Retirement across countries: A tripartite analysis of the welfare state, family care networks, and the retirement industry

Introduction

In a rapidly ageing world, today’s retirees are moving across borders at unprecedented rates. Existing studies have analysed this group through single-focused approaches to welfare, family care networks, or the retirement industry at one point in time. RETIREWEL will be the first study to take an integrated approach to individual experiences of spending and planning for their retirement in more than one country and their complex relationships with the welfare state, family care networks, and the retirement industry.

Research Questions

RETIREWEL asks:

1. What patterns of transnational retirement are observable and what new trends are emerging?
2. How do older adults experience spending and planning for retirement in more than one country in relation to the nation-based welfare state, family care networks, and retirement industry?
3. How do public and private stakeholders deal with individuals who spend or plan to spend their retirement transnationally?
4. How do places shape and are shaped by transnational retirement?

Study Focus

This multi-sited, multi-method study focuses on three migration corridors that link European and non-European contexts:

• Portugal-Brazil
• Netherlands-Turkey
• UK-India

These corridors exhibit intricate relationships between the welfare state, family care networks, and retirement industry. It will focus on two groups—retirees and soon-to-be retirees—providing novel insight into how retirement is spent and planned transnationally.

Contribution to the Field

RETIREWEL breaks new ground on two counts:

1. By approaching retirement and retirement planning through a multi-directional transnational lens.
2. By theoretically and empirically integrating welfare (state), family care networks, and retirement industry (market) in a comparative study.

It develops a novel theoretical framework to understand how public and private stakeholders interlock in new and uneven ways across borders and provides new insights into what retirement futures are in the making.