Italian retirement migration: stories from Bulgaria

The geography of international retirement migration is constantly changing with the rise of new countries of origin and destination. The latter are often peripheral, lower-cost countries at various latitudes of the world. New actors are also emerging, like pension-poor Westerners with economic constraints who seek suitable locations to enhance their standard of living. This paper is set within this context and studies the recent emigration of Italian pensioners to Bulgaria. By using narratives from interviews carried out with 25 retirees who have recently relocated to this country, the paper addresses two questions. The first relates to the main reason for relocation, while the second concerns the balance of their life in Bulgaria. Study results highlight that the main motivation for the relocation was the financial constraint they were living under in Italy. However, for some of them, in addition to this, another motivator related to the emotional, personal problems they were facing. A novel aspect of this study relates to the outcomes illustrating that, beyond the improvement of their standard of living, for most of the participants the relocation provided a way to reacquire intergenerational practices with regard to family duties (e.g. to economically sustain children left in Italy). While the overall balance of their life in Bulgaria is positive, the partial social integration due to the strong language barrier renders their stay in this country improbable, as they approach the fourth age.