Aging and Migration

The international scholarship on aging and mobility recognizes that the migrations of older people have considerable implications for the economic, social, and environmental functions of sending and receiving communities. Knowing where and why older people move is fundamental to the design and implementation of good community development policy. While most migrations by older people are local and are undertaken to achieve a housing adjustment, others seek to move to different countries or regions that offer vastly different cultural, economic, environmental, and political conditions. Migrations by older people represent an important livelihood strategy for maintaining independence and improving quality of life. Migrations are complex and can involve a series of backward or onward moves. The spatial unevenness of old age migration flows within countries and between countries is generated by underlying unevenness in social, cultural, political, financial, and environmental factors that operate in both sending and receiving communities. The nature of migration flows is informed by the inequalities that exist between individuals regarding opportunities to participate in particular migration flows. Old age migration has implications for the well-being of migrants as well as for the residents of the sending and receiving communities.