “to join Thai spouse” as the reason to remain in the Kingdom. Top sending countries include the UK, the US, Germany, China, Switzerland, France, Australia, Japan, India, and Norway (Chamchan, 2018). Husa et  al. (2014) proposed that the number of Western residents in Thailand is much higher than that expressed by official statistics, as some may stay for years on a tourist visa, departing for a neighboring country shortly before visa expiration, and re-entering immediately with a new tourist visa. In reality, the economic contribution of IRM or medical tourism has not been fully assessed and the impact on the local population not fully understood. This is caused by the vague definition of IRM and the heterogeneity of migrants/long-stayers from the Global North and their migration motivations and behaviors. The following section will illustrate that receiving long-stayers from wealthier countries has created some unintended consequences to the Thai care landscape: straining public care resources and increasing inequality through the privatization and commodification of healthcare.

Socio-economic Impacts of IRM on Thailand IRM from the Global North to Thailand has different characteristics compared to retirement mobilities to other destinations. Westerners who stay long term in Thailand are predominantly older male in intimate partnership with Thai women (Howard, 2008; Statham et  al., 2020; KochSchulte, 2008; Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016). The possibility to form romantic relationship despite an advanced age constitutes a motivation for men from Global North countries to relocate to Thailand (Howard, 2009). Relationships between Western men and Thai women are diverse ranging from boy friend-girl friend, bargirl and customers, to formal

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marital relationships (Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016, 2021). The male-­ dominated migration from wealthier countries to Thailand has developed in parallel with the highly feminized Thai marriage migration to Europe, which peaked in the 2000s (Sunanta, 2020). After years of working in high-income countries in the Global North to support their families in Thailand, a number of Thai marriage migrants decide to retire in Thailand with their European husbands (Kanchanachitra and Chuenglertsiri 2020, Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016, Sunanta, 2020). For population mobilities from the Global North to Thailand, tourism, retirement migration, lifestyle migration, and marriage migration are closely intertwined (Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016, 2021; Maher & Lafferty, 2014; Lafferty & Maher, 2020; Thompson et al., 2016; Sunanta, 2020). Concerning the Thai government’s hopes for IRM and medical tourism to boost the Thai economy, researchers have pointed out that long-­ stayers do not spend as much as short-term tourists (Xiang and Toyota 2012, Koch- Schulte, 2008). Although their old age pension from the Global North gains additional value in Thailand and is a stable source of income, retirees are sensitive to declining health and the fluctuating exchange rate (Botterill, 2017). A number of foreign retirees in Thailand see themselves as driven by economic necessity caused by the dwindling old age pension and a high cost of living in their home countries (e.g., Husa et al., 2014; Jaisuekun, 2017) and are careful with their spending in Thailand. Not all foreign retirees have disposable income to spend on private care facilities and some male retirees express their hope for their Thai wives to care for them in their older age (Koch- Schulte, 2008, Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016). Dependence on Thai spouses can be precarious in the long run (Maher & Lafferty, 2014; Botterill, 2017). Hospitals in Thai IRM destinations have reported outstanding medical bills incurred by foreigners who are abandoned by both their marital families in Thailand and natal families in the home countries. In 2019, the Ministry of Public Health’s report of over 300 million baht (US $10 million) loss from outstanding medical bills incurred by foreigners annually was used to convince the cabinet to approve the implementation of the new requirement for long-stay visa holders to obtain health insurance (Cabinet Resolution, 2016). From our ethnographic study in Pattaya, Thai staff members in public and private hospitals have reported an increasing number of foreign long-­ stayers in Thai medical facilities. Hospital staff we interviewed share some concerns about foreign long-stayers using resources that are intended for

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Thai citizens. Foreign long-stayers receive services at a subsidized rate and in some cases cannot pay their medical bills in public hospitals. In addition, foreign patients consume more time and require extra services such as translation. Wealthy foreigners who can afford private medical care have priority to services and medicines over poorer Thais with the same health conditions. A nurse at a public hospital in Pattaya shares her view of the increasing financial burden to the Thai public health caused by foreign long-stayers in the city. They (foreign long-stayers) are using resources funded by the Thai government for Thai public usage. We are allocated government funding according to the number of Thai citizens in our jurisdiction. Now foreign retirees know that they can use Thai public hospitals. They are aware that they have to pay for the treatments. Minor treatments do not cost much but major procedures can cost over 100,000 baht (3,300 USD, the authors). Some foreigners can afford the treatments but some can’t. Sometimes their relatives (in the home country, the authors) pay for them. Some can only afford a part of the costs. In that case, we ask them to pay in installments. From my observation, retired foreigners have pensions that amount to about 30,000–40,000 baht monthly (1,000–1,200 US $, the authors). They can therefore pay back 5,000–10,000 baht a month. But there are also cases who cannot pay at all. Just this past year, there were 5–6 cases of American, British and Dutch nationals who could not pay for their treatments. But the most serious cases were two German nationals who died in the ward. The relatives refused to pay for the treatment and we could not discharge the cases. Thai charities do not take foreigners’ cases.

Time is a precious and scarce resource in healthcare as manifested in a long waiting time in overcrowded public hospitals’ waiting room. Due to the volume of patients compared to available medical doctors, general Thai patients only see the doctor for a few minutes per a hospital visit. The recommended average time for one general outpatient’s visit in a Thai public hospital is five minutes per visit (Bunjongpak, 2016). According to a staff member in a public hospital in Pattaya, foreign patients demand much more time than what is allocated to general Thai patients, significantly adding to the time constraint and the workload of medical personnel. The main problem is communication. Foreign patients are self-centered and demand detailed information. I can explain treatments to a Thai patient in

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five minutes. But with a foreign patient, it would be no less than 30 minutes. They would ask Why? Why? For example, in a surgery case, they would ask about the site of the operation, the number of days in hospitalization and the kind of material used in the surgery. It would be no less than 30 minutes for sure.

Reflecting on paid services in private hospital settings, a former nurse explains health inequity promoted by the commodification and privatization of healthcare. “Foreign patients would demand imported original drugs that are cheaper in Thailand than in their home countries because of the Thai government’s subsidy. Foreigners with medical insurance have a quicker access to expensive medical procedures such as a brain scan. Thai patients who cannot pay have to wait for their time even though their health conditions are the same. We consider foreigners as the drivers of our economy. In an economic term, the hospital gains financially. But in a social term it creates inequality of access to drugs and timely medical treatments. In Pattaya, money comes first and it affects the society.”

