Retirement Migration and Precarity in Later Life

Book excerpt: The last few decades have seen an increase in the migration of ageing people from richer Northern and Western countries to poorer Southern and Eastern countries. This book seeks to understand the motivation behind retirement migration and how precarity in later life contributes to this trend. Drawing on accounts of retirees from different nations, the book examines how welfare policies in their home country and their country of migration interact to shape their experiences of migration. It shows how ageism impacts social precarity across different social classes, and across economic, social and health dimensions. It also evaluates how local and global systems of inequalities influence retirement migrants’ experience, providing both opportunities and constraints that differ across countries.