green paul reading reflection

Mobility, Stasis and Transnational Kin: Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia

PAUL GREEN*

University of Melbourne

Abstract: Studies of transnational families tend to filter understandings of mobility and stasis through a bi-national framework that juxtaposes the movement of migrants across international borders with the immobility of in-place kin within equally static national spaces. This article examines the concept-metaphors of mobility and stasis through the eyes of later-life (over 50 year-old) Western migrants living in Penang, Malaysia and Bali, Indonesia. By treating “in-place” kin as mobile subjects I examine the extent to which the movement of individuals and families within and across a range of national borders affects the lives, concerns and movements of these older, Western migrants and retirees in Southeast Asia. By examining the concept-metaphors from the perspective of these migrants I illustrate the extent to which such people both succumb to yet exceed scholarly imaginings of im/mobility and juxtapositions between mobile selves and immobile others. Migrant thinking about these concept-metaphors, I suggest, complicates an ongoing tendency within the field of transnational family studies to view mobility and stasis as categorical opposites and offers fresh insights into the role and relevance of these concept-metaphors in the lives of Western migrants in Southeast Asia and their transnational relations with teenage and adult children, ageing parents and grandchildren.

Keywords: Western migrants, transnationalism, kinship, later-life migration, Southeast Asia

Introduction

According to Cresswell (2006, p. 26), understandings of mobility are underpinned by “two principal metaphysical ways of viewing the world: a sedentarist metaphysics and

*Correspondence Address: [email protected]

© 2015 Asian Studies Association of Australia

Asian Studies Review, 2015 Vol. 39, No. 4, 669–685, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10357823.2015.1082976

a nomadic metaphysics”. While the former is built around imaginings of fixivity, rootedness and place, nomadic metaphysics “revels in notions of flow, flux and dyna- mism” (Cresswell, 2006, p. 26). Studies of transnational families tend to embrace both of these “concept-metaphors” (Salazar and Smart, 2011, p. ii). Transnational migrants, by implication, are viewed as mobile subjects. They leave their homelands. They come and go in a circular fashion (Tsuda, 2003, p. 238), or make irregular visits to their homeland (Constable, 1999). This view of mobility is juxtaposed with the fixivity of kin who remain rooted in a particular homeland. “Migrant” kin are categorised in opposition to “homeland” kin (Baldassar, 2007, p. 387). The mobility of adult children, mothers and expatriate wives is juxtaposed with representations of “stay-behind” par- ents (Baldassar et al., 2007, p. 12), left-behind children (Devasahayam and Abdul Rahman, 2011; Madianou and Miller, 2012; Parreñas, 2005), or grown-up children and elderly parents “who still live in the expatriates’ home country” (Fechter, 2007, p. 54).

The perceived rootedness of “in-place” kin, I suggest, has facilitated valuable yet particular representations of migrant subjectivity and experience. Studies of Filipino migrant women, for example, attest to the ways in which their experience of life and work overseas is influenced by attachments to “left-behind” kin such as siblings and children (Madianou and Miller, 2012; Parreñas, 2005; Piquero-Ballescas, 2009). Through feelings of guilt and a sense of responsibility towards their children, these women compensate for their absence from the “left-behind” household by engaging in a process of “intensive mothering” from afar (Parreñas, 2005, p. 323). As Piquero- Ballescas (2009, p. 79) suggests, the desire to take care of one’s family back home plays a “crucial deciding role” in the decision to travel to and/or stay in particular over- seas destinations. Rooted in place, poverty and traditional culture, the “affective domain” of the in-place household thus provides a sedentarist anchor for the movement or otherwise of migrant kin (Piquero-Ballescas, 2009, p. 79).

Boehm’s (2012) study of transnational families across the Mexican-US border sug- gests that there is fluidity in the categories of mobile and in-place kin. As she puts it (2012, p. 19), “a ‘nonmover’ may suddenly migrate or a ‘mover’ may be deported and stop migrating seasonally”. This fluidity is nevertheless based on a form of method- ological nationalism (Wimmer and Glick Schiller, 2002) that replicates the dominant, dyadic framework of mobility and stasis in transnational family studies. The nonmover in Boehm’s study is viewed as an immobile subject by virtue of location in a particular homeland; re-categorisation as a moving subject is only made possible by transgressing national borders.

Studies of transnational families, like migration studies more generally, prioritise international migration and neglect the relevance of mobility practices within national borders (Kalir, 2013). Little attention is paid to the movement of in-place kin between “porous” households, towns and regions within national spaces (McKay, 2012, p. 200), and the ways in which this movement may impact on (transnational) migrant experience. Parreñas (2005, p. 331), for example, highlights the extent to which stay-behind husbands work away from home, and are viewed by migrant wives as drinkers and womanisers. Distrust of these men plays a central role in how migrant wives manage transnational household finances and relationships. Yet little attention is paid to the mobility practices of these men, where they may work, drink and engage in extra-marital sexual relations, and the implications of this movement for understanding conflict between female migrants and their supposedly nonmoving spouses in the Philippines.

670 Paul Green

In contrast, Olwig’s extensive research on transnational family networks of Caribbean origin highlights the ways in which kin relations are imagined and main- tained across a globally dispersed range of locations and destinations (see, for example, 2007; 2012). Olwig’s (2012, p. 949) research also demonstrates how the mobility of children in local communities impacts on migrant life, helping “to generate and rein- force the local, regional, and transnational networks of social and economic relations that sustain Caribbean life”. McKay’s (2012, p. 18) multi-sited study of globally dis- persed Filipino migrants similarly points to “a complex history of local mobility” and an extensive range of village and kinship networks situated across the Philippines, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai and Canada. In contrast to Parreñas’ (2005) understand- ing of migrant mothers and their left-behind children, McKay (2012, p. 197) points to a new generation of mobile subjects – namely, the sons and daughters of current migrants “who are not only domestic workers in Hong Kong but also doing factory and restaurant work in Singapore and caregiving in Israel”.

Yet as Lee (2011, p. 303) points out, “the majority of studies of transnationalism” tend to focus on ties between a homeland and host or receiving society. Such studies, then, neglect the importance of “intradiasporic transnationalism” and the ways in which connections in a diasporic context “can occur independently of the host-home connec- tions” (Lee, 2011, p. 295). There is a need, I argue, to recognise and account for more complex transnational itineraries, of movement between and across here, there and several “elsewheres” in shaping relationships between migrants and other, mobile kin. The promise of Bryceson and Vuorela’s (2002, p. 6) introduction to an edited volume on “family diasporas” and global networks on these terms is arguably offset by a predominant focus in subsequent chapters on dyadic connections between migrants and their families back home. Vuorela’s (2002) historically situated account of a “multi-sited”, East African Asian family proved a particular exception to this rule. The strength of her case study, however, is countered by a limited focus on a longstanding personal friendship with a university lecturer and the latter’s extended family.

