Retirement migrants and Covid19

Retirement migration refers to the movement of elderly people to a different region or country for lifestyle motivations. Retirement migrants may enjoy the benefits of moving to a region/country where prices are cheaper, but their migration is not mainly driven for economic reasons but rather, to the search for better climate, amenities or social life. Previous studies on EU retirement migration show that elderly Europeans move from Northern and Central Europe to Southern countries, clustering in certain spots in the destination areas and being little or no integrated at all with the local institutions and population. I.e. retirement migrants frequently cannot speak the language of the destination country, are not aware of national regulations and institutions, and their social relations tend to include mostly members of their same country. Research carried out in Spain demonstrated that local populations do not resent (too much) this apparent isolation of retirement migrants, welcoming instead their presence as a source of jobs and money. However, this win-win equilibrium was impossible since the Covid19 crisis began. Suddenly, the isolation of retirement migrants made them unable to understand national, regional and local Covid regulations; their needs could not be meet by means of their usual self-help networks, and the local social services were overwhelmed with demands. In this paper we make use of 40 qualitative interviews with social workers, retirement migrants, and local actors related to retirement migration to describe and analyze how the pandemic impacted the lives of retirement migrants in Spain, and what strategies they developed to get ahead. Interviews took place in five Spanish “destination spots” for retirement migration. The empirical material was gathered in the framework of the research project: “Retirement migrants and the Social Services” (RETIRO), funded by the Spanish Ministry of Science under the RETOS 2018 call