Despite different sets of policies by the Thai government toward developing care as social protection for older Thai citizens and care as commodity for foreigners from rich countries, the data from Pattaya reveals that foreign long-stayers are part of the local care landscape sharing the same resources with Thais. Foreign retirees are implicated in the distribution of time, labor, and budget in the Thai healthcare system. In addition, very frail and terminally ill foreigners require intensive homecare. Due to the lack of public support in Thailand for both Thai and foreign older persons, Thai spouses of the foreigners are expected to shoulder heavy care responsibilities. Physical and emotional labor required of intensive homecare for older foreign spouses in Thailand prevent Thai woman carers from earning an income, caring for other family members, or having a life of their own. Caring for her German partner with last stage cancer in Pattaya, a Thai woman reveals that she has to put her life on hold. Sleep deprivation leaves her with a chronic fatigue “I’m dead on my feet. It’s either he dies or I die.”

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Discussion and Conclusion In this chapter we analyze the political economy of eldercare in Thailand where the state promotes the commodification of care for retirement migrants while public care and social protection for the growing number of Thai aged citizens is underdeveloped. The increasing transnationalization and commodification of care has challenged conventional logics of care responsibility, entitlement and territoriality (Böcker & Hunter, 2017; Ormond & Toyota, 2018; Williams, 2014). Through the IRM industry and long-stay tourism, the Thai entrepreneurial state seeks to boost the Thai economic growth from the pension systems in the Global North. In the meantime, a large number of Thai workers, including those in the tourism and hospitality industry, do not enjoy economic security in their old age. The fact that old age social protection in Thailand is behind those in wealthier IRM sending countries attests to inequality in global aging. Because of the lack of a clear definition and the diversity of long-stayers’ profiles and practices, economic benefits of IRM for Thailand is difficult to assess. Much of the Thai government’s policies regarding medical tourism and IRM have been formed out of speculations rather than solid research. Connell (2016) questions the reliability of cited “success” numbers—of patients and income—generated from travelers from the Global North in the Thai medical business. Ormond et al. (2015) observe a similar lack of information about advantages and disadvantages of medical tourism for Malaysia, another ASEAN country competing with Thailand for medical tourists and retirement migrants. Our ethnographic data from Pattaya reveal that citizens from richer countries are not necessarily rich. Some even depend on public resources intended for Thai citizens, adding a burden to the already strained Thai public healthcare facilities. The Thai state has recently realized this unintended consequence of old age migration from the Global North and set up a new requirement in which retirement visa holders have to acquire private medical insurance in 2019. The move might not solve the problem as many foreign retirees choose to be in Thailand through other channels such as repeatedly crossing land borders to obtain a new tourist visa when an existing one expires (Husa et al., 2014). Analyzing trends in medical travels, Connell (2016, p. 13) notes that the privatization and commodification of healthcare transforms the technological and political perspectives on the health system “where medical services can be bought from the lowest cost-provider, rather than

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wellbeing created by remedying the social, political and economic determinants of health.” The bifurcated approach to health and personal care for older persons in Thailand exemplifies the contested notion of care— between commodity to which access is determined by individuals’ economic standing and essential activities that sustain human’s life and dignity, which should be accorded human right status. According to the care diamond concept, care responsibilities are shouldered by different sectors in society. Minimal social care provision by the state means care responsibilities are loaded on other actors, especially the family. Lacking adequate care infrastructures, families in developing economies take matters into their own when a member migrates to higher-­ income places in order to send remittances back to left-behind loved ones. Thai wives in Europe and CLMV female domestic workers in Thailand send remittances back home to represent their commitment to “caring about” left-behind aging parents whom they cannot “care for” personally. Given its important implication on social equality, the distribution of any economic gains from medial and long-stay tourism matters. They should be used to improve social care services, especially for the disadvantaged, rather than shifted to other sectors or further benefitting the rich. The state with its apparatus has the ability and responsibility to regulate the distribution and redistribution of care resources to reduce inequality that accompanies the increasing privatization and commodification of care.

Notes 1. A charity that provides emergency rescue services for Thai and non-Thai citizens. The rescue foundation plays a significant role in providing help to Westerners who fall ill or die in Thailand, in some cases, with no relatives. 2. Thailand economic model: Thailand 1.0—Agriculture; Thailand 2.0—Light industries; Thailand 3.0—Heavy industries; and Thailand 4.0—innovation-­ driven economy. 3. The government identifies 10 future industries that will push Thailand to become a developed country. The industries are divided into two categories; the S-Curve and the New S-Curve. The S-curve refers to existing industries that already have solid foundations but require further improvement through innovation and R&D to add value and keep up with global competition, for example, agricultural and biotechnology, smart electronics, affluent medical and wellness tourism, next-generation automobiles, and food for the future. The New S-Curve involves developing five new industries to enhance their capabilities to support future competitiveness, for example,

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biofuels and biochemistry, digital economy, a medical hub, automation and robotics, and aviation and logistics. 4. For non-immigrant O-A visa holders, either a Thai bank account with a balance of at least 800,000 baht (US $27,000), a monthly salary of at least 65,000 baht (US $2200), or a combination of a deposit account plus an annual income of no less than 800,000 baht (US $27,000) is required. Non-immigrant O-X visa holders have to provide a proof of bank deposit of no less than 3 million baht (US $100,000) in Thailand or a bank deposit of no less than 1.8 million baht (US $60,000) and an annual income of no less than 1.2 million baht (US $40,000). Such amount must be maintained in bank deposit in full for at least one year and kept at no less than 1.5 million baht (US $50,000) thereafter.

