Fourteenth International Conference on Interdisciplinary Social Sciences

Abstract

The paper explores the situation of French retirees in Vietnam and Cambodia. These “pensioners on the move” could be described as a result of globalization with their search for lower living costs in Southeast Asia, thus leading to the description of fixed identities mostly defined in economic turns and through the unequal relations between the north and south worlds. Rather I am turning to Roger Brubaker and Frederick Cooper’s “categories of practice” which underline the everyday life experiences of ordinary people and in our case how these seniors integrate into a new environment and also try to recreate little pocket of Frenchness abroad. Being a heterogeneous group, these retirees are better understood by looking at the practices they develop which can be analysed it through the sociology of aging and the use of the literature on postcolonialism.