This article transcends what I term a “dyadic imaginary” of migrant/in-place kin in such studies and instead suggests that “in-place” kin, or rather kin based in other places, should also be viewed as mobile subjects. By recognising how these supposedly static subjects engage in various spatial mobility practices within and across a range of national borders, I then ask how these practices impact on and affect the lives of older or later-life (over 50 year-old) Western migrants living in Penang, Malaysia and Bali, Indonesia.

Increasing numbers of older, Western migrants are settling in Southeast Asia. Research on this growing phenomenon is limited, though see Green (2014a; 2014b), Howard (2008; 2009) and insights by Ono (2008) and Toyota (2006) on Japanese retirees in the region. Studies of older migrants and retirees from “the West” have tended to focus on movement across Europe, from Sweden or the UK to Spain, or from North America to Mexico (see, for example, Banks, 2004; Casado-Diaz et al., 2004; Gustafson, 2001; Oliver, 2008). Even so, beyond Gustafson’s (2001) research, these studies offer limited insights into the affective role and influence of other kin, particu- larly mobile kin, in the lives of these migrants. As I highlight in this article, the pres- ence of older, Western migrants in Southeast Asia sheds complex, relational light on the mobile lives of young adults, and young families, whose internal and international mobility practices are guided by a range of work, educational and leisure opportunities,

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 671

in the context of increasingly affordable and flexible “travel technologies” (Baldassar et al., 2007).

My understanding of affect is built around recognition that the self is a “relational achievement” (Conradson and McKay, 2007, p. 167) whose sense of being is defined, in important ways, through interpersonal relationships with “emotionally important” kin (Reimers, 2011, p. 254). This sense of connection to kin may vary, in terms of intensity, expectation and obligation, in given social, cultural and gendered contexts. Anthropologists have long debated the extent to which concepts of the person, on these terms, vary cross-culturally (Smith, 2012, p. 50). Baldassar’s (2007) understanding of emotional closeness between parents and adult children in Italian families, for example, contrasts in important ways with Strathern’s (1992, p. 14) suggestion that “the individ- uality of persons is the first fact of English kinship”. As Parreñas (2005) demonstrates, normative expectations of intimacy in some cultural contexts may intensify through migration. It is important to recognise how intimacy evolves and is shaped, on these terms, through broader structures of global and economic inequality (Parreñas, 2005, p. 319).

The association of individuality with Western or Euro-American concepts of the per- son is nevertheless overstated (Smith, 2012). Benson and O’Reilly’s (2009) focus on the “individualised” conditions and self-realisation projects of amenity or lifestyle migration similarly denies the extent to which spatial mobility practices and attendant notions of belonging are formulated in and through relationships with significant others, particularly kin. As I demonstrate in this article, this connection to others may play a central role in how and why a given migrant decides to relocate from England or Australia, as examples, to Southeast Asia. Such connections may variously impact on the everyday lives and concerns of migrants, who as such may feel an important sense of duty and obligation to their dependent adult children, grandchildren and elderly par- ents, for example. This is not then to deny that this “constellation of others may influ- ence us in diverse ways” (Conradson and McKay, 2007, p. 167). Affect, on these terms, may have less impact where distance from other kin “provides a welcome escape from the duty and responsibility associated with family ties” (Walsh, 2009, p. 436). Even then, it is important to recognise how and on what terms a perceived sense of escape from or even nonchalance towards other kin evolves in the interpersonal context of transnational kin dynamics.

As I suggest in this article, it is also important to recognise how and on what terms migrants engage with imaginings of stasis in and through these relationships with other transnational kin. By taking into account how migrants view relatives as immobile others I thus account for the ways in which such people engage with the concept- metaphors of nomadic and sedentarist metaphysics on their own particular terms. Indeed, while anthropologists are adept at filtering understandings of in-place kin through notions of guilt, duty and yearning (Baldassar et al., 2007; Madianou and Miller, 2012; Parreñas, 2005, Piquero-Ballescas, 2009), I suggest that immobility can be perceived by migrants in a range of complex and innovative ways. They may utilise the perceived fixivity of other kin in order to highlight and celebrate the importance, in the context of kin work (Di Leonardo, 1987), of their own mobility practices. Distance between migrant selves and other, immobile kin may be viewed and talked about with a degree of indifference or nonchalance. Migrants, I suggest, are also capable of tran- scending this form of binary thinking and imagining relations with other kin in ways

672 Paul Green

that are not simply colonised by distinctions between or the virtues of one concept-metaphor or another.

Indeed, migrant thinking about mobility and stasis both succumbs to and yet exceeds the dyadic terms and conditions of established scholarly thought on this subject. While anthropologists within the field of migration studies remain committed to viewing mobility and stasis as categorical opposites (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013), I argue that migrant imaginings and perceptions of other kin complicate both the rootedness of these ideologies and the symbolic roots that underpin these scholarly understandings of mobility and stasis. Migrants, in other words, are capable of contributing on their own terms to recently emerging and broader academic debates that refuse to associate rootedness with place and culture or a “ready equation of mobility with freedom” (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013, p. 190). As I demonstrate in this article, understand- ings of rootedness may be grounded in a family history that spans national borders, and not specific places, just as engagement with travel technologies and movement across national borders can be viewed through a particular understanding of immobility. Migrants, like contemporary scholars, can thus contribute to advancements in social theory and shed fresh light on contemporary understandings of mobility and stasis and their impact on kin relations and transnational family life.

Setting the Scene

This article is based primarily on close to six months of ethnographic research in Penang, Malaysia and Ubud, Bali, Indonesia during 2011, followed by a further three months of fieldwork in Ubud during 2013. During these periods I conducted informal interviews with a total of 85 individuals (42 men and 43 women). These interviews focused on life history and relationship concerns and motivations for moving to Southeast Asia. Twenty-four of these individuals were initially interviewed together, as couples. I met a further 23 individuals on a one-to-one basis, although they also lived in the region with a partner or spouse. The remaining 38 migrants variously defined themselves as single, divorced or widowed. The majority of participants came from the United States (24), the United Kingdom (24) and Australia (21). These migrants and retirees ranged in age from 44 to 94, although the majority of individuals were in their 50s and especially their 60s. Some participants had initial contact with the region as tourists; a small number came to live in Southeast Asia in the 1980s. The majority of participants, however, had relocated to the region at various stages over the last 10 years.

