At the British Sociological Association Annual Conference (3-5 April 2013, London), Karen O’Reilly and Kate Botterill presented a paper with some of the findings from the Lifestyle Migration in East Asia project. We talked about how older British emigrants think about older age and how they will cope with that so far from ‘home’.
Lifestyle migration overlaps with well-being migration, in as much as many lifestyle migrants consider the place they are moving to be better for their mental health, and often also their physical health. They have better quality of life, spend more time outdoors, relax more, eat more fresh fruit, are more active and happier.
And, on top of that, many of them believe that the health service provision, – diagnosis, facilities, hospitals, doctors, surgeons, after-care – may be of a better standard than they would have access to in the UK. Of course, in Malaysia and Thailand they have to pay for it, but they feel they have also paid towards the cost of the welfare state in the UK!
One of the things we have been thinking about, as the project team, is the role of property developers in creating an identity of a place, shaping how it is imagined to be, and what sort of life one should expect to have there.
Several of our respondents have sent us photos of their entrance hallway (like this one from Livvie), their swimming pool (the one above is from Sarah), or the view from their balcony. One person sent a link to a promotional video, saying ‘this is why I want to move to Penang’.
