Understanding Lifestyle Migration

Theoretical Approaches to Migration and the Quest for a Better Way of Life

M. Benson, N. Osbaldiston, M. Benson, N. Osbaldiston

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781137328663
• eBook ISBN: 9781137328670
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

This book draws on social theories to understand lifestyle migration as a social phenomenon. The chapters engage theoretically with themes and debates relevant to contemporary social science such as place and space, social stratification and power relations, production and consumption, individualism, dwelling and imagination.

1

New Horizons in Lifestyle Migration Research: Theorising Movement, Settlement and the Search for a Better Way of Life

Michaela Benson and Nick Osbaldiston

In 2009, Benson and O’Reilly (2009a and b) noted a burgeoning field of research investigating what they labelled lifestyle migration, the migration of ‘relatively affluent individuals, moving either part-time or full-time, permanently or temporarily, to places which, for various reasons, signify for the migrants something loosely defined as quality of life’ (2009a: 621). This is a migration phenomenon distinct from other more-documented and researched forms of migration (such as labour migration and refugee movements) that has some similarities with elite travel and migration (see, e.g., Amit 2007; Birtchnell and Caletrío 2013), and has developed into a healthy field of scholarly enquiry, generating its own corpus of literature. As Knowles and Harper succinctly define it, ‘[These] are migrations where aesthetic qualities including quality of life are prioritized over economic factors like job advancement and income’ (2009: 11). The centrality of such aesthetic qualities both to the decision to migrate and experiences of post-migration life results in explanations privileging the socio-cultural dimensions of the decision to migrate. As we demonstrate in this introduction, these explanations, developing out of the research traditions of sociology and social anthropology, are often underpinned by a strong commitment to social theory.

Understanding Lifestyle Migration builds on this commitment, to develop further conceptual and theoretical models for understanding the phenomenon. The intentions of the volume are twofold: contributions reflect on and question the theoretical underpinnings of current research in this area, while also developing further our understandings of these social phenomena through the application of social theory. Through a discussion of both, we hope to produce opportunities for reflection not only on the movement itself, but how lifestyle migration inputs into contemporary debates in social theories not only of migration, but also consumption, identity and culture. Following this agenda, the volume follows the agenda for migration research laid out by van Hear, ‘the potential of re-embedding conceptual approaches to migration in wider social science theory’ (2010: 1536). In this respect, the contributions to the volume recognise the value of social science debates to understanding lifestyle migration, in particular, the dialectic between structure and agency.

The introduction sets up the volume by reviewing some of the key theoretical trends and conceptual underpinnings of lifestyle migration research. Through this review, it forecasts the development of this field thematically, theoretically and conceptually by building on the strengths of existing research and introduces the contributions to the volume. It also highlights the importance of this field of research and its possible contributions to understanding migration more generally. In particular, we stress the methodological and epistemological lessons to be learned (and shared) from lifestyle migration research, lessons that teach us to rethink who migrants are and how they live as well as questioning the fundamental notions of social life.

Lifestyle migration

On a kind of personal quest, life-style migrants seek places of refuge that they can call home and that they believe will resonate with idealized visions of self ... the ‘potential self.’ Life-style migration concerns individuals and families who choose relocation as a way of redefining themselves in the reordering of work, family, and personal priorities as they seek a kind of personal moral reorientation to questions of the good. (Hoey 2005: 593)

Lifestyle migration is a complex and nuanced phenomenon, varying from one migrant to another, from one location to the next. It holds at its core social transformation and wider processes; it is at once an individualized pursuit and structurally reliant and it is a response to practical, moral and emotional imperatives. (O’Reilly and Benson 2009: 11)

The definition of lifestyle migration as a social phenomenon is intended to capture the movement and (re)settlement of relatively affluent and privileged populations in search of a better way of life. Rather than a focus on production and the involuntary nature of many migrations, lifestyle migration appears to be driven by consumption and is optional and voluntary, privileging cultural motifs of destinations and mobilities. In part, this drive to migrate to particular places is framed by social and mediatised constructions of particular destinations as offering an improved way of life (Jackiewicz and Craine 2010; Åkerlund 2012). Such constructions often replicate known cultural tropes that include the rural idyll and authenticity (Buller and Hoggart 1994; Osbaldiston 2011, 2012; Benson 2013a). Beyond this, however, and as the quotations that head up this introduction indicate, the better way of life sought often embeds existential and moral concerns, with the expectation that through migration these will be, in some way, resolved (Hoey 2005, 2006).

