Neue Formen des Alter(n)s
The experience of ageing has become more and more pluralized and diversified in recent years, with retirement migration being one important expression of such lifestyles oriented towards consumption and self-realization. Within Europe, Spain is the most important destination for retirement migrants. This study focuses on German retirement migrants living in the city of Denia on the Spanish Mediterranean coast. Empirically based on a large-scale quantitative survey of European retirement migration to Spain and a locally embedded ethnographic field study, this investigation provides a detailed insight into the life circumstances, socio-economic features and general characteristics of this particular group of migrants. Besides the empirically based descriptions of quotidian activities, attitudes, self-concepts and modes of life of the German retirement migrants in Denia, a specific focus of the study is centered on transnational family relations and the experience of ageing within retirement migration. Within retirement migration, transnationality is produced in a number of ways. Extended use of telecommunication and media, frequent travels and visits, the regular keeping-up of plurilocal living arrangements between Germany and Spain and a cultural bifocality based on social integration within multiple localities provide the basis for the transnational characteristics of this social phenomenon. Familial and social relations to the areas of origin are largely perpetuated and, while family relations are usually experienced as satisfactory despite spatial separation, areas of tension within families may occur in situations in which the provision of care, especially for grandchildren or ageing parents, may become necessary. Hence, in regard to family relations, the project of retirement migration is often perceived by the actors as being situated within conflicting areas of personal self-realization and autonomy linked to living in Spain on the one hand and familial obligations and responsibilities on the other hand. However, the positive images and conceptions of ageing in Spain are crucial for the retirement migrants and ultimately serve as an explanation and personal justification for their physical separation from families and friends. People reported to be happier, more active and healthier, evaluating the advantages of living in Spain as outweighing the disadvantages of being separated from their families. Spain is constructed as a place of warmth, health and freedom, where an active, meaningful and preventive lifestyle can be performed. This is contrasted with more negative depictions of Germany, where the retirement migrants localize much smaller chances of successful ageing.