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CHAPTER 11

Looking Back to Go Forward: A Comparative Engagement with International Retirement Migration in the Global South Caroline Oliver

Introduction In the wake of the 2008 global economic crisis, Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2017, p. 174) asks, ‘What if Europe, rather than being the solution to the problems of the world, were itself the problem?’ Should Europe rely on its own experience alone, or could understanding of its issues benefit from the experience of a much wider world? This chapter considers those questions in arguing for an accumulative approach to International Retirement Migration (IRM), where the uneven experiences of the first wave of intra-European IRM might be better understood by applying understandings of contemporary IRM processes in the Global South. Such an exercise helps clarify to what extent iterations of IRM in the

C. Oliver (*) University College London, London, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2022 C. Schweppe (ed.), Retirement Migration to the Global South, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_11

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Global South are a fundamentally different process to their counterparts in Europe and also illustrate new insights into old sites. The chapter revisits my own writing on IRM in Spain (based on ethnographic research periodically between 1999 and 2014) through the lens of developing scholarship on IRM in the Global South. The analysis is situated in an account of IRM in the Costa del Sol, an area transformed from fishing and agricultural villages in the 1960s to a hub of international and residential tourism. Inspired by the perspective of comparative urbanism to begin the conversation, my analysis is held in dialogue with findings from the non-­ European world to generate reciprocal learning and indicate areas of future consideration in the field.

Positionality: IRM Scholarship and Comparative Learning Early work in the field of IRM focused mainly on the migration of older people from Northern and Central European countries to the Mediterranean region. Certainly in the late 1990s when I began my doctoral work, IRM to Spain was a proliferating mobility form within Europe, representing a relatively unresearched subject (King et al., 2000; O’Reilly, 2000). IRM was increasing due to the growth of the ‘grey pound’, cheaper international travel and, by then, several decades of mass tourism in the Mediterranean. To some extent, it represented an extension of the process of domestic retirement mobility, whereby from the post-war years, older people chose to retire in other locations in their own countries, attracted by their amenities (e.g. the South coast in England, or retirement communities in Florida or Arizona in the United States). The extension of this to migration abroad, particularly within Europe, was facilitated by the clear economic benefits of doing so in an era of globalization, especially since property was more affordable. Therefore from the outset, the growth of IRM was tied strongly to the international real estate market. Yet, as scholars have demonstrated, the motivations for IRM are not purely economic. Benson and O’Reilly (2009) identified that this form of migration is driven primarily by lifestyle factors, where migration was not just about gaining better value but is also about seeking a better way of life. My own work showed that for retired people moving to Southern Spain, IRM enabled a pursuit of specific cultural imaginaries of ageing (Oliver, 2008). Moving abroad helped to furnish identity transitions of

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retiring workers in late capitalist society, whereby mobility was an important contributor to retirees’ life projects. Migration was understood as facilitating an escape from perceived less satisfactory approaches to ageing in the homeland and achieving a better lifestyle. The process opened up a repertoire of imagined places and ‘others’ (other British people around or in the homeland, or local Spanish people) for articulating their ageing identities (ibid.). Over the last two decades, we have witnessed changes in both IRM as an object of study as well as in the scholarly tools used to interpret those processes. On the one hand, IRM has grown and diffused globally within a changing neoliberal and globalizing economy. New overseas markets have been developing in South East Asia, Central America and Africa, often expanding from existing touristic or professional mobility forms and evidencing a global interconnectedness of ageing (Benson, 2013, Benson & O’Reilly, 2009, Botterill, 2017, Hayes, 2018, Schweppe, this volume). Often context rich, the studies of IRM in the Global South have identified distinctive and place-specific features of the process. Yet these developments have occurred within shifts in broader scholarship of the social sciences, where there has also been a re-evaluation of the problematic locus of theory production as within Euro-American contexts. For example, Ananya Roy (2009, p.  820) urges that to overcome the dominance of Eurocentric paradigms of knowledge, ‘the centre of theory-making must move to the global South’. In this chapter, I revisit my own research site by drawing inspiration from urban scholars’ consideration of the global diffusion of common processes (such as gentrification) through comparative perspectives. According to Harris (2008), comparative urbanism entails a recognition of both the global spread of processes, but also the ways in which such processes are affected by the geographically and historically specific manifestations and diverse effects of them, as influenced by countries’ unique cultural histories, social hierarchies and economic bases through which those processes manifest. As Harris (2008) argues, the approach helps interpret additional ‘waves’ of a process when considering the ‘same’ process within locations in the global South (in his case, gentrification). Applying this perspective to IRM, I revisit earlier research and fieldwork conducted in Spain in the light of scholarship of IRM in the global South. This helps in recognizing common aspects, for example by understanding IRM as an intensified and expanded set of processes with similar dynamics that were already apparent within Europe some time ago. Yet it also avoids

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the assumption that it is a simple replication and projection out from ‘heartlands’ in the Global North, indicating instead how similar processes still differ and require our frameworks to be sensitive to the contexts in which those processes occur (ibid.) In engaging in such reflection, we can also learn from sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos (2017). He maintains that in moving beyond Eurocentric frames, two prerequisites for learning from the South are needed; the first being to clarify ‘what kind of South or Souths are to be engaged in the conversation’ (2017, p. 175). In this regard, he urges for further consideration of the relations of the geographically peripheral South inside Europe, referring to relations with Greece, Portugal, Spain and so on (ibid.) The second step is to recognize that the future is non-­ European, but this requires Europe coming to terms with its past. It entails a fuller reckoning with awareness that although historical colonialism has ended, neo-colonialism has continued new forms of unequal relationships—from military intervention to land grabbing to development policies. Part of the exercise of learning from the South therefore involves more scrutiny of the global operations of European enterprise. Bringing all of the above together, I use Santos’ two arguments in reverse order. First, I revisit IRM in Spain, by drawing on scholarship on IRM in the Global South which more fully questions the economic ramifications of reliance on foreign consumption of real estate and services involved in the process. Used overtly as a development strategy in the Global South (Toyota & Thang, 2017) within earlier incarnations of IRM in the Southern fringes of Europe, regional economies have nevertheless also been structured to have a high degree of dependency on foreign investment, an issue that has not fully been recognized in the existing scholarship. Especially in the wake of the devastating impact of the 2008 global financial crisis in Southern European countries, such awareness needs to be more fully embedded in our scholarship. The second—and related theme—considers the implications of these dependency patterns in terms of hierarchical relationships. Here, I consider how economic dependency can also be related to the cultural imaginings of the other that have been identified as key to (especially age-based) self-conceptions of lifestyle and retiree migrants in general. This cultural distance is evidenced too in counter-hegemonic responses from within receiving societies to retired populations from overseas (as I discuss later in this chapter and see Botterill, 2017, Hayes, 2018). I argue that both themes are important in structuring the subtle unequal relations in IRM sites, and are integral to

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the understanding of the cultural referents available in such practices to inform a particular vision of mobility within IRM.  Ultimately too, they institute both subtle and not so subtle practices of superiority and exploitation as integral to IRM. Drawing out similarities between practices ‘then and there’ with research on IRM in the Global South ‘now and elsewhere’, the chapter shows therefore how similar processes occur, with place-based inflections. Through building reciprocal learning from those experiences, we may be able to imagine alternative and more equitable forms of IRM, as I turn to in the third section of the chapter where I explore future potential responses and research possibilities.

