(Im)Mobility During Retirement Years: Family as the Main Motivation?

Retirement is a key moment in the life course, and for many people, it is a time to think about relocation. Two ongoing qualitative research projects study the (im)mobility patterns of retirees, who moved to Portugal and Spain at the end of their working lives in Switzerland. In this post, we examine how relocation during retirement affects the (im)mobility of the retirees as well as their family members, and we take a broader look at the concept of the family.

Our data shows that there are many reasons why people relocate to the Iberian Peninsula during retirement years, as e.g. having property in Portugal or Spain; the difficulty to make ends meet at the end of the month in Switzerland; and being able to take advantage of a better climate.[1] The newly established geographical distance between family members motivates retirees to remain mobile after relocation by regularly traveling back to Switzerland for visits. However, this relocation does not just affect the mobility of retirees, but also the mobility of family members.

Family-related Reasons to Postpone Relocation

Portuguese and Spanish former migrant workers, who left their immediate families when they first emigrated, often face a dilemma when deciding whether to return or not. They have to choose between improving their financial situation by returning to the Iberian Peninsula, or staying close to their offspring in Switzerland. The latter is particularly important for retirees when they are actively involved in care arrangements or have close relationships with their (grand)children. In such cases, the decision to move abroad may be postponed and they may find ways of coping with the reduced income at the time of retirement, thanks to e.g., the financial support from their children or by continuing to work part-time.

Another family-related reason to postpone one’s plans to relocate abroad relates to the care needs of our interviewees’ parents. In some cases, retirees kept their plans to move abroad in abeyance to take care of their mother or father (see also Artamonova & Syse, 2021). Family is, thus, an important factor that fosters immobility during retirement. However, family can also encourage mobility.

Family-related Motivations to Remain Mobile

Our research shows that grandparents do not cease to support their family members, nor do they stop engaging in care arrangements when they relocate during retirement. Indeed, they travel back and forth between their new country of residence and Switzerland, particularly when grandchildren are of school age. Furthermore, it seems important to our interviewees to be present for special family events like birthdays, Christmas and the birth of a new family member. Seeing their family regularly and supporting them despite the geographical distance is thus an important reason for retirees to remain mobile. These mobility patterns can,  however, change over time. On the one hand, the frequency of mobility may decrease as the years go by, i.e. when both grandparents and grandchildren get older. On the other hand, a person who is not particularly mobile after moving abroad may increase visit frequency to Switzerland after the birth of a grandchild.

The regularity and duration of these return trips are linked to the concrete conditions of their stay in Switzerland. Most interviewees relocated with the idea to move back and forth more or less regularly to visit family and friends. But for those who have terminated their tenancy and no longer have a home of their own in Switzerland, this was not as easy as it seemed. On the one hand, staying overnight with the family may lower privacy and affect retirees’ daily rhythm. Moreover, our interviewees expressed their worry to disturb or burden their families with additional work when staying with them. On the other hand, if there is no such a free room available at their family’s home, retirees need to find other solutions as e.g. staying in a nearby hotel. This, however, can become very expensive in Switzerland. These disadvantages can hamper the back-and- forth mobility of retirees. Eventually, they will make shorter visits or tend to come less often than they had envisaged before their relocation.

Impact of Retirees’ Relocation on Family Members

We observe that the mobility of family members is also affected by the relocation of retirees. When former migrant workers return, for example, their children are likely to spend more frequently long holidays in their parents’ country of origin than before. Also, grandchildren sometimes spend a significant part of the summer holidays with their grandparents, while their parents are working in Switzerland.

Similar mobility patterns can be found among family members of Swiss retirees, who relocated to Spain. We find that their family members regularly come to Spain to spend time together. This does not necessarily mean that these family members are now more mobile, but the retirees’ relocation has made Spain more important as a destination country for their mobility.

Friends and Other Loved Ones: A Broader Sense of Family

This blog post takes family as a starting point to discuss the (im)mobility of retirees who relocated to the Iberian Peninsula, and their family members. Thereby, we focused on close relatives, i.e. children and parents, as they play the most important role in our data. However, the notion of family is not limited to relatives for all individuals. Instead, it can be defined more openly by counting close friends as family members. We observe such a broader notion of family in the case of childless retirees moving from Switzerland to Spain. Also, this definition is consistent with the sociological literature on family, which has advocated for a broader definition during the last decade (Widmer, 2010; Wyss & Nedelcu, 2020). In sum, we find very comparable mobility practices among both interviewees with a broader and narrower definition of family. In other words, retirees regularly return to Switzerland for short stays to visit their close relatives and vice versa.

[1] These reasons are also among the main motivations why people 55+ residing in Switzerland spend more than 3 months per year abroad (see Flyer of the “Transnational Ageing Survey”).

Liliana Azevedo is an nccr – on the move associated doctoral student and a PhD candidate in Sociology at Iscte – Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (Lisbon, Portugal). Her research focuses on the transition to retirement of Portuguese migrant couples in Switzerland, from a transnational and a gender perspective. Her Ph.D. is supported by the Portuguese national agency for scientific research (FCT – SFRH/BD/128722/2017)

Livia Tomás is a doctoral fellow of the nccr – on the move working within the Transnational Ageing: Post-Retirement Mobilities, Transnational Lifestyles and Care Configurations project. She has a particular interest in questions concerning transnational mobilities and the different regulatory regimes, which shape such mobilities.

References:

– Artamonova, A., & Syse, A. (2021). Do older parents’ assistance needs deter parent-child geographic divergence in Norway?. Health & Place, 70.

– Widmer, E. D. (2010). Family configurations: a structural approach to family diversity. London: Ashgate.

– Wyss, M. & Nedelcu, M. (2020). Grandparents on the move: a multilevel framework analysis to understand diversity in Zero Generation care arrangements in Switzerland. Global Networks, 20(2), 343–361.

– nccr-on the move. (2021). First Transnational Ageing Survey: First Results in Switzerland.