Conceptualizations and experiences of citizenship among rural retirement migrants

Abstract

This qualitative research explores how retirement migrants articulate and experience rural citizenship. In doing so, it examines the factors that influence the rights, responsibilities, and everyday practices of retirement migrants as rural citizens. Thirty-nine semi-structured interviews were conducted with people who had retired to rural communities within two local government areas in Victoria, Australia. Findings indicated that locality-based and sociocultural constructions of rurality impacted both positively and negatively on retirement migrants’ ability to claim their rights, fulfil their responsibilities and their everyday experiences of inclusion. However, the relative impacts of these elements of rurality on retirement migrants were mediated by expectations of rural community settings. These expectations were associated with motivations for relocation, lifecourse experiences, individual mobilities and resources. These findings highlight the differential, temporal and precarious nature of citizenship for rural ageing cohorts and contribute to our understanding of how rurality and individual determinants intersect to facilitate processes of inclusion or exclusion for diverse older people.