The study of lifestyle migration – as opposed to the related studies of counterurbanisation and amenity migration (cf. Moss 2006; Halfacree 2012) – has taken an interest in these latter dimensions of the decision to migrate, questioning how we can understand the quest for a better way of life, approaching the existential and moral concerns embedded in the decision to migrate through a notably sociological lens. The predominant conceptual and theoretical approaches to this field of study focus on the relationship between migrant subjectivities and the quest for a better way of life. This is a quest that does not end with the act of migration, but continues into post-migration life (Benson and O’Reilly 2009a; Knowles and Harper 2009; Benson 2011). Lifestyle migration research thus documents not only the act of migration – where, why and how – but also lived experiences of life following migration. Without a doubt, the ability to privilege lifestyle and realise it through migration is borne out of relative affluence and privilege, and is thus inseparable from the economic circumstances and global contexts of inequality in which it takes place.

To date, the field of lifestyle migration research may be characterised as vibrant, engaging questions about the intersections of migration, lifestyle and identity-transformation (O’Reilly 2000; Oliver 2008; Benson 2011). It reflects the relationship of social and economic transformation to these forms of migration (Benson and O’Reilly 2009a; Hoey 2014); presents migration as more than a one-off event bringing about a change of lifestyle, an ongoing process through which such migrants incrementally improve their quality of life (Benson and O’Reilly 2009a and b; Benson 2011); questions relationships and attachments to place (Osbaldiston 2011, 2012); and recognises the false dichotomy of structure and agency, revealing how tensions between structure and agency play out in migration and post-migration lives (Oliver and O’Reilly 2010; Benson 2013b).

Conceptualising and theorising the quest for a better way of life

This field of research engages social theory at different registers, setting the context and explaining the conditions that nourish lifestyle migration as a social phenomenon, while also being put to work to explain particular articulations of the lifestyle migrant experience. We start here by questioning the theoretical underpinnings of the existing conceptual work on lifestyle migration.

Conceptualising lifestyle migration through social theory

Definitions of lifestyle migration, unsurprising, centre on the sociological concept of lifestyle, driven by empirical research that repeatedly stresses that migration equates to a search for a better way of life (Benson and O’Reilly 2009a). The better way of life sought by these migrants is presented as distinct and of its time, a migration trend notable precisely because it is reminiscent of Giddens’s (1991) quest for ontological security, Beck’s (1992) risk-avoidance strategies or Bauman’s (2007, 2008) pursuit of happiness. In this rendering, migration represents a lifestyle choice that should be considered as a stage within the reflexive project of the self (Hoey 2005, 2006; Benson and O’Reilly 2009a). Embedding the phenomenon into this conceptual terrain rests upon the conditions set by late- or liquid modernity. In other words, the social and economic arrangement of everyday life has in recent times somehow shifted allowing and producing lifestyle migration – an assumption built into the design of several contemporary social theories; lifestyle migration becomes a late-/liquid modern phenomenon.

Challenges to this position can be found within social theory, but have not been fully explored within the field of lifestyle migration. We propose here to unsettle the relationship between lifestyle migration and such theories that focus on individual agency, freedom and choice, the central theme of Korpela’s chapter in this volume. As Inglis (2014) so clearly articulates, theories of a late-/liquid-modern society are ahistorical, resting upon notions of presentism. This allows for a situation where the possible forebears of contemporary social phenomena are literally resigned to history.

... although personalized quests for utopia have persisted for centuries, the recent increase in this phenomenon implies it emerges partly as a result of the reflexive assessment of opportunities (whether life will be between here or there) that Giddens (1991) identified as only recently made possible, rather than a direct outcome of relative economic privilege. (O’Reilly and Benson 2009: 3)

Despite the recognition of the historical precedents for lifestyle migration – the Grand Tour and other forms of elite travel, rural escapism and colonialism – it has often been presented as an emergent migration trend made possible by recent social and economic transformation. In particular, lifestyle migration is characterised by the reflexivity unique to post-, late- or liquid modernity, an articulation of the project of the self. The analytical tools offered by Giddens, Bauman and Beck have been readily assumed and put to work within these understandings (see, e.g., Hoey 2005, 2006; Benson and O’Reilly 2009a; McIntyre 2009). The recognition of what Inglis (2014) refers to as ‘presentism’ within the social theory that underwrites these approaches to lifestyle migration, leads to the suggestion that the phenomenon, the motivations and intentions behind it, is distinct from migration trends of the past. This assertion of distinctiveness remains untested although presented as fait accompli.

