During the last two decades, northern European retirement residence in the southern European sunbelt has grown strongly and its forms have rapidly changed, but standard demographic and social statistical sources provide no information about the flows, the migrants or their increasingly mobile and complex residential patterns. Considerable primary research has however recently been undertaken into the causes, conditions, experiences and consequences of international retirement migration (IRM) by investigators from Germany, Spain, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Many collaborated when designing their studies and instruments, and all have subsequently worked together in a European Science Foundation Scientific Network. This paper compares the findings of six systematic social surveys in (to be more precise than the title) eight regions of southern Europe and the Canary Islands: all that have tackled similar research questions with similar methods and instruments. It presents interpretations of several comparative tables compiled from their original data, with a focus on the socio-economic backgrounds, motivations and behaviour of the various migrant groups and their relationship with the host and home countries. The paper presents new findings about the typical and variant forms of IRM, and additional understanding of the heterogeneity of the retirees of different nations and in the several regions.

No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

The emergence of the sharing economy has been driven by the increasing value of temporary access to goods over ownership as an alternative mode of consumption. This economy has been enabled by the rapidly evolving Web 2.0 technologies. Scholars have turned their attention to the implications of this sharing economy for the tourism and hospitality industries. However, research on peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation-sharing has mainly focused on a few global (monetized) platforms, especially Airbnb, while other manifestations of P2P sharing accommodation have remained underexplored. This is the case for 'home exchange', an example of non-monetized P2P sharing accommodation where individuals exchange their homes via web-based platforms. Aiming to address this gap, this paper reviews existing literature on the topic and identifies three key research dimensions, namely, economic, social-psychological and spatial. The paper also argues for the value of using second-home tourism literature in the examination of the home exchange phenomenon. Main research gaps and directions for future research are then addressed. Finally, the conclusions and limitations are presented.