Inequalities: Economic Dependence Neoliberal policies are the driving force of urban inequalities damaging cities in the Global North, and yet global and local economists constantly promote these same policies as the best way to achieve economic growth in other parts of the world. (Zaban, 2020, p. 3122)

Driving down the motorway through the Eastern area of the Costa del Sol in the evening, one is greeted by glistening lights and the impression of a bustling, success story of coastal tourism. Yet Andalucía, the broader autonomous region of Spain in which it is located remains one of the poorest in Spain. Following the 2008 global financial crisis it had one of the highest percentages of the population living in severe material poverty in all Spanish regions (Alvarez-Galvez et al., 2019). Key to the region’s development has been an overwhelming reliance on the real estate and tourism sectors for income, entailing a dependence on ‘wealthy foreign visitors: tourists and lifestyle migrants’ (Jover & Díaz-Parra, 2020, p. 3045). According to Navarro-Jurado et al. (2019, p. 1792) the Costa del Sol is ‘a prime example of an urban growth machine in a semi-­peripheral region of late capitalism’. The region’s reliance on foreign permanent and seasonal visitors can be understood as similar in motivation to the broader patterns exhibited today in IRM worldwide. Given that IRM is, unlike many other migration flows, characterized by consumption rather than production (Oliver, 2011) many governments are keen to capitalize on foreign investor’s purchasing power, in both real estate and commodities associated with the process. Recent scholarship on IRM in the Global South has shown that

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particularly in countries such as Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, IRM is seen as a key aspect of an economic development strategy (Toyota & Xiang, 2012). It exhibits somewhat specific characteristics in that in many of these other locations, the state itself becomes an entrepreneur for elder care and there is a more conspicuous retirement industry led by business operations concerned with the relocation of foreign retirees (Toyota & Thang, 2017). Janoschka (2009) notes how within Latin America, for example, much of the IRM market is managed by banks and global investment pools. Thus national governments of receiving countries and ‘big players’ of the real estate market lure retiree migrants as high value consumers to marketed developments (ibid.). Welcomed explicitly or not by policies and practices of governments and real estate markets in the global South, lifestyle migrants are able to capitalize on a ‘relative affluence’ of their position in a global economic hierarchy (Benson & O’Reilly, 2009; Hayes, 2018). The welcome they receive by governments and business is emblematic of the double standards applied to migration from wealthier countries. Special visa categories (e.g. see Hayes, 2018) and overlooking of misdemeanours on tourist visa are just two examples of how they are favourably treated as Bauman’s ‘tourists’ rather than ‘vagabonds’ in global mobility regimes (Oliver, 2011). Understanding IRM in these terms, I revisit IRM in Spain, perhaps hitherto viewed as the successful forerunner to other models, to understand the longer-term experience of this economic model. During my earlier periods of fieldwork (in the late 1990s and early 2000s) I witnessed an atmosphere of growth fuelled by rapidly expanding land and housing prices gathering pace. At this time, there was strong demand in the global economy for real estate from overseas tourists and residential tourists, which was supported by regional governments’ incentivization of foreign home purchasing (Holleran, 2017). During this period, prior to the 2008 global financial crisis, the Spanish economy was regarded as one of the most successful in Europe, narrated with the slogan ‘¡España va bien!’— ‘Spain’s doing well’ (Fernández Ordóñez, 2014). The ‘Spanish miracle’ saw unprecedented growth, increase in employment and in families’ wealth, as well as a reduced public deficit (López & Rodríguez, 2011, 5). The optimism was evident in the village in which I conducted fieldwork, which underwent a rapid transformation. A new motorway was built, aided by European regional development funds and there was heavy investment in construction of new housing and commercial properties linked to tourism. At the entrance to the village, a plush hotel and new

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commercial centre was built, evidence of the wider construction boom and investment in the region. Confidence was palpable among Spanish residents where I was conducting research, who benefited from selling plots of inherited land for impressive profits and refurbishing their old cortijos (farmhouses) for rental or sale. In reality, the model depended on a huge tourism and construction bubble, with the speculative model of capitalism fuelled by aggressive borrowing, encouraged by the EU’s accommodating monetary policy (López & Rodríguez, 2011, pp. 5–9). The dependence on mass tourism and construction, including foreign investment, however had been already instigated by a ‘development at all costs’ strategy instigated by the Franco dictatorship during the late 1950s (ibid.). Indeed, until the late 1960s the town where I conducted fieldwork in the Axarquía region was a small village. It was inhabited by around 5000 people and dependent on fishing and agriculture. In 1959, local youths uncovered a cave system of high archaeological value, drawing national interest and putting the town on the tourist map. As tourism grew, the population has more than quadrupled, and this includes many foreign residents. The first foreign community was established by a Canadian man, Ken Brabant, who purchased 35,000 square metres of olive groves to build the area’s first urbanization, attracting Canadians, Americans and snowbirds from other nationalities to the town (Bardsley, 2011). His company became the biggest employer in town, in 1973 employing around 500 local people. The same company, later taken over by the minority shareholders, completed around 1500 houses. These urbanizations were run according to Spanish law by a ‘community’ executive committee of residents. This has led to a high degree of self-­organizing among foreign residents, and the community now includes many retirees living there permanently who provide activities such as lecture, music, film clubs, a library and a bridge club. As I explore later, such urbanizations set up a particular residential arrangement and expected patterns of sociability, including a ‘tight-knit’ foreign community living both geographically and socially apart. In Spain, the success of tourism and construction gathered speed and in 2002–2007 there were more visas granted for construction in Spain than in France and Germany combined (Miralles i Garcia, 2011). However the 2007–2008 global economic crisis saw the bubble burst; supply exceeded demand and many new units in mid-construction were left unsold (see also O’Reilly, 2017). In 2012 and 2013, the units of the commercial centre in my fieldwork village lay empty, while within the wider

