“It’s not a vacation, it’s your life”. Privileged identities, ageing experiences, and migration projects of British retirees on the coasts of Spain
[eng] This doctoral thesis investigates identity, ageing, and migration through an intersectional approach to retirement and later life migration from the UK to Spain. Through an in-depth exploration of the experiences of British expatriate retirees in Costa del Sol, Andalusia, and Costa Brava, Cata...
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| Tipo de recurso: | tesis doctoral |
| Estado: | Versión publicada |
| Fecha de publicación: | 2023 |
| País: | España |
| Institución: | Universidad de Barcelona |
| Repositorio: | Dipòsit Digital de la UB |
| OAI Identifier: | oai:diposit.ub.edu:2445/195802 |
| Acceso en línea: | https://hdl.handle.net/2445/195802 http://hdl.handle.net/10803/687957 |
| Access Level: | acceso abierto |
| Palabra clave: | Antropologia social Etnografia Identitat col·lectiva Envelliment de la població Migració (Població) Grups socials Social anthropology Ethnography Group identity Population aging Migration (Population) Social groups |
| Sumario: | [eng] This doctoral thesis investigates identity, ageing, and migration through an intersectional approach to retirement and later life migration from the UK to Spain. Through an in-depth exploration of the experiences of British expatriate retirees in Costa del Sol, Andalusia, and Costa Brava, Catalonia, Spain, the thesis analyzes the generation of experiences between privilege, vulnerability, and precarity, and its contingent effects on the construction of these identity processes. The trend of British retirees moving to Spain has a long-standing history and has been studied in Anthropology, Gerontology, migration studies, and more. Yet, in the period between 2019 and 2020, when this research took place, the confluence of Brexit and the COVID-19 pandemic reinvigorated the field of study. Said geopolitical and sociosanitary shifts put the experiences and identities of British expatriate retirees in question; altering the material foundations upon which their privileged migration life projects were constructed. Like this, creating a unique context where privilege and uncertainty meet in the crux of intersecting experiences of migration and ageing. Through the latter, the thesis contributes to anthropological debates on the contextualized construction of identities between the self and society; on Global North ageing discourses and its’ effects on later life identity projects; and questions the use of migration categories on the ground. Since identity, ageing and migration are polysemic concepts that have mutated over time with their subsequent analytical repercussions, this thesis adopts an intersectional lens that recognizes and develops the debates these terms are involved in, as well as captures the everyday connections between micro experiences and macro structures that evidence relationships of power and the perpetuation of inequalities. This involves the study of labels and their adjacent prejudices and stigmas, exposing how these travel from one sociocultural context to another, while also exploring how feelings of belonging are built abroad. By examining through the seemingly privileged retirement migration experiences of informants, this doctoral thesis exposes the intricacies between privilege, vulnerability, dependence, and precarity through the minutiae of the quotidian, contributing to wider empirical and conceptual debates regarding identity, ageing, and migration. |
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