Volunteering in retirement migration: meanings and functions of charitable activities for older British residents in Spain

Abstract

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...

Peer-Led Care Practices and ‘Community’ Formation in British Retirement Migration

“…Community becomes a form through which individuals are able to escape loneliness, loss and emptiness. Anita confirmed this with her explanation of the Centre: 'it became the place where people can give their time, their talents to help others and to give a purpose to their lives' (Interview 2013; see also Haas 2013). As a result, the daily care and caring practices offered by both individuals and informal groups created welfare webs that went beyond only self-interest or expectations of reciprocity.…”

“…Work by Roseneil & Budgeon (2004) and Spencer & Pahl (2006) confirm the wider societal shift of declining familial relationships and increased significance of private and informal relationships. These relationships are developed in Spain among people who may have only recently met, but nonetheless might extend to caring, intimate acts (see Haas 2013). I show how these care actions help create community, while their effects are still limited by the characteristics of the liquid community that restrict their extent and scope.…”

“…The community created via informal care networks also proved brittle because not everyone was included in the social networks (see Hall and Hardill 2016;Haas 2013). Shared age and class backgrounds helped create relationships as explained earlier, but some felt that some group activities were exclusive; as Peter explained, describing his first reaction to the Centre: 'I actually didn't like it.…”

“…On the one hand, the retirees' actions are ostensibly individualistic and pleasure-oriented, with 'community' here created ironically through a 'multitude of individual acts of self-identification' (Bauman 1992: 136). On the other hand, empirical research shows that far from 'the decline of the social' espoused to come from weakening familial, associational and classties (Putnam 2000), there are high levels of social capital 1 among retirement migrants, generated through associations, charity work and volunteering (Casado-Díaz 2009;Haas 2013;O'Reilly 2000).…”

“…As such, the Heideggerian notion of 'being-toward death' is helpful in understanding the migrants' actual actions to help people 'get by' and providing meaning to those engaged in these practices. Such actions invest any 'ideas' of community with real 'social content and context' (Amit 2002:17), and by doing so, they not only address care deficits exposed by life in liquid contexts but also guide migrants into ethnically preferred lifestyles and contribute to diasporic formation (Olsson 2017;Haas 2013). As I will show, their small acts generate fleeting conditions of community out of ostensibly individualistic pursuits.…”