This statistical data provides some important insights into the age, nationality and relationship status of these 85 individuals. Focusing on the number of people involved in this research, however, offers less insight into the longitudinal, ethnographic dimen- sions of this ongoing project. Initial insights gained from interviews have been exten- sively complemented and augmented by my participation in a range of social gatherings, such as weekly dinner meetings involving male migrants, birthday parties, film nights in a migrant couple’s home and a weekly croquet event. The findings of this article are based, in important ways, on an extensive series of ongoing conversations and discussions with the same individuals, in a variety of social contexts, over extended periods of time. I have also kept in touch and maintained contact with some migrants through email and other forms of online communication. Insights gained from

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 673

discussions with older migrants and retirees have been complemented by analysis of relevant blogs, Facebook groups and media sources.

While this project addresses the everyday experiences and concerns of migrants in Southeast Asia this article specifically focuses on the often salient role and influence of transnational family networks in the lives of these later-life migrants. I follow Olwig (2007, p. 23) in suggesting that these family relations can be viewed as a field site in and of themselves. As Olwig (2007, p. 24) argues, by analysing the meaning of these relationships on these terms we gain a more nuanced understanding of the “social fields of movement” that lie at the heart of individual migrant lives and their location in a globally dispersed web of affective kinship ties.

Many, if not all, of these migrants are of educated, middle-class backgrounds. Some have professional experience of working in banking, insurance, the police or military, or the public sector, as examples. They may have spent their working lives “back home” in Europe or Australia, or spent much of their adult lives working in Hong Kong, Singapore or Jakarta, for example. These migrants can be categorised, in important ways, as privileged subjects (Croucher, 2012). As Harrison (2003) found in her study of Canadian tourists, however, a focus on class or privilege denies the heterogeneity of wealth and income levels of these older migrants and retirees. Some hold a transnational portfolio of properties and/or have significant savings and pension arrangements. Others feel that they have limited income and savings and cannot afford to live or retire in their homeland. Migrants of various income levels are often drawn to a life in Southeast Asia because their income can stretch further in the context of relatively cheaper costs of living in the region and the financial uncertainties in retirement. It is also important to highlight that some of the single or divorced women I met in Penang and Bali have not retired from a specific long-term career trajectory and may instead have played important supporting roles to their husbands’ careers or worked part-time while raising children in ways that have now compromised income levels in later life.

Penang and Ubud are leading tourist destinations in the region. Tourists come to the island of Penang to explore its beaches, food and the UNESCO world heritage “site” of urban Georgetown. Many, if not all, working expatriates, later-life migrants and retir- ees choose to live near the coast, in a “condominium belt” on the northeast coast of the island of Penang. The apartments and condominiums in the area typically offer sea or partial sea views of the Strait of Malacca. Many migrants speak highly of life in a pre- dominantly Chinese part of multicultural Malaysia. Penang is often viewed as a safe place to live in terms of low crime rates and, in a regional light at least, a stable political climate.

The hill town of Ubud tends to be viewed as the “cultural heart” of Bali, a place that continues to evoke the “arts and ceremonies” of Balinese culture, society and religion (Picard, 1996, p. 83). The town attracts Western residents of various ages. While an improvement in services is on the horizon, older migrants recognise that Ubud, and Bali more generally, has tended to offer little security in terms of medical facilities and emergency treatment for heart attacks and strokes, for example. Such concerns are nevertheless offset by the lifestyle choices available to residents in Ubud. Western migrants tend to live in houses or villas in Ubud, often in the midst of rice fields. Ubud also offers a vast range of social and cultural activities, museums, galleries and an endless array of local and international cafes, bistros and restaurants.

674 Paul Green

The project is primarily based on a study of later-life, or over 50 year-old, migrants. The term “later-life” migration is used (Warnes and Williams, 2006), as opposed to a notion of retirement migration, to provide a more flexible, age-related framework for analysing these forms of movement and migration in Southeast Asia. During my research I regularly encountered migrants who had retired early due to personal or health reasons. A focus on retirement, and its association with a post-work lifestyle, also denies the experience of women who had not worked before arriving in the region, or who may be based in the region as a result of their spouse’s employment status. The term later-life also provides a more adequate basis for understanding the visa and pol- icy frameworks of governments in the region. The Thai and Indonesian governments offer retirement visas to over-50 and over-55 year-old foreigners, respectively, while Malaysia’s My Second Home (MM2H) program is predominantly aimed at prospective applicants over the age of 50.

This said, it is not possible to gain accurate figures for the number of foreign, later- life migrants living in Southeast Asia. Since 2002, more than 26,000 applicants of vari- ous national backgrounds have joined the MM2H program (Ministry of Tourism and Culture Malaysia, 2014). Nevertheless, it is quite common for later-life migrants to make use of generous three-month tourist visas available to many nationalities upon entry to Malaysia. I met several migrants who were content to use this visa. While around 2,400 foreign nationals use a retirement visa in Indonesia there are “at least” 10,000 older migrants, according to one media report (Cassrels, 2012), who take advan- tage of other visa options available to foreign nationals. In my case, it was rare to meet migrants with a retirement visa. Many prefer to use a Social-Cultural visa, which is viewed as easier and cheaper to apply for, even though it requires visa holders to leave the country every six months in order to renew their residential status. For many migrants this “visa run” is viewed as an opportunity to travel and/or visit family.

Migrating to Southeast Asia

In late modernity, it is argued, the decision to migrate is increasingly built around indi- vidualised narratives of personal fulfilment and self-discovery (Benson and O’Reilly, 2009). Yet it is also the case that such decisions take place in and through the self’s location in a web of important and valued kin ties. In a Western or Euro-American con- text, intimacy on these terms tends to reflect the role of conjugal kinship ideology in shaping and limiting landscapes and boundaries of meaningful kin relations (Reimers, 2011; Strathern, 1992). Take the example of Sam, a British migrant in her early 50s. Sam has two daughters. Her older is 24 and lives in Hamburg with her partner. Her younger, teenage daughter, Sarah, lives in England. Sarah, like Sam, also relocated dur- ing 2010. She left their home town in the east of England to take up a university degree in veterinary medicine in another part of the country. Any potential guilt that Sam may have had at the time, in terms of abandoning her teenage daughter as she put it, was offset by certain assumptions that Sam held about university life. As Sam explained, she assumed that Sarah would be fine, given that it was normal for univer- sity students to “find themselves” in a thriving social environment and not really miss their parents. Sam’s understanding of campus life, in other words, mirrors a traditional understanding of the role of higher education in facilitating a middle-class rite-of- passage towards independent adulthood (Wilcox et al., 2005).

