Abstract
In this paper I examine how later-life foreigners and retirees living in Ubud, Bali, think about and strategise life course transitions towards a fourth age. Focusing on third to fourth age transitions, I suggest, reveals the ways in which historically constituted understandings of personhood are nourished in the social, cultural and economic context of specific retirement destinations. In this, we see how older foreigners develop individualised life projects in Bali, through virtues of geoarbitrage and privileged access to material and human resources. Drawing on an illustrative ethnographic example I highlight the ways in which such resources both support and compromise attempts by foreign residents to gain personal yet collaborative control over their future self’s engagement with care and support in later life. On one hand, the availability of local drivers, domestic servants and informal care workers encourages what I term as a bespoke fantasy of independence that extends over time into an everyday world of physical immobility, chronic health concerns and limited financial resources. At the same time, this individualised fantasy of personhood feeds into yet complicates a desire to find a sense of security and belonging in entrepreneurial imaginings of dependent sociality and small-scale retirement spaces. The elusive search for Project Marigold, I argue, reveals the creative and contradictory limitations of bespoke individualism in later life, with residents left to fear and contemplate a potential return one day to institutionalised care in their homelands.
Presenters
Paul GreenSenior Lecturer, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
Social and Cultural Perspectives on Aging
KEYWORDS
INTERNATIONAL RETIREMENT MIGRATION, PERSONHOOD, THIRD-FOURTH AGE TRANSITIONS, WESTERN RETIREES, BALI
