Editorial IntroductionRussell King, Anthony M. Warnes and Allan M. Williams

The focus for this ®rst theme issue ofIJPG ± international retirement migra-tion in Europe ± is a topic on which

there has been very little literature andresearch thus far. The reasons are not hard toidentify. They include the conceptual andde®nitional dif®culties in specifying a migra-tory phenomenon that exhibits a variety offorms, from permanent relocation to seasonaland temporary mobility, the lack of data tomeasure it, and the practical problems ofconducting research across national bound-aries. And yet international retirement migra-tion (IRM) is widely known to exist, not onlywithin Europe where it mainly expresses itselfas a north-to-south movement approachingmass proportions, but also from the UK toNorth America and Australia, from Canada tothe United States' `sunshine states', and fromNorth America to the Caribbean.Although in Europe IRM is commonly

viewed as a progression from themass tourismboomwhich started in the early-mid 1960s, it isnot a uniquely post-war creation, for there is along history of settlement along the shores ofthe Mediterranean by northern Europeans andNorth Americans. This is perhaps best epito-mised by the French Riviera, but it also appliesto some parts of Italy such as Tuscany,Sorrento and Capri, and even to relativelynew areas of tourism and coastal urbanisationsuch as the Portuguese Algarve. What isdifferent about the post-1960 period is thatchanges in working patterns, in income andwealth ¯ows and in life expectancy, haveresulted in a signi®cant increase in the num-bers of people in the more developed econo-mies who have the means, in terms of ®nanceand personal skills, to choose to emigrate atsome point after the end of their formalworking careers. A substantial minority ofretired and early retired people in advancedEuropean countries can now add international

retirement migration to the list of alternativeresidential mobility strategies that are avail-able in their post-working lives (Cribier, 1980).That large numbers have chosen to do so, andhave also decided to live out at least a part oftheir retirement in one of Europe's Mediterra-nean regions, is clearly indicated by a reviewof the available (but limited) statistical datawhich we have recently published (Williams etal., 1997). The last point also emphasises thatIRM, as a social phenomenon, is far more thanan extension of mass tourism.As there have been few studies of IRM, both

theoretical and substantive knowledge of thephenomenon is more than usually provisional.The papers collected in this theme issue makea contribution to ®lling this research gap. The®ve papers that follow are a product of twointerlinked research projects, one caried out bya British team and the other by a group ofSpanish researchers. The ®rst of these operatesfrom the University of Sussex's EuropeanInstitute (Russell King and Guy Patterson) incollaboration with the Universities of Exeter(Allan Williams) and Shef®eld (AnthonyWarnes). This research, funded by the BritishEconomic and Social Research Council (ESRC)over the three years 1995±97, is examining theexperiences of retired Britons in four SouthEuropean destinations ± the Algarve, Costa delSol, Malta and Tuscany. The ®rst paper in thetheme issue presents some general compara-tive data from this project, and area-speci®cstudies then follow in the papers by Warnesand Patterson on Malta, Williams andPatterson on the Algarve, and King andPatterson on Tuscany. The second project,coordinated by Vicente RodrõÂguez at theConsejo Superior de Investigaciones Cienti®-cas (CSIC) in Madrid, is also a comparativestudy but in a different sense, for it examinesthe retirement migration experience of severalnorth European nationalities in southern

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Spain. The two research projects deliberatelyran simultaneously and in a somewhat com-plementary form. They asked similar researchquestions and used some shared methodolo-gies and ®eld instruments. This coordinationwas facilitated by a grant from the BritishCouncil/Acciones Integradas scheme.Alternative interpretations can be offered

regarding Europeans' experience of IRM. The®rst is that it is a generally positive, life-enhancing experience which brings bene®ts tothose involved, many of whom are suf®cientlywealthy and travel-wise to cope with anystresses the move may bring. The second viewis that retirement migrants are placing them-selves at risk by moving abroad at a relativelylate stage in their lives; they increase theirvulnerability to ill-health and ®nancialtroubles because of their isolation from friendsand relatives `back home' with consequenttruncation of social networks. Within Britain,recent years have seen a number of press andmedia reports of sick and impoverishedelderly Britons having to be repatriated fromtheir self-chosen trap of retirement in Spain.Based on little more than individual stories,such reports have tended to exaggerate theproblem of `destitute pensioners' livingabroad. Nevertheless, it does have to berecognised that retiring abroad is not entirelyunproblematic, as Age Concern (1993) haverecently emphasised. But current evaluationsare characterised by con¯iciting and partial®ndings which at present lack integratedtheoretical or empirical resolution. The paperspresented in this issue do not resolve all thedilemmas and issues, but they do present awealth of empirical evidence and, althoughdiversity of experience is one of key ®ndings ofthe research, the evidence presented tends touphold the positive interpretation of IRMrather than the negative view.The ®rst paper sets out an overarching

prospectus for research on the topic of IRMand offers a preliminary analysis of somecomparative results of the ESRC study on theexperiences of older British people in fourMediterranean regions favoured for retirementresidence. It also develops further some of thethemes recently introduced in a review articlebased on secondary data (Williams et al., 1997),adding some conceptual and methodological

discussion on the connections between newforms of residential mobility behaviour andchanges in people's characteristic life-courses,as well as introducing some policy issues thatarise from IRM at a variety of scales fromindividual welfare considerations to state andEU implications. These linkages and policyquestions extend well beyond the traditionalfocus of population geography, but are indica-tive of the need for population geographers toengage the research interfaces between theirown specialism and adjacent ®elds such aseconomic geography and public policy.The next three papers examine in turn the

situation of older British residents in Malta, theAlgarve and Tuscany. As well as the differentregional foci, each of these papers also picks adifferent thematic approach to the research itpresents. The paper on Malta by Warnes andPatterson concentrates on the intensity of therelationship between the British and theMaltese, a link which re¯ects the long connec-tion between Britain and Malta at a politicaland military level, as well as a history ofMaltese labour migration to Britain since thelast war. In the paper on the Algarve, Williamsand Patterson carry out a cohort analysis totease out the differences (and similarities)between retired Britons who moved to theregion at different stages in the region'sdevelopment as a tourist and retirementhaven. The paper on Tuscany by King andPatterson explores diversity in a different way,by comparing the processes and results ofretirement settlement in different sub-areas ofthe region, contrasting Florence with ruraldistricts such as Chianti and adjacent Umbria.This paper also argues that the phenomenon ofBritish migration to Tuscany in the past 30years has to be set against a much longerhistory of British involvement in the regionstretching back to the Grand Tour in the 18thcentury.The ®nal paper by RodrõÂguez et al. compares

the experiences of different north Europeannationalities who have settled on Spain's`amenity coast', the Costa del Sol. This research®nds interesting sociodemographic differencesbetween the nationalities, as well as variationsin behaviour and degree of sociocultural inte-gration with local Spanish society. As such thispaper also underlines the need for compara-

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88 R. King et al.

tive international studies in other leadingdestination areas.These papers by no means constitute a

complete survey of environmentally-moti-vated international retirement migration inEurope, but they do offer a range of insightsinto a signi®cant yet under-researched area ofpopulation geography.

REFERENCES

Age Concern (1993) Growing Old in Spain (London:Age Concern England)

Cribier, F. (1980) A European assessment of agedmigration, Research on Ageing 2: 255±70

Williams, A. M., King, R. and Warnes, A. (1997) Aplace in the sun: international retirement migra-tion from Northern to Southern Europe, EuropeanUrban and Regional Studies 4: 115±34

# 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Int. J. Popul. Geogr. 4, 87±89 (1998)

Editorial Introduction 89