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 675

Sam’s assumptions about university life have in fact been contradicted by new research. A recent study by Scott et al. (2012) points to a changing student culture in contemporary universities in the UK. University students feel an ongoing sense of financial and emotional attachment to their parents. This sense of attachment and dependence is manifested in a tendency for some students to return to their family home at weekends and/or to choose to study at a university within reasonable travelling distance of a parental home (Scott et al., 2012, pp. 59–60). In Sarah’s case she was unable to return to the family home at weekends. Not only were her parents living in Malaysia, but this home had now transformed into a rental property. As Sam suggested, Sarah felt abandoned in the UK. This sense of abandonment was exacerbated by Sarah’s choice of degree, which involved the need to engage in regular work place- ments. Sarah felt that such opportunities were most evident in and around her home town, which led to her being billeted, as military officer’s daughter Sam put it, at the homes of relatives in the region.

Many parents, particularly in the UK, share Sam’s experience of seeing their children leave home and attend university in another town or city. Yet as the study by Scott et al. (2012) demonstrates, these mobile children imagine that the family home will operate as a point of fixivity in this process, as a static site of emotional support that they can return to at any given point, especially at weekends and during term breaks. Sam’s decision to migrate to Southeast Asia, however, added particular and ongoing complications to her daughter’s life. There is no family home to return to and commu- nication with her mother operates in the transnational context of information and communication technologies. As Sam put it, she feels a strong sense of guilt at not actually being there for her daughter and planned to make amends for her actions by returning to the UK in the next university holiday. As Sam added, hopefully the family home would also be available at the time for them to live there on her return. Sam’s experience is not unusual. I met several later-life parents who are similarly faced with the challenge of managing the emotional and financial needs of dependent adult chil- dren based in other parts of the world.

Hannah’s story illustrates the extent to which the mobility practices of working children may complicate, rather than inspire, potential retirement plans. Hannah is an Australian widow in her mid-60s. After an eventful and varied working life Hannah expected to spend her non-working years in Queensland, close to her two sons, both of whom were married with children. Within the space of just a few months, however, both families had relocated to different parts of Western Australia for work reasons. Hannah was now faced with a major, personal dilemma. Where should she live? Should she follow them interstate? What if they returned to Queensland? Her sons’ mobility practices had, in short, complicated her retirement plans and her specific inten- tion to retire in situ in Queensland. In the end, Hannah put both regional options to one side. She looked into the possibility of moving to Penang and travelled there to find out more about life in Penang and Malaysia. After arriving late one evening in a torrential downpour, she woke up the next morning and opened the curtains in her hotel room to a sunny day and a beautiful view of the sea. She knew right then that she would live there. Hannah moved to Penang in 2008.

Sam and Hannah’s decisions to relocate to Southeast Asia, then, have been affected in various ways and to various degrees by the mobility practices of their adult children. Their experiences highlight the ways in which education and work opportunities within

676 Paul Green

particular nation-states can impact on the transnational movement and relocation of later-life migrants in Southeast Asia.

Here, There and Elsewhere/s

Air travel plays an increasingly central role in spatial mobility. As Amit (2007, p. 4) suggests, growing numbers of “less privileged” middle-class Westerners can afford to travel and travel for longer. Yet it is also the case that travel has become increasingly affordable (Sobocinska, 2011). The affordability of travel has also been enhanced by the recent and rapid emergence of a low-cost carrier (LCC) airline industry. LCC airlines typically offer a “no frills” approach to air travel. The low cost of a flight is augmented by additional payments for items such as meals and check-in baggage. This industry has witnessed spectacular growth in Southeast Asia. An exemplar of this “bud- get airline” growth is AirAsia, primarily a Malaysian carrier (Shuk-Ching Poon and Waring, 2010). In 2002, the airline ran six domestic routes within Malaysia. By 2010, it covered 65 destinations in 18 countries and had carried 16 million passengers in that year alone (AirAsia, 2010). National carriers such as Qantas and Singapore Airlines now have budget subsidiaries, in the form of Jetstar and Scoot, respectively. AirAsia, Scoot and Jetstar all offer important, often inexpensive connections between Southeast Asia and major city airports in Australia.

Take the case of Anna. Anna is Dutch and in her late 50s. She has lived in Ubud since 2008. She has two adult children, a son who lives in Holland and a daughter who lives in Australia. Anna’s daughter met her Australian husband after receiving a scholarship to spend a year of high school study in Western Australia. AirAsia fly directly between Bali and Perth and Anna makes full use of promotions or sales win- dows to buy particularly cheap tickets. When I looked at the AirAsia website during a flight sale in January 2013 it was possible to buy a one-way ticket from Perth to Bali, inclusive of fuel and surcharges, for just 40 Australian dollars. Anna tends to visit Australia more than Holland, though both of her children have visited her in Bali. The affordability of these flights is important for Anna. She has limited non-working income and often eats in relatively cheap local cafes or warungs in Bali. The low cost of AirAsia flights, and the location of her daughter on a short flight route of less than four hours, have undoubtedly increased her motivation and ability to visit her daughter in Australia.

Anna’s case, then, highlights the role of these affordable travel technologies in facili- tating important “face-to-face” connections with other, migrant kin. These technologies, however, also enable more complex travel arrangements. “Traditional” national carriers such as Qantas and LCCs tend to have “unaccompanied minor” policies which provide a basis for children as young as 6 years of age to travel alone across great distances. The movement of unaccompanied children across transnational space complicates how and in what terms scholars might conceive of dyadic, face-to-face relations and under- standings of relatedness between parents and their adult children. Take the example of Tim and Elizabeth, a retired Australian couple in their 60s living in Ubud. Tim and Elizabeth have three children. Both of their daughters are married, but the “protagonist” in this story is a son-in-law, Simon. Simon was approaching his 40th birthday and wanted to celebrate this event by going to Barcelona with his wife. Through conversa- tions across Indonesia and Australia a plan was devised whereby Simon’s two children,

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 677

who were 6 and 10, respectively, would fly “unaccompanied” to Bali while Simon and his wife headed to Spain. Simon’s birthday thus provided Tim and Elizabeth with an opportunity to “babysit” their grandchildren in Ubud.

