Introduction

In the previous chapter I explained my approach to gaining knowledge of the processes involved in constructing shifting and overlapping forms of belonging to different kinds of community. I argued that a thematic and structural narrative approach can illuminate how retired women experience the structural contexts in which their migration takes place, how this shapes agency, and how structures and agency are mediated by their multiple and shifting positionalities. In this chapter I discuss the macro contexts framing retired women's agency in migration in terms of ‘upper structural layers’ and ‘more proximate structural layers’ (O’Reilly, 2012).The focus then shifts to the women's positionalities, and I explore how positionalities act as a meso level of interaction between wider structures and women's agency. I develop my use of translocational positionality and discuss this in relation to gender, class, age and ethnicity and place this in theoretical and lived contexts. I also offer a reflection on my own positionalities.

Structural contexts in retirement migration

In the introduction, I summarised the reasons for the rise in retirement migration in Europe. Now, it is useful to revisit this discussion in order to explain British working-class women's experiences in terms of the structural, demographic and cultural contexts framing their migratory decisions. It is worth noting that in retirement/lifestyle migration, the structural context tends to represent opportunities rather than constraints (O’Reilly, 2012). The temporal context in which women's retirement migration took place is also significant; they moved in the late 1990s and early 2000s, before the global recession, when the pound was strong against the peseta. In 2003–04, when the fieldwork was conducted, the cost of living in Spain was approximately two-thirds of what it was in the UK and the exchange rate favoured sterling as one euro was equivalent to 60 pence. All of the women featured mentioned the differences between the cost of living in the UK and Spain as a factor influencing their migration to Spain as Margot's talk about her financial difficulties in the UK illustrates:

Myra equates retirement in the UK as ‘existing’ whereas in Spain she has a ‘life’