Elderly mobility in Italy: An interpretative Model

Elderly mobility has been often studied in Anglo-Saxon countries, where mobility rates are traditionally higher than in Europe and Italy. But Europe (and especially Italy) has now the most aged population in the world. And national and international flows are going to different directions, compared to the past. Italy became a destination country for young people coming from Africa and Eastern Europe (mainly looking for a job), but also for elderly coming from Northern Europe and USA (looking for “amenity”). But still it is dominant the return migration among the elderly. This paper tries to distinguish this return migration from other types of elderly migrations, and to make hypotheses on the elderly mobility in Italy at the beginning of the new century. Italy is, at the same time, origin and destination of elderly mobility. Italy was in fact one of the main origin of internal and international migration flows, now it is one of the main destination. It is interesting to explore what happens to these flows at retirement age of migrants and to see the “new” elderly mobility that is not “affected” by “return” migration. We especially focus on amenity-seekers and on assistance-seekers elderly migrants. This study has been done using register individual data (inscriptions/cancellations), the origin/destination matrix approach, and a multilevel analysis. We selected the Genoa Province, because is the biggest province of Liguria, the most aged region of Italy.