Abstract
Cornelia Schweppe and Karin Müller examine social relationships of retirement migrants with people from the local population on the South Coast of Kenya. The life situation of the local population is marked by extreme poverty. Based on narrative-guided interviews with retirement migrants, their analysis shows how inequalities and constructions of difference are at the core of retirement migrants’ relationships. The predominant relationship structuring is marked by the retirees’ superior self-positioning and by the continuous (re)production of domination, subordination, and devaluation of the local population. In very few exceptions, however, the relationships take a different form. In these cases, the relationships develop from shared beliefs and/or sympathies. However, in the course of these relationships, social and particularly material inequalities become highly relevant and insurmountable problems. In contrast to the other relationships in which the migrants’ privileged position leads to dominance and devaluation of the local population, retirees in these cases largely withdraw from relationships in disappointment and become socially isolated. The analysis shows that the dominance and dependency structures of Europeans that characterize Kenya’s South Coast pervade not only the life conditions of the local population but also the social relationships between retirement migrants and Kenyans.
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Notes
- 1.
This concept has dominated research, especially with regard to intimate encounters between men from relatively wealthy countries and women from less wealthy countries, for example, sex tourism research (O’Connell Davidson & Sanchez Taylor, 1999) and international marriages, including marriages between Thai women and western men (Lapanun, 2018; Thompson et al., 2016).
- 2.
Diani is the main area at the South Coast where European presence and infrastructure concentrate.
- 3.
The term “mzungu” comes from the Swahili language and refers to Europeans or white people.
- 4.
Chege and Schweppe (2018) point out how some of these income-generating practices contain strategies that are very similar to those of charity organizations in the region: “(…) the strategies of charity organizations in the region (…), have spread beyond the boundaries of organizations and have been adopted and incorporated into the livelihood strategies of the local population” (p. 116).
- 5.
All quotes from the interviews were translated from German into English.
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Schweppe, C., Müller, K. (2022). Social Relationships of Retirement Migrants in Kenya with the Local Population: On Devaluation Practices, Re-education Efforts and Disappointments. In: Schweppe, C. (eds) Retirement Migration to the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-6999-6_5
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