Lifestyle Migration (Studies in Migration and Diaspora)

179 Pages·2009·2.44 MB·English

by  Michaela Benson

Lifestyle Migration
Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences
Edited by Michaela Benson and Karen O’Reilly
LifestyLe Migration
studies in Migration and Diaspora
series editor:
anne J. Kershen, Queen Mary, University of London, UK
Studies in Migration and Diaspora is a series designed to showcase the
interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary nature of research in this important field.
Volumes in the series cover local, national and global issues and engage with both
historical and contemporary events. the books will appeal to scholars, students
and all those engaged in the study of migration and diaspora. amongst the topics
covered are minority ethnic relations, transnational movements and the cultural,
social and political implications of moving from ‘over there’, to ‘over here’.
also in the series:
International Migration and Rural Areas
Cross-National Comparative Perspectives
Edited by Birgit Jentsch and Myriam Simard
isBn 978-0-7546-7484-9
Accession and Migration
Changing Policy, Society, and Culture in an Enlarged Europe
Edited by John Eade and Yordanka Valkanova
isBn 978-0-7546-7503-7
Migrant Women Transforming Citizenship
Life-stories From Britain and Germany
Umut Erel
isBn 978-0-7546-7494-8
Polish Migration to the UK in the ‘New’ European Union
After 2004
Edited by Kathy Burrell
isBn 978-0-7546 7387-3
Gendering Migration
Masculinity, Femininity and Ethnicity in Post-War Britain
Edited by Louise Ryan and Wendy Webster
isBn 978-0-7546-7178-7
Lifestyle Migration
expectations, aspirations and experiences
Edited by
MichaeLa Benson
Keele University, UK
Karen o’reiLLy
Loughborough University, UK
© Michaela Benson and Karen o’reilly 2009
all rights reserved. no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval
system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying,
recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher.
Michaela Benson and Karen o’reilly have asserted their right under the copyright, Designs
and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the editors of this work.
Published by
ashgate Publishing Limited ashgate Publishing company
Wey court east suite 420
Union road 101 cherry street
farnham Burlington
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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lifestyle migration : expectations, aspirations and
experiences. -- (studies in migration and diaspora)
1. emigration and immigration--Psychological aspects.
2. expectation (Psychology)
i. series ii. Benson, Michaela. iii. o’reilly, Karen.
304.8-dc22
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Benson, Michaela.
Lifestyle migration : expectations, aspirations and experiences / by Michaela Benson
and Karen o’reilly.
p. cm. -- (studies in migration and diaspora)
includes bibliographical references and index.
isBn 978-0-7546-7567-9 (hardback) -- isBn 978-0-7546-9840-1 (ebook)
1. Developed countries--emigration and immigration--social aspects. 2. Lifestyles--
Developed countries. 3. immigrants--Developed countries. i. o’reilly, Karen. ii. title.
JV6225.o74 2009
304.809173'2--dc22
2009022742
isBn 9780754675679 (hbk)
isBn 9780754698401 (ebk.V)
contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Series Editor’s Preface ix
1 Lifestyle Migration:escaping to the good Life? 1
Karen O’Reilly and Michaela Benson
2 When a trip to adulthood becomes a Lifestyle:
Western Lifestyle Migrants in Varanasi, india 15
Mari Korpela
3 Pursuing the good Life:
american narratives of travel and a search for refuge 31
Brian A. Hoey
4 romance tourists, foreign Wives or retirement Migrants?
cross-cultural Marriage in florence, italy 51
Catherine Trundle
5 your home in spain:
residential strategies in international retirement Migration 69
Per Gustafson
6 social capital in the sun:
Bonding and Bridging social capital among British retirees 87
Maria Angeles Casado-Diaz
7 the children of the hunters:
self-realization Projects and class reproduction 103
Karen O’Reilly
8 a Desire for Difference:
British Lifestyle Migration to southwest france 121
Michaela Benson
vi Lifestyle Migration
9 taking the risk: the British in Didim, turkey 137
Ozlem Nudrali and Karen O’Reilly
10 Lifestyle afterthoughts 153
Jacqueline Waldren
Index 165
notes on contributors
Michaela Benson (Editor) has carried out ethnographic fieldwork with the British
population of the Lot (southwest france), the topic of her forthcoming monograph
The British in Rural France (Manchester University Press) and a series of articles.
her research interests include the intersections of lifestyle choices with migration,
the negotiation of everyday life within destinations, and the historical and material
conditions which give rise to lifestyle migration. she is currently employed as The
Sociological Review fellow.
Maria Angeles Casado-Diaz is a sociologist working in the Department of
geography and environmental Management at the University of the West of
england. her main research area has been international retirement migration, with
a particular focus on northern european migration to spain. she is co-editor of
International Retirement Migration in Spain (2005) and has published numerous
articles on this topic in peer-reviewed journals. she has also recently carried out
a research project on the role of leisure in the creation of social capital among
British retirees in spain.
Per Gustafson is a sociologist at the institute for housing and Urban research,
Uppsala University, sweden. he has a general research interest in different forms
of mobility (travel, migration) and territorial belonging. One of his research fields
