Volunteering is a ubiquitous and distinct feature of the British retired community in Spain, and for many older migrants volunteering constitutes a significant part of their post-retirement life abroad. Especially in the management and organisation of health and age-related problems voluntary organisations have come to play a crucial role not only for the British community but also for the Spanish host society and public health-care system. Furthermore, volunteering represents a valuable sphere of activity offering personal benefits for those who are actively engaged. Based on ethnographic fieldwork conducted in a charity organisation in the province of Alicante on the northern Costa Blanca, this paper examines the extensive functions that volunteering and charitable activities can offer British older migrants. The implementation of voluntary work within the specific context of retirement migration is identified as a multi-functional individual and societal resource. Volunteering for the retirees is described as a true means of adaptation to a new life context, and as a highly reflexive strategy of risk minimisation and self-realisation. This implies individual benefits and opens up possibilities of active ageing. Finally, volunteering will be analysed as a performative expression of transmigrants' cultural bifocality, reflecting both a high level of commitment to Spain as well as a specific feature of British community spirit and traditionalism. often economic advantages due to cheaper living conditions. Factually situated somewhere between migration and tourism, a plethora of terms such as amenity migration, sunshine migration, later-life migration, gerontomigration and residential tourism, among others, have been coined in order to capture the different qualities and peculiarities of these processes of mobility which rigorously defy the characteristics of conventional categories of migration. However, international retirement migrationintepreted as a specific subtype of a wider phenomenon recently defined as 'lifestyle migration' (Benson and O'Reilly : )is the term that has been utilised most frequently in academic research on the issue (e.g. King, Warnes and Williams ; Rodríguez, Fernández-Mayoralas and Rojo ) and which most adequately defines the subject matter of this article.The main factors that have contributed to the massive growth of retirement migration are the increased experience with mobility and travel (Eliot and Urry ; Urry ), economic affluence, the spread of communication technologies, the pluralisation of living conditions and the individualisation of retirement, as well as stable political conditions and the accessibility of destinations. This globalisation of retirement now discloses a world-wide panorama of elderscapes (Katz ), selected by affluent older citizens from diverse cultural and national backgrounds as their individual retirement choice. Within Europe, the coastal and southern areas of Spain represent by far the most popular destination for largely north...