Tim and Elizabeth’s grandchildren had visited several months before I met these two migrant grandparents, yet Simon’s birthday plans had clearly provided the former with powerful, glowing memories of their time with their grandchildren in Ubud. As Tim suggested, the grandchildren had loved their time there, just as Tim and Elizabeth had gained so much from sharing their new place of residence with them. The imprint of this visit was also felt in public space. Tim and Elizabeth took their grandchildren to see a Balinese dance organised within the local community. The grandchildren, mean- while, had taken to eating at several nearby cafes and restaurants. As Tim suggested, the local Balinese who organised these dances or worked in cafes in their area contin- ued to ask after their grandchildren. Tim and Elizabeth’s experience of being grandpar- ents in Bali, I suggest, is more than a memory – it is a memory that is continually flagged, to follow Billig (1995), in and through everyday relationships with Balinese people in their neighbourhood.

Jennifer is in her 50s and has lived with her working husband for almost a decade in Penang. Both wife and husband are British. Jennifer is a frequent flyer between the UK and Malaysia but her understanding of migration and mobility is greatly informed by her experience of raising two equally mobile children. Jennifer has two daughters, from two different marriages. Her older daughter, Allison, is 28; the younger, Helen, is 15. Helen lives with Jennifer in Penang but thanks to regular visits to England refers to both places as home.

When Jennifer came to Penang her older daughter stayed behind to study at univer- sity in England. Towards the end of her studies, Allison struggled with her emotional well-being and came to live in Penang for a year. Allison enjoyed life there and looked for employment but was unsuccessful. She subsequently found work back in England. Throughout this process, Jennifer and her husband provided material and financial sup- port for Allison and also paid for a year’s rent on a house in northern England to enable her daughter to “find her feet” again. In 2012, Jennifer informed me that her daughter’s planned wedding in Italy had gone very well and that her younger daughter, Helen, was now very happy to have what she viewed as a “new brother”, in light of formal incorporation of Allison’s husband into the family. After initially boarding yet another flight to the UK, Jennifer and several other family members were there to cele- brate this special occasion over the course of a week in Italy.

In the methodologically nationalist order of things, to follow Malkki (1992), this is very much a tale of ongoing, transnational movement between the “here” of Malaysia and “there” of England, or vice versa. Yet Jennifer’s attachments to particular places within England, for example, are continually evolving and shaped, in important ways, by the mobility practices or otherwise of emotionally important kin. Jennifer maintains a strong sense of belonging to her hometown of Halifax because of the ongoing pres- ence in the town of close family members, such as an aunt and uncle. At the same time, her life now centres on Manchester, the “new” home of her older daughter. Her daughter and husband recently bought a house there, thus ensuring that the city is very much part of Jennifer’s travel itinerary whenever she visits the UK. Jennifer’s younger daughter, Helen, meanwhile may soon challenge Jennifer’s understanding of life between Penang and attachments to different towns within England. Helen is already

678 Paul Green

thinking of where she may attend university. This might be in the UK, but it could also be in Australia. Jennifer’s frequent movement between “here” and “there” may soon include an important “elsewhere” in Perth or perhaps Melbourne.

The cases of Anna and the couple Tim and Elizabeth certainly highlight the extent to which the lives of migrants in Southeast Asia are greatly influenced by the desire of younger generations to celebrate birthdays and weddings, build international relation- ships, travel, study and work in different parts of the world today. Affordable travel tickets, LCCs and unaccompanied minor policies, as examples, enable the fulfilment of these desires and complicate how and on what terms we can “locate” transnational fam- ily life in the “here” and “there” of two national spaces. The example of Jennifer and her family, meanwhile, illustrates the extent to which movement between two nation- states should be examined in light of movement within national borders, in this case through her older daughter’s relocation to a new city.

Immobile Others? Itchy feet and upping sticks: Comparative metaphors of im/mobility

In studies of transnational families the notion of immobility tends to be associated with the fixivity of other kin in equally static national spaces or homelands. The perceived immobility of these left-behind individuals and kin leads some researchers to focus pri- marily on notions of duty, responsibility and guilt across transnational social spaces. Put differently, relations between mobile and in-place kin are seen as tainted by the pain of separation of loved ones (Madianou and Miller, 2012; Parreñas, 2005; Piquero-Ballescas, 2009) or a need or desire at least to see other kin, “face-to-face” (Baldassar et al., 2007, p. 138). Such concerns are undoubtedly important, though as the case of British migrant Sam illustrates there is also a need to recognise how emo- tion on these transnational terms is shaped by the movement and mobility of other kin in national spaces at “home”, and not simply distance between migrant and supposedly in-place kin.

At the same time it is important to recognise that migrants imagine immobility and their kin as immobile others in a range of complex and creative ways. Take the example of Hannah, whom I discussed in a previous section. Hannah moved to Penang following the relocation of both of her sons from Queensland to Western Australia. One of her sons also has two children, making Hannah a very doting and loving grandmother. Any sense of guilt she may have felt at living some distance from her grandchildren was alleviated by recognition from her son and his two children that Hannah sees more of her family than the “other” grandparents who live in Queensland. Hannah was demonstrably proud of this fact. Like other migrants with kin in Australia she makes a great effort to buy cheap LCC tickets in advance and tends to visit Western Australia at least twice a year. Hannah’s comparative justification for being a “better” grandparent was also fuelled by a (methodological nationalist) moral logic that she makes a greater effort to see her grandchildren because she has to cross national borders in order to visit and see them. In reality, a flight between Brisbane and Perth still takes close to six hours and is likely to be more expensive than Hannah’s AirAsia e-ticket.

Transnational relations between mobile and what are perceived by migrants as other, immobile kin are not always characterised or talked about in a negative sense, or

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 679

through idioms of yearning or longing. Paul, in his late 50s, had a long career in the British military. He lived in India for three years before moving to Penang. Paul views himself and his wife as a highly mobile couple. They soon plan to move to Cambodia. We get “itchy feet”, he says – the idiom of itchiness thus representing Paul’s way of talking about and defining his own sense of hypermobility (D’Andrea, 2007). Paul has two adult sons – one who travels to visit them in Asia, for example, and one who does not. Paul in fact suggested that the latter son would never come and visit them in Southeast Asia. Unlike his father, he added, he was simply not “travel minded”.

This was not viewed as a problem, or an emotional concern for Paul or, he sug- gested, for his son either. Paul instead attributes his son’s immobility to the former’s life and career in the British army. As Jervis (2007, p. 103) suggests, as a total institu- tion the British military plays an influential role in defining family life and gender roles among personnel and “military wives”. Some military wives may view this totalising effect in a negative light (Jervis, 2007), but it is also the case, as Paul suggests, that the military provides great support to families. When Paul was based in Germany, he added, they effectively paid for his son’s education and the opportunity for him to attend boarding school in England. They also contribute to travel costs for parents to collect and drop off their children at the beginning and end of school holidays. As Paul summarised, the family is thus used to being apart and not seeing each other. As a total institution it seems, then, that the military’s influence in this transnational family’s life remains today, shaping understandings of intimacy, distance and immobility across Malaysia and the UK.