has been seasonal retirement migration between sweden and spain, which was a
topic in his PhD dissertation and the basis of several articles appearing in peer-
reviewed journals.
Brian A. Hoey is an anthropologist and associate Professor in the Department of
sociology and anthropology at Marshall University. hoey’s research encompasses
a number of themes including personhood and place, migration, narrative identity
and life-transition, community-building and negotiations between work, family and
self in different social, historical and environmental contexts. he has a particular
interest in the non-economic migration internally within the Us. in the last few
years, this has been the subject of numerous publications and presentations. he
is currently in the process of preparing a volume entitled, Opting for Elsewhere:
Relocation and the Remaking of Self in the Post-Industrial Middle Class.
Mari Korpela is teaching anthropology at the Department of social research in
the University of tampere, finland. her research interests include transnational
communities, counter cultures as well as gender and travel. she has recently
viii Lifestyle Migration
completed her PhD thesis based on ethnographic research among Westerners in
Varanasi, india. she has also published articles in peer-reviewed journals.
Ozlem Nudrali has an Msc in international Business and an Ma in sociology.
her research interests include global media industries, urban transformation
and lifestyle migration. she has co-authored articles in turkey and has several
published translations. her contribution to this collection is based on qualitative
research carried out among the British community in Didim, a coastal location in
turkey.
Karen O’Reilly (Editor) has research interests in contemporary migrations (and
mobilities) and their implications for sociological ‘problems’ of nation, ethnicity,
class, gender, age, community, home and belonging. her ethnographic research in
spain spans over 15 years, and she is author of The British on the Costa del Sol
and Ethnographic Methods (both with routledge) and numerous journal articles
in the fields of tourism and migration.
Catherine Trundle is currently completing a PhD in social anthropology at the
University of cambridge. her research explores english-speaking migrant groups
in florence, italy, with a particular focus on expatriate women’s involvement in
charity. she has also carried out historical research on the grand tour to italy and
florence. she is an anthropology lecturer at Victoria University of Wellington,
new Zealand.
Jacqueline Waldren is a long-term resident of Déia, Mallorca, the site of her
ethnography Insiders and Outsiders: Paradise and Reality in Mallorca (1996), a
study of the relationships between locals and foreigners which advanced tourism
studies in anthropology. she currently splits her time between Déia and oxford
University, where she is a research associate in the institute for social and cultural
anthropology and is a member of the international gender studies centre.
series editor’s Preface
Lifestyle Migration
‘the sun is nice but it doesn’t pay your bills; that’s the bottom line.’1 these were
the sentiments expressed by a British expatriate in May 2009 to a reporter from
The Times working on a story about the increasing number of lifestyle migrants
returning to Britain from spain. for many, living the dream was becoming a
living nightmare. a weakened pound, unemployment levels above 17 per cent
and a stagnant property market was pushing middle-aged migrants home, whilst
pensioners, unable to sell their homes on the costa Del sol and doubly hit by the
reduction of interest rates in Britain and a strong euro, were finding their quality
of life deteriorating by the week. The article exemplifies the way in which lifestyle
migration, defined by one contributor to this volume as ‘the search for personal
fulfillment by the affluent, geographically mobile’, though an individualist concept,
is fashioned by the global rather than the personal.
As the contributors to this volume illustrate, lifestyle migration can be defined
in a variety of ways. similarly the actors fall into several categories. there are
those who make a permanent break, as did the ‘foreign’ wives in florence or the
internal migrants to rural mid-west America, the latter seeking to ‘find themselves’
and identify with place rather than just set up a home. others have become
permanent transnationals – living their lives in two places – as returning long-
stay backpackers in Varanasi and global wanderers; as sun-seeking cold weather
retirees from sweden and Britain in southern spain or, as the disillusioned and
despondent returnee quoted above, families seeking a safer and better quality of
life away from the pressures and dangers in Britain.
Though perceived as the territory of the affluent retiree, lifestyle migrants
range from the very young, as evidenced by the account of the experiences of
english schoolchildren in southern spain, through to the widower pensioner in
Didim, turkey. another (mis)perception is that, by making the decision to migrate
and create a new, and better, life elsewhere, the migrant will want to become
part of the local community. it is clear that this is not always the case and, as
several of the contributors demonstrate, the migrants’ Britishness is reinforced as
‘British communities’ are constructed by those who, having left family and friends
behind, seek to create networks and support systems to compensate. in this context
residential strategies are played out as the actors determine issues of citizenship,
tax liability, language and interaction with neighbours. Lifestyle migration is an
1 The Times, 16 May 2009.