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region, whole urbanizations were left abandoned mid-build. It was estimated that by the end of 2010, in Spain there were still between 800,000 and 1.5 million new houses for sale, as well as land prepared for development but left uncompleted (ibid.) This rendered companies incapable of paying back loans, while access to additional sources of capital dried up. In addition, residential tourism markets became subject to complaints about political corruption following illegal urbanization of greenbelt lands, where local governments had permitted change of uses from rural land to developable urban land (ibid.). In the aftermath of the crash, to some degree the same strategy is being repeated. As in IRM in the Global South, the real estate sector looks to foreign buyers and investment as a means of recouping losses. Since 2011, the region has experienced even greater foreign investment in construction and real estate, with construction of new developments seen as a solution to unemployment; in 2016, 15.4% of house purchase transactions were from foreign buyers (Jover & Díaz-Parra, 2020). Research suggests that investment is spreading inland too, affecting cities like Seville (ibid.). Having undergone already the shock of the financial crash, the region is also subject to the unfolding impacts of Brexit, which changes the status of British populations from European mobile citizens to third country nationals. It has important implications for overwintering snowbirds or second homeowners, who now find that they can only stay in Spain temporarily. By 2019, the number of intra-European migrants was 25% lower than it was in 2011, and an enormous 37% decline of British migrants, indicating less demand for Spanish real estate (Stücklin, 2019). This compounded reductions in mobility already seen as a result of the economic crash itself (Huete et al., 2013). Research shows the negative impacts of strategies of relying on foreign investment on local residents in the long term, such as pricing out local actors (Janoschka, 2009) and the encouragement of precarious employment scenarios (Navarro-Jurado et al., 2019). Others indicate local exclusion especially from sites of historical value (e.g. see Jover and Díaz-Parra (2020) on gentrification in Seville, or Navarro-Jurado et  al. (2019) on touristification and gentrification in Málaga historic centre). Considering such situations comparatively, it is clear to see some echoes of the Spanish strategy within IRM developments in the Global South. In Thailand, for example, Toyota and Thang (2017) note that foreign retirees have been seen as the solution to an oversupply of high-end housing developments, where real estate companies sought to recoup some of their losses in the

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wake of the 1997 Asian financial crash. Likewise, within the Costa del Sol, the understanding of tourist and second home sales as a solution in the Costa del Sol, though ostensibly economically profitable, did not ‘reflect a sustainable development plan or take into account the environmental and social impact’ (Navarro-Jurado et al., 2019, p. 1788). Moreover, the reliance on tourism led growth promoted precarious working that did little to address the unemployment affecting young people in the region. I saw this first-hand as in 2012, the Spanish family with whom I had lodged during my previous fieldwork became dependent only on seasonal rental income from their cortijo (farmhouse) and short-term, low value contracts for cleaning swimming pools. In the next section, I consider some of the further ramifications of these observations. What are the implications of the model of economic dependence on foreigners through IRM for social relations, and what overall learning about IRM can be gained by comparing with countries undergoing similar, yet different processes in their own contexts? My analysis highlights the subtle and symbolically laden implications of the economic dependency on foreign buyers that tourism, IRM and the related real estate sector depend.

Cultural and Psychosocial Ramifications: What South Are We Talking About? Scholarship of IRM in the Global South has made much more explicit the geometries of power shaping IRM, demonstrating how such flows are supported by and reproduce privilege and global power inequalities (Benson, 2013; Croucher, 2009). Within this scholarship, there has been something of a clarion call for more overt consideration of the broader frameworks within which individual movements occur. This entails not only awareness of the ways in which foreign investment-oriented development disadvantages local residents, but consideration of the impacts of the structural conditions, and particularly the specific, contextual histories and postcolonial legacies through which lifestyle movement occurs. It entails attention to how ‘imaginings of destination and understandings of migration contain colonial traces’ (Benson, 2013, p.  316) and how these traces, or sediments of long established historical and geopolitical arrangements continue to inform contemporary relationships (O’Reilly, 2017).

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Within IRM in the Global South, there are differences in the power relationships evident in earlier incarnations within Europe, especially since the relatively privileged financial situation and enhanced purchasing power noted as integral to the process are exacerbated by the dynamics of race, ethnicity, nationality and at times, gender. The historical relative power of countries like the USA or United Kingdom and interpretation of whiteness in non-Western contexts mean migrants in the Global South are immediately received into higher echelons of society, regardless of their pre-migration status in sending countries (Benson, 2013; Botterill, 2017). There are also important gendered and sexualised dimensions of whiteness as a marker of status within IRM in the Global South. Some white men from affluent countries in the Global North seek intimate relationships with women from less well-off, low-income countries based on a transactional exchange of longer-term care and financial security for local women (Botterill, 2017; Jaisuekun & Sunanta, 2016). Fechter’s (2016) research indicates that this is not the case for women; her work on female mobile professionals from Europe and North America shows how they inhabit rather an uncomfortable visibility as ‘white bodies’ in an Asian environment. This more overt recognition of (racialized) privilege from scholarship of IRM and lifestyle migration (LM) in the Global South is useful however for revisiting IRM in the Global North. This is especially relevant as Santos (2017) calls attention to the subtle ‘underground’ (and at times overground) colonial prejudices directed from the core to southern European countries of Greece, Portugal and Spain. He argues that the economic crisis reawakened colonial dynamics operating structurally within Europe, whereby the fault of the crash was located within negative characteristics of the Portuguese, Spanish and Greek as lazy, unproductive and corrupt. Yet, he points out, such dynamics of privilege have a longer historical dimension: The truth is that there have always been two Europes and often two Europes inside each country (Catalonia and Castile in Spain, northern and Southern Italy, etc.) This duality is more entrenched in European culture than we might think, which may explain some of the difficulties in addressing the current financial crisis. What on the surface seems to be addressing a financial or economic problem is, at a deeper level, also a cultural and socio-­ psychological problem. (Santos, 2017, p. 176)

