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Gender, Family, and Adaptation of Migrants in Europe pp 67–89Cite as

Palgrave Macmillan

‘And we are still here’: Life Courses and Life Conditions of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Retirees in Switzerland

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Abstract

Using a life-course perspective, we analyse the past trajectories and situations of migrants from Southern Europe who came as guest-workers in Switzerland during their adult life and who now are retired. We focus on past migratory, citizenship status and professional trajectories. We analyse how these variables influence the economic, social and health situations of migrants during the transition to retirement and after retirement. We compare their trajectories and situations with those of the Swiss-born population of the same ages. We compare also between immigrants who acquired Swiss nationality and those who are still foreigners. The concept of path dependency that leads to a process of cumulative advantages or disadvantages across the life course is particularly useful to understand the trajectories and situations of retired immigrants.

This chapter is the result of research executed within the framework of the National Competence Centre in Research LIVES and the SINERGIA Project CRSII1-129922, which are financed by the Swiss National Science Foundation. The authors are grateful to the Swiss National Science Foundation for its support.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    For this reason, our chapter is called ‘And we are still here’. Many immigrants who intended to return to their home country decided finally to stay in the host country after retirement.

  2. 2.

    Authors’ translation from French.

  3. 3.

    Please consider the important non-response rate to this question.

  4. 4.

    All the statistical analyses were conducted using R (2016). The MCA was conducted using the library FactoMineR (Le et al. 2008).

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Social Work, University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), Geneva, Switzerland

    Claudio Bolzman

  2. Nuffield College, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK

    Giacomo Vagni

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  1. Claudio Bolzman
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  2. Giacomo Vagni
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. ‘Lucian Blaga’ University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania

    Ionela Vlase

  2. ‘Lucian Blaga’ University of Sibiu, Sibiu, Romania

    Bogdan Voicu

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Bolzman, C., Vagni, G. (2018). ‘And we are still here’: Life Courses and Life Conditions of Italian, Spanish and Portuguese Retirees in Switzerland. In: Vlase, I., Voicu, B. (eds) Gender, Family, and Adaptation of Migrants in Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-76657-7_4

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