Authors:
- Awarded an ‘honourable mention’ in the Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies
- First major work in English on France’s migrant worker hostels, a massive state-led housing policy for migrant workers
- This book has been nominated for the 2019 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize
- Presents an innovative methodology that combines multi-sited and in-transit ethnography spanning France, Morocco and Senegal
- Challenges existing theories of migration based respectively on economic costs/benefits and the location of family members
Part of the book series: IMISCOE Research Series (IMIS)
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Table of contents (8 chapters)
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Front Matter
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Back Matter
About this book
This open access book offers new insights into the ageing-migration nexus and the nature of home. Documenting the hidden world of France’s migrant worker hostels, it explores why older North and West African men continue to live past retirement age in this sub-standard housing. Conventional wisdom holds that at retirement labour migrants ought to instead return to their families in home countries, where their French pensions would have far greater purchasing power.
This paradox is the point of departure for a book which transports readers from the banlieues of Paris to the banks of the Senegal River and the villages of the Anti-Atlas. In intimate ethnographic detail, the author brings to life the experiences of these older labour migrants by sharing in the life of the hostels as a resident, by observing at close quarters the men's family life on the other side of the Mediterranean as a guest in their homes, and even by accompanying them in their travelsby bus, sea, and air.
The monograph evaluates several theories of migration against rich qualitative data gathered from multiple methods: biographical narrative and semi-structured interviews, participant observation, and archival research. In the process, it offers a thoughtful contribution to broader debates on what it means for migrants to belong and achieve inclusion in society.
This book has been awarded an ‘honourable mention’ in the Khayrallah Prize in Migration Studies, courtesy of the Moise A. Khayrallah Center for Lebanese Diaspora Studies at North Carolina State University. For more information please see: https://lebanesestudies.ncsu.edu/awards/scholarly/2018.php.
This book has been nominated for the 2019 BSA Philip Abrams Memorial Prize
Authors and Affiliations
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University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, United Kingdom
Alistair Hunter
Bibliographic Information
Book Title: Retirement Home? Ageing Migrant Workers in France and the Question of Return
Authors: Alistair Hunter
Series Title: IMISCOE Research Series
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-64976-4
Publisher: Springer Cham
eBook Packages: Social Sciences, Social Sciences (R0)
Copyright Information: The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
Hardcover ISBN: 978-3-319-64975-7Published: 16 April 2018
Softcover ISBN: 978-3-030-09731-8Published: 08 January 2019
eBook ISBN: 978-3-319-64976-4Published: 29 March 2018
Series ISSN: 2364-4087
Series E-ISSN: 2364-4095
Edition Number: 1
Number of Pages: XII, 211
Number of Illustrations: 28 b/w illustrations
Topics: Migration, Population Economics, Aging, Human Geography