I discussed some of Tim and Elizabeth’s experiences of life in Bali in the previous section. This Australian couple took care of their grandchildren while one of their two daughters went to Barcelona to celebrate her husband’s 40th birthday. Although Elizabeth felt guilty at times for not being there for her daughters, she also questioned the extent to which parents should be involved in their adult children’s lives. People of her generation, she pointed out, just “upped sticks” and left home as soon as they could. They were not that close to their parents, she added. Today’s generation of young people, she felt, were financially and emotionally less independent and relied a lot more on their parents’ support. On one level, Elizabeth seemed to suggest that the source of her guilt at not being there for her daughters lay in an issue of generational change and a greater expectation, from the perspective of her children’s generation, of support from their parents. At the same time, this sense of need was expressed through a comparative idiom of spatial mobility – her generation “upped sticks” and left the family home as soon as possible. Today’s generation do not do this. Instead, they remain emotionally centred, or fixed, on their natal household.

At the same time Elizabeth recognised that such attachments are shaped by broader “structures” of immobility (Salazar and Smart, 2011, p. iii), which as such play a prominent role in enabling young people to up sticks or otherwise in contemporary Australia. Elizabeth’s son Adam, for example, is in his early 30s and lives with his girl- friend’s parents in Melbourne. Rising property prices in Melbourne have ensured that thirtysomethings like Adam must save for longer before they are in a position to jump on a property ladder that is increasingly being pushed to the outer fringes of the city (Birrell et al., 2012). Elizabeth could draw some comfort however from the fact that their property in rural Victoria, which was effectively standing empty while they lived in Bali, was available to their son and his girlfriend at weekends. Elizabeth thus felt

680 Paul Green

great joy in the fact that their home was being used and lived in from time to time, in a way that gave her son and his girlfriend some breathing space to spend some time on their own. Through this sense of the house being lived in, Elizabeth, I suggest, was thus able to feel an important, shared connection to her son’s everyday life in Australia.

In the two cases presented here, Paul and Elizabeth demonstrate an ability to view notions of mobility and stasis as categorical opposites. Paul’s sense of having “itchy feet” is contrasted with the life of his immobile son in the UK, who is not travel minded. Elizabeth’s generation “upped sticks” in ways that are not evident among younger generations of Australians today. Yet these two migrants, based in Penang and Bali respectively, engage with these concept-metaphors on their own, distinct terms. For Paul, his son’s lack of travel mindedness is rooted in a transnational family history and a tendency to view spatial distance across national borders as an integral and, it could be argued, indifferent aspect of family life. Elizabeth’s imagining of her son’s life, meanwhile, refuses to be grounded in one or other concept-metaphor. While her son’s generation may be rooted in the emotional context of a natal household, Elizabeth is also cognisant of a broader “structure” of immobility at play in relation to rising property prices. Without irony, I suggest, Elizabeth is nevertheless able to gain a sense of happiness from the fact that her empty home in rural Victoria is used and “lived in” at weekends by her son and his girlfriend.

Immobility and travel technologies

Some migrants have elderly parents based in other parts of the world. While migrants may have their own personal health concerns, “the effects of unpredictable biological ageing and the uncertain knowledge of certain mortality” (Oliver, 2008, p. 2) are also felt in and through these transnational relationships. I introduced Sam, in her 50s, in a previous section. Sam has struggled with the knowledge that her daughter’s new life at university was complicated by her mother’s decision to migrate to Malaysia. Sam also has an elderly mother, in her 80s. In recent months, her mother came to visit Sam in Penang. Although her mother coped well with the actual flight, Sam told me, she faced difficulties upon landing in Kuala Lumpur, where she needed to change flights and check her baggage in again for an ongoing domestic flight to Penang. As Sam sug- gested, her mother really struggled with the process of lifting her luggage from the car- ousel and the need to wait for another flight. In fact the experience proved so difficult that Sam thinks her mother is unlikely to make the trip again, even though it is possible to book flights with certain carriers that will ensure that her luggage goes straight through from London to Penang.

For both Sam and her mother, it seems, the very attempt to embark on this long- distance transnational journey has served as an important reminder of the biological ageing process and its impact – in this case, on the mobility practices of an eightysomething traveller. At the same time, it is important to note that recognition of her mother’s immobility on these terms has not necessarily affected Sam’s life in any significant sense. Sam, of course, travels in the opposite direction. Yet she also admit- ted to having a difficult relationship with her mother and is still resentful of her life as a military daughter, whereby she was sent to boarding school in England while her par- ents were based in Germany. Her parents wrote once a week, she says, but never rang

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 681

to see how she was. As in the case of Richard and his family, discussed above, the effects of the total institution of the military are felt in Sam’s life as well, if in a differ- ent way (Jervis, 2007). As Sam put it, she prefers speaking to her mother on a weekly basis on Skype to fulfilling any sense of obligation to her mother in the flesh, so to speak. Her mother’s inability to travel to Malaysia in the future has, at the very least, removed the possibility that a sense of duty and resentful obligation will be fulfilled, on a face-to-face basis, in the midst of Sam’s migrant life in Penang.

Sam’s story also offers a cautionary note on the role and relevance of travel tech- nologies in people’s lives. Sam’s mother may be able to travel long haul for leisure purposes because she has access to financial resources and has time “that other people do not” (Amit, 2007, p. 8). There is a danger, however, in assuming that such access can be readily equated with freedom. The case of Sam’s ageing mother illustrates the extent to which “privileged” access to such technologies may bring concerns about individual immobility and biological ageing to the fore. While it is important to ask how structures or regimes of (im)mobility may “normalise the movements of some travellers while criminalising and entrapping the ventures of others” (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013, p. 189), Sam’s story highlights the importance of viewing the individual body, in this case, as an overlapping site and structure of mobility. The story of Sam’s mother, I argue, offers a window into the evolving lives of some later-life migrants in Southeast Asia, who like Sam’s mother may be faced with an inability in the future, as a result of health concerns, to equate travel technologies with freedom and freedom of movement.