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This is relevant to understanding the cultural dynamics of IRM in Spain. First, as Holleran’s (2017) analysis of experiences of residential tourism in Spain before and after 2008 shows, it is very easy for ostensibly ‘equal’ relational dynamics to revert to those dualistic frameworks of Northern Europeans versus Southern Europeans. Holleran shows indeed that while many semi-permanent residents espoused ideals of pan-­ European cosmopolitanism, these were shed quickly following the debt crisis, revealing instead an ‘us vs them’ mentality. Experiencing massive reductions in loss in property values, extensive legal battles and conflict with local governments, Holleran (2017, p. 218) demonstrates that residential tourists, ‘often took issue with the popular Spanish crisis narrative of transnational contagion of problematic banking practices and focused their criticism on cultural shortcomings, particularly a “Mediterranean mentality” towards work, probity and thrift’. Holleran’s (2017) example shows therefore how unequal cultural dynamics are not reserved for later waves of IRM but continue to operate structurally and often not far from the surface within first waves of IRM. On the level of individual migrants, this unequal relationship may not be ostensible. Scholars of IRM and LM have demonstrated for example how migrants’ privilege is relative and in reality, some exist in precarious financial situations (O’Reilly, 2007). Therefore, despite a broader structural privilege embodied in their freedom to move and obtain benefit from cheaper property and commodities, some are, in individual cases, also structurally marginalized. Botterill (2017) for example explores how some ageing British emigrants in Thailand have struggled with pensions frozen at the rate when they left, and face limited or no affordable state services for health care. Moreover few individuals retiring abroad would conceive themselves in overtly privileged terms, especially as some self-­ consciously rebuff stereotypes of themselves as the colonial dominators (Oliver, 2008). When IRM is to destination countries with developed economies (like Spain) such an assertion might also be considered regressive. Nevertheless, if one scratches beneath the surface, research demonstrates there are traces of privileged attitudes evident within many IRM encounters in the Global North. On one hand, this is a self-conception demonstrated through the abundant use of the term ‘expat’ or expatriate rather than immigrant within the communities of retirement migrants (and equally as ‘tourist’ rather than immigrant within Spanish ones, as observed by Huete & Mantecón, 2012). The ‘expatriate’ terminology is

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common parlance among retirees, and in local newspapers and magazines. It is somewhat explained by the fact that many come to IRM from global mobile professional careers, where relations with locals were often based on more ostensible privilege. Yet migrants’ imaginaries of locals also commonly demonstrate a continued projection of orientalist traits and ‘otherness’ upon their hosts (referring to Edward Said’s (1978) work on ‘Orientalism’ which showed how scholarship on the Middle East projected stereotypes and ‘otherness’ on the Islamic world). For example, early experiences of foreign settlement in the areas from the 1960s depicted migrants as ‘pioneers’ entering into the relatively undeveloped ‘simple’ areas (Oliver, 2008, p. 51). Elizabeth, the first migrant to live in my fieldwork site lived in one of the most desirable historical properties. Her status in the village at that time was high; she was addressed with the prefix ‘Doña’ to indicate privilege, a status also included in her niche stone in the cemetery after her death. The experiences of foreign developers of the first urbanization project also project a timeless temporality upon the area, describing it in a book of the process as a ‘sleepy little town’ before the extranjeros (foreigners) arrived. This sits in contrast to a portrayal of the ‘modern’ character of these newcomers through terms inter alia such as ‘the young visionary’ and ‘inventive entrepreneur’ (Bardsley, 2011, p. 2). Historical precedents for such relationships also arise through the long-­ standing British presence in Spain that existed prior to tourism. Britain had a significant industrial presence in Spain, for example in their ownership and development of the Rio Tinto mines in Andalucía in the late nineteenth century, their role in developing transport networks for agricultural exports as well as their military presence in Gibraltar. Spain was a port of call for Northern Europeans on the Grand Tour, and notions of ‘the Spanish character’ influenced writers such as Laurie Lee. Santos points out that historically, stereotyped assumptions about the ‘character’ of people from Southern European countries developed in these early travel narratives established during the Grand Tour. He explains: What is striking about these narratives is that they ascribe to the Portuguese and Spanish exactly the same features that the Portuguese and Spanish colonizers ascribed to the primitive and savage people of the colonies. Such features ranged from precarious living conditions to laziness and lasciviousness, from violence to friendliness, from disregard to cleanliness to ignorance, from superstition to irrationality (Santos 2017, 177).

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Narratives of early British settlers in Spain influenced later cohorts, and even among those moving to very modern tourist apartment blocks, there remains expressions of strong individualistic attitudes of newcomers as ‘pioneers’ and fascinated by the culture of ‘the other’, consumed through gaining knowledge about Mediterranean lifestyle, culture, history and food. These accounts resonate with features identified by Hayes (2020) within the self-conceptions of North American migrants to Ecuador, whose protagonists understood themselves as ‘adventurers’ in an unfamiliar culture and land. At times, within my own research in Spain, explicit nationalist tropes of superiority were employed, which pitted a putative Spanish relaxed and laidback attitude (mañana—tomorrow) against a more productivity driven go-getter Northern European image (Oliver, 2008). Although in a post working phase time of life the relative advantages of such characteristics were redrawn, to support migrants’ step away from a capitalist rat race, it nevertheless had patronizing tones. At other times, there were explicit culturally racist elements evident, where for example one woman spent a long time in an interview explaining to me how she suspected her Spanish cleaner was a thief. Even where explicit colonial and superior perspectives are rejected, research nonetheless shows that there is often a large social and linguistic distance between host and receiving societies within IRM relationships. For example, among British people in Spain, it was commonplace to defend against ‘expat’ or negative nationalist stereotypes (e.g. as ‘Brits abroad) by considering themselves as cosmopolitan ‘guests’ in Spain (Oliver, 2008). Impressions of the other were framed within a framework of cultural fascination, such as in the historical, harmonic cohabitation of the three religions of the book (Judaism, Islam and Christianity) in the region during the Al Andalus period. Nevertheless, migrants’ claims of their cosmopolitan orientation is made towards the British residents’ own national communities, and is shown in Oliver and O’Reilly’s (2010) analysis as a device that reproduces class distinctions among themselves. In other words, presenting oneself as integrated and having knowledge of the area through history and tradition was a means of accruing symbolic and cultural capital among the British. This meant local places and people became something of an object of study to furnish their own identity claims, cementing Spaniards’ distance as a cultural ‘other’ (Oliver, 2008, pp.  144–149). This is compounded by the practical manifestations of social and cultural distance too in the rather limited engagement with state services. For example, Calzada (2018) shows that many British people use