Extending Inglis’s (2014) critique of contemporary social theory into lifestyle migration research calls into question the extent to which such migration phenomena should be considered as unique to current social conditions and contexts. As Osbaldiston (this volume) argues, this is in part a question about the distinctiveness of reflexivity – the characteristic of lifestyle migration that links it to the conditions of alleged post-, late- or liquid modernity – to a particular sociological epoch and how the assumption of this relationship has shaped the study of lifestyle migration. It is also a question about the project of the self and whether a recounting of the critical history by which personhood has been invented (see, e.g., Rose 1998; Korpela this volume) might open up the scope to explore continuities through different articulations of the search for a better way of life. What seems to be clear however is that the significant lack of evidence to confirm lifestyle migration as a product of a contemporary sociological epoch calls assumptions made about its uniqueness into question.

Hoey’s contribution to this volume presents one challenge to such renderings. As he argues, there is a need to understand current forms of lifestyle migration in the United States, not only as running counter to previous internal migration flows, but also as a continuation of these. Tracing these historically – with trends including suburbanisation, and the shift back to urban living – reminds us that lifestyle is a longstanding motivation behind household relocation. This ‘fifth migration’ as Hoey labels it, is made further possible by conditions of flexibility – originally identified by Sennett (1998) as a characteristic of working life under new capitalism – whereby relocation results from calculations of collective and personal quality of life. This observation draws attention to the need to question the assumption that lifestyle migration is distinct from previous migration trends and instead recognise the possible continuities that may be present.

Seeking authenticity

As these continuities highlight, there is value to be gained from a more historically sensitive approach to lifestyle migration that examines how the motivations behind lifestyle migration are (historically) constructed or developed. Even if it is the case that these are located specifically within a particular shelf of the middle-class cabinet, how this has become part of the habitus of individuals within this group remains left underdeveloped. Although the considerable use of travel (as indicated earlier) and tourism literature in the past has led to a deeper appreciation of the ‘practices’ of lifestyle migration (O’Reilly 2012), we still require a potential interpretation of events that have led to the notion of escape or utopia as a social good to be obtained, not to mention also the conditions under which the realisation of these is a possibility.

The makings are already in place; much research on these phenomena, including that presented in the pages of this volume, is attentive to the historical dimensions of the quest for a better way of life. Such research traces the Thoreau-inspired wanderlust, the rural idyll with its Arcadian influences and the desire for escape from the city, recognising that these cultural tropes and imaginings have long histories that have been folded onto contemporary practices of the self. These imaginings are not only concerned with the physical characteristics of the destination; the desire for pristine environments often goes hand in hand with more cultural longings with lifestyle migrants seeking a sense of community. It therefore becomes clear that ‘escape’ or ‘utopia’ are themes that deserve further unpacking through both historical and cultural analysis. While Bauman has identified the quest for utopia as an individualised construct in today’s ‘liquid’ state, we must always be mindful of historical precedents that have served as cultural goods to be acquired today. History is replete with examples from as diverse as Thoreau’s Walden experiment through to Georg Simmel’s attempts to find solitude in the Alps (Jazbinsek 2003).

The notion of escapism or adventure is further undoubtedly related to the quest for a better life or self-authenticity as demonstrated in tourism theory (Cohen 1979; Urry 2011). Rather, like Lindholm and Zúquete (2010: 155) found in their consideration of utopian social movements, the process of finding a better way of life may well be a ‘value in itself’, demonstrating the potential to recognise lifestyle migration as an ongoing quest for ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  New Horizons in Lifestyle Migration Research: Theorising Movement, Settlement and the Search for a Better Way of Life
• Part I  Constraints and Opportunities
• Part II  Revisiting Assumptions
• Part III  Spaces of Imagination
• Part IV  Stillness and Sedentariness
• Part V  Looking Onwards and Outwards
• Index