A European Assessment of Aged Migration

Abstract

This article is not a catalogue of European research on aged migration, although some European findings are incorporated as illustrations and qualifications of point in the article's arguments. Rather, it is an explanation of and an argument for an approach to the study of aged migration, which relies both on quantitative and qualitative data to get beneath the facts to the underlying social processes at work, and against the narrower approach which tends to rely almost exclusively upon quantitative data, the relevance of which is not always clear. Five types of aged residential relocation are delineated, but only one is selected as an appropriate focus of research on the topic-namely, retirement migration-which is then analyzed as a social and spatial system. Five key issues which will continue to be central both to national and to comparative international research on retirement migration are discussed. Throughout the article there is a running argument that more cross-national comparative research is needed and that it must be multidisciplinary as well.