Negotiating the Challenges of Aging as a British Migrant in Spain

There has been a proliferation of research on lifestyle migration, including studies of older people who move from Northern to Southern European countries in retirement. This body of research has generally focused on so-called third-age retirees, who exercise mobility to improve their quality of life and to achieve optimal aging. These healthy and active migrants have yet to face the challenges associated with the fourth age. This paper focuses on how retirees in both the third and fourth ages of life experience and exercise mobility, and how some experience the transition from young old to old old age in Spain. While the third age is characterized by new opportunities and activities, the fourth age is a time of decreasing mobility, dependence, and bodily decline. We bring together narrative interview data from two separate studies undertaken with older British people in Spain to examine three main issues: how the experiences and identities of retired migrants change in response to the aging body; the strategies deployed by retired migrants to manage the fourth age; how lifestyle migration as a theoretical category captures the experiences of migrants in their fourth age. This paper therefore represents an original contribution to our knowledge by exploring how lifestyle migrants transition from the third to the fourth age, and in particular how they negotiate bodily decline and decreasing mobility. We conclude that aging represents an important structural context that both enables and restricts opportunities and experiences of mobility.