ABSTRACT
As the last chapter demonstrated, retired migrants emphasise their inclusion in a warm and welcoming community of other foreign residents. This community is sustained through informal cooperative networks, governed by an ethos of ‘helping each other out’ (O’Reilly 2000a: 124) particularly through voluntary work by retired migrants (see King, Williams and Warnes 2000: 148–152, Huber and O’Reilly 2004, Verlot and Oliver 2005, and see Chapter 5). Upon moving to Spain, new residents find it easy to make new acquaintances (O’Reilly 2000b) in a social life governed by a spirit of camaraderie and loosened social etiquette. Differences seem to matter less, as O’Reilly points out, ‘there is an explicit agreement that it should not matter what you were in the past’ (2000a: 129). This echoes Fitzgerald’s analysis of retirement communities in North America, where, ‘no-one gives a hang here what you did or where you come from…It’s what you are now that matters’ (1986: 219). Perhaps, as I suggested in Chapter 2, such features suggest an emergence of ‘communitas’ amongst migrants, the common feeling of union arising in liminal conditions which stresses ‘personal relationships rather than social obligations’ (Turner 1969: 112).
