Dutch retirement migration to Spain and Turkey: Seeking access to healthcare across borders

Abstract

Abstract This article focuses on Dutch retirement migrants who move to Spain and Turkey after retirement. Retirement migrants move at a stage in their life cycle which can be associated with health deterioration. The need to seek access to healthcare provisions may therefore be important in the migratory experience of retirement migrants. This article provides an analysis at three different and interrelated levels by drawing on an analytical framework of Faist, Bilecen, Barglowski and Sienkiewicz. The article discusses the interrelationship between: (1) European, national, and private rules and regulations on health care which determine retirement migrants’ access to healthcare provisions in the home and host state; (2) retirement migrants’ social networks as a space where collective meaning is given to these rules and regulations and where retirement migrants create preferences for healthcare provisions; and (3) retirement migrants’ strategies to access their preferred set of healthcare provisions in the home and host state. It will be argued that retirement migrants may navigate their way through the healthcare systems and may change their mobility or residence pattern in order to be seen as a resident in the Netherlands or Spain/Turkey in order to access their preferred set of healthcare provisions.