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Spanish health and social care only ‘as a last resort’, preferring to fall back on their own networks or voluntary associations (Oliver, 2017). Yet the distance between foreign and local populations is also supported from within receiving societies. Studies in IRM in the Global South show for example that various counter-hegemonic monikers are given by receiving country populations to foreigners to keep them at arms-length and show them as outside local norms. For example, the labels ‘gringos’ in Latin America, or ‘farang’ in Thailand are used to denote a person of European ancestry and associated with whiteness (see Hayes, 2018; Botterill, 2017). Within Spain too, the term ‘extranjero’ (foreigner) is used, but also a more pejorative term of ‘guiri’ is given to denote an outsider from non-native Spanish-speaking backgrounds, who is subject to ridicule.

Moving On: ‘Degrowth’ and Intercultural Encounter in IRM The picture portrayed thus far is a rather familiar read. Revisiting IRM in Spain through a comparative lens highlights that it is a process commonly associated with economic dependency, structural privilege and social distance. There are obviously positive aspects of the process, evident in the economic benefits for receiving societies arising from foreign residents’ consumption, payment of taxes, employment of people, as well as pride associated with cultural heritage, and the obvious benefits in health and wellbeing to migrants themselves. Yet a comparative reading shows that inequalities are cemented deeply in the process. At the same time, I would like to warn against a too overly deterministic approach of IRM solely in those terms. I employ this final section to suggest some indications of how IRM might transcend these inherited relationships and structures, moving beyond its consumerist foundations and disrupting inequalities and cultural distance. I identify two areas of further investigation: one on ‘degrowth’ movements, identified in Spanish scholarship on tourism in the Costa del Sol and one on intercultural encounters (using some unpublished examples from my own research and see also Oliver, 2008, 50–54). The first promising theme is the existence and growth of social movements premised upon a notion of ‘degrowth’ in the region. The notion of degrowth involves a paradigm shift where, as Navarro-Jurado et al. (2019, p. 1790, citing Hall (2009)) points out, the central values are ‘quality of

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life instead of the quantity of consumption […] satisfying basic human needs, fairness, a participatory democracy, respect for human rights, a sense of community and coexistence, the reduction of the dependence on economic activity and an increase in free time’. Developing from within a Southern peripheral perspective of local Spaniards mobilizing against large-scale foreign capitalist investment (such as Qatari-owned businesses building marina complexes and skyscrapers in Málaga) this may be a key area where alliances can be forged with foreign residents who are in pursuit of ‘the good life’. As I have shown, retirement migrants themselves are implicated in the growth process, but many are (perhaps somewhat ironically) concerned about the impacts of unbridled development on the ‘paradise’ around, especially in light of obvious environmental shocks, such as devastating floods in Southern Spain in recent years. Motivations to live in Spain are, for some, driven for some by a somewhat nostalgic yearning for community, and so foreign residents can find themselves dismayed at the change and development they witness around them. For example, in an early publication (Oliver, 2002) I referred to Ed, a painter who had taken refuge from a village in the South East of Britain that he described as full of commuters and estate agents, but who then became disappointed at the extent of subsequent development. He established a group known as the neighbours (Vecinos) to preserve ‘the traditional values of the community, the customs, the tradition, the style, the architecture and the underlying conflict with the need for change’ (Oliver, 2002, p. 175). The protests to the ayuntamiento (local government) were foreigner-led, but nevertheless meetings were attended well by both Spanish and foreign residents in equal measure, pointing to a possible coalescing of interests in addressing some of the excesses of (residential) tourism growth. This points to a second area of potential disruption to existing arrangements identified in the previous sections, by considering the transformative potential of intercultural encounters between distant populations. Scholarship on this topic, emerging from social and cultural geography, recognizes the potential transformative impacts of close habitation and regular encounter to overcome distance embedded within relationships across difference. It explores how within increasingly multicultural and superdiverse contexts, aversion to the stranger can be overcome through ‘encounter’, and civility generated through everyday forms of sociability (e.g. Amin, 2012). Although encounter between migrants and receiving society populations has been a wide topic of study, it has rarely been

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considered within the contexts of IRM, where limited attention has been specifically paid to the dynamic micropolitics and intimate moments of cultural exchange, in favour of more attention to migrants’ perspectives and experiences. In this regard, Bender’s and Schweppe’s (2021) detailed ethnographic analysis of Thai women and foreign men’s encounters in bar districts is insightful, elucidating the different perspectives and scripts playing out through informal conversations and shared sociabilities (like playing board games) within the bars. A key problem however in focusing on encounters and their potentially transformative nature in IRM is that there is a low level of daily interaction (Huete & Mantecón, 2012). This is especially because genuinely shared social space is rare. Surveying the British population in Spain over a twenty-year period of research, O’Reilly (2017, p.  139) points out the ‘low expectations and low opportunities for meaningful social, political or economic integration’ of British migrants in Spain. For Spaniards too, interactions are generally tinged by a perception of these residents as foreigners as tourists and ‘visitants’ (Huete & Mantecón, 2012, p.  165). Even when living side by side as neighbours, interviews with Spanish people revealed they had fairly limited communication with foreign neighbours (Oliver, 2008, pp. 148–149). Exchanges were friendly and frequent, but were often superficial, and negotiated through signs, gestures and over-dependence on frequently used Spanish words (Oliver, 2008, p. 149). Language difficulties were compounded too by different customs, histories and use of space. Some younger British lifestyle migrants had deeper engagement through intermarriage, having younger children or working, which opened up opportunities through shared use of spaces like playgrounds and schools. Yet for retirees, access to shared space was more limited and arguably intercultural social relationships not sought, especially as cultural traditions around retirement were divergent (Oliver, 2008). There were also arguably fewer obvious opportunities and expectations for romantic relationships than in other IRM contexts (see Bender & Schweppe, 2021). An arena where intercultural encounters were possible among retirees and Spanish people was within religious spaces, although cultural distance was still evident here. Within my research site, the British were predominantly Protestant Christian in orientation, in comparison to the Spanish dominant Catholic denomination. As such, they worshipped in separate, parallel spaces; the British protestant community held its services within the Spanish Catholic church at different times and was populated then by

