Philip D. Sloane - Retirement Migration from the U.S. to Latin American Colonial Cities

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At one extreme, cities can be seen as hubs of innovation and progress, full of energy, culture, and life. At another extreme, they can be seen as noisy, depressing, artificial, and crowded yet isolating. From either point of view, the trend toward human urbanization is unmistakable. It is global and historic, and it may also be our planets future environmentally, economically, and culturally.

In April of 2019,National Geographicpublished a special issue titled Cities: Ideas for a Brighter Future in which the central concept held that sustainable cities were not necessarily bad for the environment; in fact, they could be ideal solutions for many of the challenges faced by our growing and aging populations. The magazine issue was born in part from our internal conversations on the subject of cities and from a request for grant proposals (RFP) from researchers around the world for projects that would address, in new and unique ways, how the future of our planet would be one in balance with nature, yet still urban, globally interconnected, and cosmopolitan.

This book by Dr. Philip Sloane and colleagues, spurred in part by aNational GeographicRFP Grant, represents an ambitious and comprehensive look at a unique challenge faced by cities in many developing parts of the world: how do cities with deep cultural roots accommodate to international retirement migration from very culturally distinct, often wealthier, parts of the world. In hisNational Geographic-funded project, Dr. Sloane and colleagues studied two Latin-American cities, Cuenca in Ecuador and San Miguel de Allende in Mexico, both of which have seen high migration from American retirees. The team employed an array of research methods and sources, including interviews with local residents, online questionnaires, geospatial mapping, social media, local media, field notes, and photography. In doing so, they covered a breadth of topics ranging from the changing quality of life for a retired migrant to how the exodus was changing healthcare access across nations and impacting local languages and traditions.

In the fourth chapter, for example, the team looked at the difference between the two cities in how local residents attitudes were changing based on how long retirees had been there. San Miguel de Allende, in Mexico, has seen migrant retirees for decades. The population of Americans, or gringos, is about 10%, having been arriving there since the 1940s. Seventy percent or so of the Americans have integrated, explained a native resident. They are a part of that modern Mexican city. In contrast, in Cuenca, the American retiree population is less than 2%, and the economic and social changes that arrive with that influx have not been felt for as long, I think it is good that they move here, a Cuenca resident said, but they should accept our rules and procedures, and they should treat Ecuadorians as they want to be treated.

This fascinating work is one particular view of how cities around the world are changing. It provides a glimpse at how cities will continue to evolve in the future, especially as international air travel grows, social media continues to bridge great distances from the convenience of a cell phone, and our vast planet grows ever smaller and more crowded. Social scientists often paint a picture of doom as the world population creeps toward an 11th digit (10 billion by 2050). However, this study is a great example of how global interconnectedness has strong merits, how cities and cultures within those cities are malleable and continue to change and evolve, and how retiree migration can be a win-win scenario for those arriving and for those already there. The authors show us a light at the end of that airport runway.

We would like to thank our local coordinators from each city, who assisted with the logistics, arranging of interviews, and shaping of the research over the development of the research protocol and throughout data collection. Without Kati Alvarez, a sociologist based at the Universidad Central of Quito, and Roberto Robles Iniestra, a retired engineer who lives in San Miguel de Allende, this work would not have been possible. Although we were not able to visit Granada, Nicaragua, at the time of this research as originally intended, we would like to thank Milton Lpez Norori, MD, MPH, based at the Universidad Nacional Autnoma de Nicaragua, as well, for his input on our research methods.