Conclusion

As increasing numbers of older, Western migrants and retirees move to Southeast Asia, and other parts of the globe, it becomes pertinent to address how and on what terms these migrants are engaging with and maintaining relationships with a range of what I term “emotionally important” kin such as teenage and adult children, grandchildren and elderly parents. As I have demonstrated in this article, these other kin are also mobile subjects, who engage in a range of travel, work and education-related transnational mobility practices. The spatial mobility practices of this younger generation of travellers highlights the importance of intradiasporic family connections, to follow Lee (2011), in ways that transcend a tendency in the field of transnational kinship to primarily focus on ties between the homeland and a specific, host destination. Several of the case stud- ies in this article highlight the extent to which the transnational movement of adult chil- dren, for example, may in turn affect a range of individuals and relationships in these globally dispersed and mobile kinship networks. Tim and Elizabeth’s relationship with their grandchildren greatly benefited from their son-in-law’s desire to spend his 40th

birthday in Barcelona, while Elizabeth’s sense of ambivalent guilt at not being there for her adult children in Australia was partly eased by her ability to “babysit” her grand- children in Ubud when her daughter was in Spain.

While these transnational mobility practices play an influential role in the lives of later-life migrants in Southeast Asia, it is also important to attend, in similar terms, to aspects of spatial movement that occur within national borders. A range of case studies here highlight the importance of addressing how movement across towns, regions and rural/urban divides within regions impacts on the lives and concerns of migrant parents.

682 Paul Green

Hannah’s decision to move to Penang was primarily instigated by the relocation of both of her sons and their families from Queensland to Western Australia, and Sam’s jour- ney to and engagement with life in Malaysia was greatly affected by her daughter’s struggle to adapt to life at university in a new town without a family home to return to. Jennifer’s sense of connection to the UK may appear to reflect a sense of belonging in a bi-national framework of a Malaysian “here” and a UK “there”. This connection, however, has taken on new meaning following the return of her older daughter to their homeland and relocation to a new city, while her younger daughter’s plans for further study may soon add a potential elsewhere in the form of a city within Australia to this evolving field of mobile family life and transnational kin ties.

As I have suggested in this article, later-life migrants in Southeast Asia engage with the concept-metaphors of mobility and stasis in a range of complex and innovative ways. Migrants, on these terms, succumb to yet exceed established scholarly thinking on the relationship between these concept-metaphors and understandings of transna- tional families. Some later-life migrants may feel a strong sense of guilt for not being there for their (mobile) children, yet the distance between migrants and those viewed as immobile kin may be viewed in nonchalant or ambivalent terms. Hannah’s ability to compare her mobile practices as a transnational grandparent with the relative fixivity of other grandparents in Queensland highlights a fluidity and creativity in migrant imagin- ings of mobility, stasis and kinship dynamics that transcends the rather static approach to migrant/in-place kin and other, overlapping aspects of dyadic enquiry evident in transnational family studies. Paul’s ability to equate rootedness with a transnational family history of movement and Sam’s mother’s personal engagement with a structure of mobility in the form of affordable travel technologies transgress scholarly assump- tions that stasis be equated with rootedness in place and mobility be readily equated with freedom (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013).

Such imaginings and experiences of mobility and stasis mirror recent scholarly attempts in the broader field of migration studies to “create a study of mobilities in which migration and stasis are seen as interconnected aspects of the human condition” (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013, p. 187). In keeping with attempts to “move away from binary thinking” (Glick Schiller and Salazar, 2013, p. 187), I suggest that migrants, like scholars, can inspire advances in social theory. While this article has focused on the lives, experiences and perceptions of older, Western migrants in Southeast Asia, the case studies presented here highlight the need to apply more com- plex understandings of mobility and stasis to studies of transnational kin ties and family life. This study has focused on what are often considered to be “privileged” migrants from the global North; individuals and families with the time and financial resources to travel and indulge in a variety of work and educational opportunities. Once more, there is a need to transcend the binary thinking in these understandings of “asymmetrical dis- tinction” (Amit, 2007, p. 8) and recognise how the lives of migrants of various socioeconomic and national backgrounds are shaped by the mobility practices of other kin as they move within and across a range of national borders.

References

AirAsia (2010) Annual Report 2010. Available at http://www.airasia.com/iwovresources/my/common/pdf/ AirAsia/IR/annualreport2010.pdf, accessed 25 October 2013.

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 683

Amit, Vered (2007) Structures and dispositions of travel and movement, in Vered Amit (ed.), Going first class?: New approaches to privilege and movement, pp. 1–14 (Oxford: Berghahn).

Baldassar, Loretta (2007) Transnational families and the provision of moral and emotional support: The rela- tionship between truth and distance. Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 14(4), pp. 385–409.

Baldassar, Loretta, Cora Vellekopp Baldock and Raelene Wilding (2007) Families caring across borders: Migration, ageing and transnational caregiving (London: Palgrave Macmillan).

Banks, Stephen (2004) Identity narratives by American and Canadian retirees in Mexico. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology 19(4), pp. 361–81.

Benson, Michaela and Karen O’Reilly (2009) Migration and the search for a better way of life: A critical exploration of lifestyle migration. Sociological Review 57(4), pp. 608–25.

Billig, Michael (1995) Banal nationalism (London: Sage). Birrell, Bob, Ernest Healy, Virginia Rapson and T. Fred Smith (2012) The end of affordable housing in

Melbourne. Centre for Population and Urban Research. Available at http://artsonline.monash.edu.au/cpur/ files/2012/07/end-of-affordable-housing-in-melbourne.pdf, accessed 4 May 2014.

Boehm, Deborah A. (2012) Intimate migrations: Gender, family, and illegality among transnational Mexicans (New York: New York University Press).

Bryceson, Deborah Fahy and Ulla Vuorela (2002) Transnational families in the twenty-first century, in Deborah Fahy Bryceson and Ulla Vuorela (eds), The transnational family: New European frontiers and global networks, pp. 3–30 (New York: Berg).

Casado-Diaz, Maria Angeles, Claudia Kaiser and Anthony M. Warnes (2004) Northern European retired resi- dents in nine southern European areas: Characteristics, motivations and adjustment. Ageing and Society 24(3), pp. 353–81.

Cassrels, Deborah (2012) Sunset on island of last resort. The Australian, 18 August. Available at http://www. theaustralian.com.au/news/features/sunset-on-island-of-last-resort/story-e6frg6z6-1226452877587, accessed 6 May 2014.

Conradson, David and Deirdre McKay (2007) Translocal subjectivities: Mobility, connection and emotion. Mobilities 2(2), pp. 167–74.

Constable, Nicole (1999) At home but not at home: Filipina narratives of ambivalent returns. Cultural Anthro- pology 14(2), pp. 203–28.