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only foreign populations (Oliver, 2008). Spanish religious participation was rather consumed as spectacle, for example as foreign audiences watched the glorious displays of the Semana Santa (Holy week) and Saint’s day processions, but rarely joined the subsequent community celebrations afterwards (ibid.). This said, some migrants held a Catholic orientation, and this invited opportunities for a more genuine encounter and communal experience within shared space. Some (limited) opportunities for encounter were facilitated too within an ecumenical centre called Lux Mundi. This was established by a Spanish pastor in 1973 with bases in two locations in the East and Western Costa del Sol as a site for foreign residents and visitors of multiple denominations to come together, including Anglican, Lutheran and Baptists. It evolved to respond to the needs of those from other countries and beliefs as the Spanish centre director explained to me in 2012, On the religious side, we know the centre is the bridge between the Roman Catholic Spanish church and all the churches that are established here. With tourism coming, there are more and more churches here. We are in contact with 16 churches. […] Our purpose is to try and do things together. We feel that by giving the ministers and the people of the congregation the opportunity to meet others, all these barriers of divisions and separations start to come down […] we contribute as much as we can by bringing people together.

Though frequented mainly by foreign residents, Lux Mundi was distinctive in being a Spanish run charity organization. A social club was held at the centre, and it also arranged day trips, a care service, a computer surgery and language classes at different levels of proficiency. Those attending were also encouraged to attend a programme of church services run in different denominations in the local Spanish Catholic church, including for example a Taizé prayer meeting (where the focus is on prayer and meditation). The service featured incantations in both English and Spanish and provided an occasion for the centre’s singing group, comprised of foreign retirees to contribute to the service, but notably by singing songs in Spanish. I attended the practice sessions, where I observed the leader of the singing group, Tom, correcting people’s Spanish accents in the songs, because few spoke Spanish well. Afterwards, Tom explained to me that at times, when contributing to the services that the foreign singing group might even outnumber the (Spanish) congregation, but

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nevertheless the occasions felt special as one of few occasions of genuine coming together. At the end of the practice, he reminded the group members not to wear anything too flashy to the service, ‘as we don’t want to look like performers’, emphasizing the event as a joint encounter and shared experience. Within the centre, a priority was language teaching to improve intercultural encounter. Lux Mundi orchestrated occasions for mutual understanding as the centre provided both Spanish and English classes. The Spanish classes were run for foreign residents by the centre director and her husband, as she explained, The Spanish also, we understand the one of the terrible problems of the English-speaking people who live close by us is that they don’t practice Spanish. Where? If you go to a local restaurant and [you find that] local people want to practice English. So we’re not a school, we explain to them that we are not special teachers, we are just volunteers. But we try to give them confidence and vocabulary to be able to manage in their day.

The centre also offered conversational English to Spanish school children, with voluntary contributions from English members. One retired man, Bob, helped out in these classes, and also provided support to the Spanish centre director by ‘turning her Spanglish into good English’. He explained: I have no qualifications to teach in this. But I do feel that I am helping people and that’s important, that I have to get something out of it. I need to feel that I am contributing something. It’s the ethos of Lux Mundi that people contribute.

Bob’s latter sentiment, that ‘I need to feel that I am contributing something’ is important in exploring possibilities for upsetting the socio-­ economic and historical patterns of distance. Studies of IRM communities suggest that there is strong appetite for collective action, but among retirees this is generally directed at voluntary work and peer-led care among their own ethnic groups (see Oliver, 2017). It could however find expression through other forms of collective action locally, given the right conditions, structures and support. At present, therefore, identifying degrowth movements and seedbeds of intercultural encounter indicate some distant, but possible and hopeful

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avenues for at least starting to address the negative economic, environmental and social consequences of IRM for the region, but they are certainly more exception than rule. Huete and Mantecón (2012, p.  165) point out, although there is some evidence of increasing political involvement of foreign populations in the coastal towns, engagement is mutually superficial. They observe ruefully that local, regional and central governments ‘will have to be capable of implementing integration policies more active than festivals and occasional meetings’ to be able to activate and capitalize on any potential this engagement and intercultural encounter might have.

Conclusion Within the chapter I have used critical scholarship on IRM in the Global South as a tool through which to reflect on the first waves of the process, by revisiting earlier fieldwork on the Spanish Costa Del Sol. Such an approach requires attention to how the broader process of IRM has specific manifestations and diverse effects, but nonetheless shares some similarities. In particular, looking anew at IRM in Spain particularly in the wake of the 2008 global financial crisis and applying scholarship on economic development within the region shows some of the dangers inherent in dependence on foreign investment, of which IRM is an important part. A sharper focus on the impacts of this historical pattern of sociabilities suggests too there are some common outcomes in inequalities in relationships and cultural distance, as seen in IRM in the Global South. Writing at the end of 2020, the longer-term disruptive effects of both Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic on IRM and tourism in the region underline further the instability and risks of using IRM as part of economic growth models. Nevertheless, in the wake of the pandemic, IRM is likely to remain; one might even speculate that there may even be increased demand for lower cost retirement living in destinations abroad. It behoves scholars of IRM globally then to explore the (albeit limited) avenues that may exist in order to create more equitable futures of populations implicated in these processes. What efforts might lead such populations to forge more common ground and sustain shared projects? What, if any, are the spaces in IRM for collaborating and collective practice? Looking back and looking forward, these I suggest are the urgent focus of investigation within future scholarship.

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