Challenges in Lifestyle Migration Research: Reflections and Findings about the Spanish Crisis

Abstract

The lifestyle migration conceptual framework is based on the motivation for moving reported by the migrants themselves. We discuss the operability of this approach, which is built on the subjective assessments of individuals. It diminishes the actual importance of economic factors and has an underlying ideological element associated with the categorisation of people according to their nationality. A comparative analysis of residential variations by nationalities between 2005 and 2010 in Alicante (Spain) shows that, when faced with the economic crisis, the so-called lifestyle migrants are changing their mobility patterns in a way similar to the rest of the migrants. This calls into question the adequacy of juxtaposing lifestyle and labour migration. Both theory and research show that this duality, instead of clarifying applied research, makes it more difficult. We argue that the lifestyle migration framework is inadequate to study changes in mobility patterns, particularly when using a quantitative approach.

Key Words:

• Lifestyle migration
• Sociology
• Return migration
• British in Spain
• Economic recession

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Valencian Government Emerging Research Groups Grant (2011-GV-037). The authors wish to thank to Dr. Vicente Rodríguez, Dr. Michael Janoschka and Heiko Haas for their support and valuable comments on earlier drafts of this paper.