The Grey Escape: Britons Retiring Overseas, c. 1980 – 2010

This article explores a new phenomenon taking root across the global north in the late millennium. Emigration, long assumed to be the preserve of younger age groups, was increasingly the choice of the recently or soon-to-be retired. Centring the British case, the article traces the later-life mobilities of two groups: the mostly white retirees who relocated to southern Europe in search of better lifestyles, and the black and South Asian citizens who returned ‘home’ to Britain’s former colonies in older age. It argues that these mobilities should be understood as belonging to the same paradoxical moment: when rising affluence was expanding older people’s aspirations and opportunities, and postcolonial anxieties were turning ageing in multiracial Britain into an unattractive prospect for many. Through a critical reading of qualitative ethnographic data, oral histories and press and media sources, the analysis shows that ageing was a significant force in the movements of people in and beyond Europe during a period more typically associated with exclusionary bordering regimes. It suggests that historians should attend more closely to these intersections of mass immigration, demographic change and ‘neoliberal’ welfare states in the remaking of European societies over the past half-century.