POPULATION AGEING: a Cross-Disciplinary Approach Harokopion University, Tuesday 25 May 2010 Drawing the profile of elder immigrants in Greece

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1 POPULATION AGEING: a Cross-Disciplinary Approach Harokopion University, Tuesday 25 May 2010 Drawing the profile of elder immigrants in Greece Alexandra TRAGAKI Department of Geography, Harokopion University

2 Population ageing Population movements

3 This presentation Focuses on the intersection of those two trends The starting point: Old age movement is one of the little visited aspects of migration, population ageing research rarely takes into account the ethnicity parameter.

4 Elder population (above 50) Elder immigrants Retired immigrants

5 The analysis Description of elder immigrants living in Greece. Focus on the retired immigrants. Who are the retired immigrants in Greece? What are there specific characteristics? How can they be clustered in respect to their particularities? Based on unpublished data from the 2001 population census.

6 Elder Immigrants males females Immigrants represent about 2.5% of the above 50 years of age population in Greece. Their share is decreasing with the age. In most ages, the share of men is slightly higher than that of women.

7 Retired Immigrants Amount to 43,805 persons (23,585 men and 20,220 women). Represent 5.6% of total foreign population......less than half of the elder immigrant population......and 2.1% of total retired population. Originate from 110 countries.

8 Basic questions Who are the retired immigrants living in Greece? Do they comply with the classic model of International Retirement Migration? To answer to those questions we proceeded with a cluster analysis taking into account the volume of immigrants per ethnicity and the declared reasons for installation in the country.

9 Cluster analysis the method Taking into account the volume of different ethnicities and their main reasons for installation in Greece hierarchical cluster analysis has been applied on data concerning 23 different countries of origin. Hierarchical clustering is preferable in cases where non à priori assumptions about the number of clusters are made. The linkage method chosen is that of Ward s and the adopted measure of similarity is the square Euclidean distance, recommended for standardized data.

10 Cluster Analysis the results Three different groups of retired immigrants: Repatriates, economic migrants, non-typical migrants

11 Group A: older migrants coming from the main labour exporting countries towards Greece (Albania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Poland, Romania, Russia, Ukraine and Egypt). High absolute numbers (17,000) but the lowest share of elder immigrants. Reasons for migration: job seeking, family re-unification Group B: 14,800 persons mainly of Greek origin coming from USA, Canada, Australia, Sweden and Turkey. Retirement-return-migration Group C: mostly EU-15 citizens namely British, French, Swiss, Italians, Dutch, Germans but also Cypriots and Japanese. One out of three declares that his profile does not comply with the image of traditional migrant. The closest to the International Retirement Migration model. For Groups B and C migration is mostly a choice than a survival issue

12 Differentiations among Groups in respect to 1. their age and sex Group A Group B Group C Total Mean age men women Sex ratio

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14 2. their family situation Group A Group B Group C men women men women men women married 75,4% 45,6% 72,2% 44,7% 80,3% 43,6% bachelors 10,6% 9,6% 11,4% 8,9% 4,3% 3,2% divorced 6,0% 8,1% 8,3% 12,9% 2,6% 5,0% widow/er 7,9% 36,7% 8,2% 33,6% 12,9% 48,2%

15 3. their spatial distribution

16 4. the duration of stay/year of entrance Group A massively entered the country in 90 s. In contrast to Groups B and C that arrived gradually at different stages. 90% 80% 70% 60% 50% 40% 30% 20% GROUP A GROUP B GROUP C 10% 0% before not defined

17 Concluding: Motives for those who decide to immigrate at a relatively older age have not been fully explored yet. Far from being an homogeneous population, retired immigrants in Greece have different demographic features, different residence motives and different settlement patterns. In respect to these divergences, three separate groups can be distinguished. A forth group will soon come up with foreigners who entered as job-seekers and decide to stay in the country after their retirement.

18 Age selectivity of migration is under question: longevity, societal modernization and globalization create a new migratory framework from where new challenges and new opportunities may come up.