Cresswell, Richard (2006) On the move: Mobility in the modern Western world (London: Routledge). Croucher, Sheila (2012) Privileged mobility in the age of globality. Societies 2, pp. 1–13. Devasahayam, Theresa W. and Noor Abdul Rahman (2011) Mothers on the move: Experiences of Indonesian

women migrant workers, in May Friedman and Silvia Schultermandl (eds), Growing up transnational: Identity and kinship in a global era, pp. 190–209 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press).

D’Andrea, Anthony (2007) Global nomads: Techno and new age as transnational countercultures in Ibiza and Goa (London: Routledge).

Di Leonardo, Micaela (1987) The female world of cards and holidays: Women, families and the work of kinship. Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society 12(3), pp. 440–53.

Fechter, Anne-Meike (2007) Transnational lives: Expatriates in Indonesia (Farnham: Ashgate). Glick Schiller, Nina and Noel B. Salazar (2013) Regimes of mobility across the globe. Journal of Ethnic and

Migration Studies 39(2), pp. 183–200. Green, Paul (2014a) Contested realities and economic circumstances: British later-life migrants in Malaysia,

in Michael Janoschka and Heiko Haas (eds), Contested spatialities, lifestyle migration and residential tourism, pp. 145–57 (London: Routledge).

Green, Paul (2014b) Mobility regimes in practice: Later-life Westerners and visa runs in South-East Asia Mobilities: Advance online publication.

Gustafson, Per (2001) Retirement migration and transnational lifestyles. Ageing and Society 21(4), pp. 371–94.

Harrison, Julia (2003) Being a tourist: Finding meaning in pleasure travel (Vancouver: UBC Press). Howard, Robert W. (2008) Western retirees in Thailand: Motives, experiences, wellbeing, assimilation and

future needs. Ageing and Society 28, pp. 145–63. Howard, Robert W. (2009) The migration of Westerners to Thailand: An unusual flow from developed to

developing world. International Migration 47(2), pp. 193–225. Jervis, Sue (2007) Moving experiences: Responses to relocation among British military wives, in Anne Coles

and Anne-Meike Fechter (eds), Gender and family among transnational professionals, pp. 103–23 (New York: Routledge).

684 Paul Green

Kalir, Barak (2013) Moving subjects, stagnant paradigms: Can the “mobilities paradigm” transcend methodological nationalism? Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 39(2), pp. 311–27.

Lee, Helen (2011) Rethinking transnationalism through the second generation. The Australian Journal of Anthropology 22(3), pp. 295–313.

McKay, Deirdre (2012) Global Filipinos: Migrants’ lives in the virtual village (Bloomington: Indiana University Press).

Madianou, Mirca and Daniel Miller (2012) Migration and new media: Transnational families and polymedia (London: Routledge).

Malkki, Liisa (1992) National geographic: The rooting of peoples and the territorialization of national identity amongst scholars and refugees. Current Anthropology 7(1), pp. 24–44.

Ministry of Tourism and Culture Malaysia (2014) Malaysia my second home programme. Available at http:// www.mm2h.gov.my/index.php/en/home/programme/statistics, accessed 5 November 2014.

Oliver, Caroline (2008) Retirement migration: Paradoxes of ageing (London: Routledge). Olwig, Karen Fog (2007) Caribbean journeys: An ethnography of migration and home in three family net-

works (Durham: Duke University Press). Olwig, Karen Fog (2012) The care chain, children’s mobility and the Caribbean migration tradition. Journal

of Ethnic and Migration Studies 38(6), pp. 933–52. Ono, Mayumi (2008) Long-stay tourism and international retirement migration: Japanese retirees in Malaysia.

Senri Ethnological Reports 77, pp. 151–62. Parreñas, Rachel (2005) Long distance intimacy: Class, gender and intergenerational differences between

mothers and children in Filipino transnational families. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 5(4), pp. 317–36.

Picard, Michel (1996) Bali: Cultural tourism and touristic culture (Singapore: Archipelago). Piquero-Ballescas, Maria Rosario (2009) Global householding and care networks: Filipino women in Japan.

Asian and Pacific Migration Journal 18(1), pp. 77–99. Reimers, Eva (2011) Primary mourners and next-of-kin: How grief practices reiterate and subvert heterosexual

norms. Journal of Gender Studies 20(3), pp. 251–62. Salazar, Noel B. and Alan Smart (2011) Introduction: Anthropological takes on (im)mobility. Identities:

Global Studies in Culture and Power 18(6), pp. i–ix. Scott, Jon, Paul Green and Annette Cashmore (2012) Bioscience students’ first year perspectives through

video diaries: Home, family and student transitions. Bioscience Education 20, pp. 53–67. Poon, Shuk-Ching Teresa and Peter Waring (2010) The lowest of low-cost carriers: The case of AirAsia.

The International Journal of Human Resource Management 21(2), pp. 197–213. Sobocinska, Agnieszka (2011) Innocence lost and paradise regained: Tourism to Bali and Australian percep-

tions of Asia. History Australia 8(2), pp. 199–222. Smith, Karl (2012) From dividual to individual selves to porous subjects. The Australian Journal of Anthro-

pology 23, pp. 50–64. Strathern, Marilyn (1992) After nature: English kinship in the late twentieth century (Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press). Toyota, Mika (2006) Ageing and transnational householding: Japanese retirees in Southeast Asia. Interna-

tional Development Planning Review 28(4), pp. 515–31. Tsuda, Takeyuki (2003) Strangers in the ethnic homeland: Japanese Brazilian return migration in transna-

tional perspective (New York: Columbia University Press). Vuorela, Ulla (2002) Transnational families: Imagined and real communities, in Deborah Fahy Bryceson and

Ulla Vuorela (eds), The transnational family: New European frontiers and global networks, pp. 63–82 (New York: Berg).

Walsh, Katie (2009) Geographies of the heart in transnational spaces: Love and the intimate lives of British migrants in Dubai. Mobilities 4(3), pp. 427–45.

Warnes, Anthony M. and Alan Williams (2006) Older migrants in Europe: A new focus for migration studies. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 32(8), pp. 1257–81.

Wilcox, Paula, Sandra Winn and Marylynn Fyvie-Gauld (2005) “It was nothing to do with the university, it was the people”: The role of social support in the first-year experience of higher education. Studies in Higher Education 30, pp. 707–22.

Wimmer, Andreas and Nina Glick Schiller (2002) Methodological nationalism and beyond: Nation-state building, migration and the social sciences. Global Networks: A Journal of Transnational Affairs 2(4), pp. 301–34.

Western Later-life Migrants in Southeast Asia 685

Copyright of Asian Studies Review is the property of Routledge and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.