This book is a study of nostalgia, belonging and community which provides a new theoretical framework for understanding retirement migration. It is the first account of retirement migration that focuses on the voices of retired working-class British women, who are considering either return migration to the UK or permanent/temporary settlement in Spain. Through a narrative approach, we follow their journeys as they seek, recreate and construct community in a new context and their experiences of belonging and non-belonging are unravelled. The book offers a critical perspective, challenging positivistic, essentialist definitions of community.
Table of Content
Retiring to the Costas: British women’s narratives of nostalgia, belonging and community
Part One: Lives in context;
Conceptualising, theorising and narrating retirement migration;
Locating the women: macro, meso and micro contexts;
Boundary spanning and reconstitution: retirement migration and the search for community;
Part Two: Lived experiences;
Leaving the UK: motives, agency and decision-making processes;
Living in Spain: ‘idyllisation’ and realisation;
Belonging to networks: reconciling agency and positionalities;
Renegotiating family relationships: managing intimacy from a distance;
Locating ‘home’ and community: the end point of plot movement;
Conclusion: nostalgia, community and belonging: linking time and space;
Afterword.
About the author
Dr Anya Ahmed is Senior Lecturer in Social Policy at the University of Salford, with a background in social policy and sociology. She researches and writes about economic, forced and lifestyle migration and the experiences of less heard groups in societies. She is interested in how constructions of different forms of belonging and community reflect social change and continuity.
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