Theoretical Approaches to Retirement Migration

Geographic mobility in retirement or toward the end of people’s working lives has attracted interest from various social science disciplines, including Social Geography, Urban Planning, Business Studies, Sociology and Anthropology and Tourism Studies, the latter two producing the majority of published research. Sociology and Anthropology has habitually focused on the everyday lives of ‘retirement migrants’, exploring their motivations and perceptions of the migratory experience. Tourism Studies, for its part, has typically taken ‘residential’ and ‘long-term’ tourism as its primary objects of study. In this sense, the literature devotes particular attention to studying the differences between the temporariness of long-term tourism and the permanent nature of retirement migration. This distinction is crucial to understanding the large diversity of motivations that appear to drive migration or mobility among older persons, which can range from seeking temporary respite to permanent relocation for socio-economic reasons.