ABSTRACT
Like many other countries in East Asia and elsewhere, China has a rapidly growing older population. In this chapter, the authors discuss the experiences of Chinese older rural-urban migrants in order to understand migration behaviours that may be applicable to many low and middle-income countries. They focus on future service planning for the rural-urban older migrants, especially to improve their health and well-being. The authors collect 45 semi-structured in-depth interviews with older people in four sites in Beijing. Three themes were identified from the interview transcripts: mobile vulnerability, accessibility to health care services and adaptation to the new living environment. Mobile vulnerability is one of the key themes reported by participants. It refers to the vulnerability that older migrants experience affecting their mobility and social conditions in the form of physical, socio-economic, institutional and cultural aspects. Accessibility to health care services was a theme identified from the transcripts and interpreted from spatial, economic and institutional perspectives by the older migrants.
