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Aging Migrants

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Synonyms

Aging and immigration; Aging and migration; Aging immigrants; Older immigrants; Older migrants; Transnational aging

Definition

The term “aging migrants” usually refers to individuals who are foreign-born and are growing old in a country of destination other than that of his or her country of birth so that the country of destination has become his or her country of residence. In most cases, aging migrants are not foreign nationals as they may have lived in the country of destination for decades. In some cases, aging migrants are not international migrants and are represented by internal migrants who move within a country seasonally or away from informal care by family members and others to institutional care in different states or regions. Although definitions vary by countries and studies, migrants aged 50 or older are commonly considered as “aging migrants,” either because many retirement migrants occur well before the conventional delimiter (65 years) or because many...

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Correspondence to Albert Sabater .

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Sabater, A. (2019). Aging Migrants. In: Gu, D., Dupre, M. (eds) Encyclopedia of Gerontology and Population Aging. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_625-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_625-2

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-319-69892-2

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Chapter history

  1. Latest

    Aging Migrants
    Published:
    04 June 2020

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_625-3

  2. Aging Migrants
    Published:
    27 July 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_625-2

  3. Original

    Aging Migrants
    Published:
    20 May 2019

    DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-69892-2_625-1