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Abstract
Post-retirement migration behavior and the decision-making process which underlies this behavior continue to attract scholarly interest. Based on a small self-selected sample of recent retiree migrants to Western North Carolina, this paper provides initial answers to the following questions:
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Do retirement migrants exhibit high mobility throughout their life course?
How are events in the retirement migration process sequenced and what is the timing between events?
What, if any, pre-existing social ties did migrants have to the host community?
To what degree were alternative retirement destinations considered?
Approximately half (45 percent) of the respondents reported a remote daydreaming period before they started to make serious plans for their move in retirement. Comparisons of the timing of planning, retirement and move indicate much of the formal planning for the move may occur after retirement. Retirement is not simultaneous with the migration event; rather on average two years passes between retirement and the move. Two thirds of the sample had pre-existing social ties. Hence the majority of the migrants were not strangers making a "cold call" to the area. Friends in the locale were the most prevalent tie, accounting for one third of all pre-existing ties. Return migration to the native area or to a previous residence together account for more than a quarter of the ties; children or other family living in the area account for slightly less than a quarter. Prior vacation experiences account for only 14 percent of the unique ties to the region. The paper concludes with the implications of these results for those communities which have embarked on a strategy of recruiting retirement-aged migrants.
