Lifestyle Migration: Architecture and Kinship in the Case of the British in Spain

Lifestyle migration: architecture and kinship in the case of the British in Spain by Alesya Krit Thesis submitted for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Anthropology University College London 2012 2 ! I, Alesya Krit, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 ! Abstract This thesis explores the phenomenon of lifestyle migration: people mainly in their 50s who move to another country, typically with warmer climate and in some cases less stable economies, to reside there full-time. By using the built environment as a means of analysis, this project explores the different ways in which lifestyle migrants come to interact with the architecture of their houses, reflect through them, and construct a new place they are able to call home. By examining how the migrants come to inhabit their new dwellings, the thesis also reveals the underlying importance of their kinship relations with members of their extended family. It highlights how, by moving away from their families, lifestyle migrants paradoxically come to improve their kin relations, employing the transformative capacity of the move. Additionally, it details the different meanings that lifestyle migrants attach to notions of bequeathing property and how they manipulate these concepts to improve relationships with their partners, at the same time contributing to transnational intergenerational contracts within their wider kinship networks. This thesis is based on ethnographic fieldwork in a community of British lifestyle migrants who reside full-time in southeastern Spain. 4 ! Contents Abstract .......................................................................................................................... 3 List of figures ................................................................................................................. 5 Acknowledgements ...................................................................................................... 6 Prologue ......................................................................................................................... 9 1. Lifestyle migration? ................................................................................................ 10 2. In focus: British lifestyle migration to Spain ....................................................... 35 3. Becoming a ‘nation of homeowners’ .................................................................... 60 4. The power of the move: on tearing apart and creating something new ......... 69 5. Owners of townhouses, or ‘Why buy a ruin?’..................................................... 89 6. Houses in the Spanish countryside: old traditional vs. new traditional ...... 116 7. Urbanizaciones of the Spanish countryside: a dream villa just for two?......... 143 8. Legally bound: A sneak preview into the future ............................................. 165 9. Lifestyle migration! .............................................................................................. 181 References .................................................................................................................. 195 5 ! List of figures 1. Old town houses ..................................................................................................... 52 2. A farmhouse ........................................................................................................... 52 3. An urbanización ........................................................................................................ 52 4. Map of Spain [removed for copyright reasons].…………………………….… 53 5. Size of age groups of the British in this research at the time of their arrival in Spain ………………………………………............................................................... 55 6. Average age of the British residing in Spain in each built environment … 56 7. Types of houses in the old part of the town ....................................................... 91 8. Street views of Villar del Río of the old and new parts of the town ............... 95 9. Old traditional houses ……………….................................................................. 118 10. New traditional houses ……………….............................................................. 118 11. Houses in the countryside with plots of land ………………......................... 121 12. Houses of the urbanizaciones next to Villar del Río ...................................... 144 6 ! Acknowledgements First of all I would like to thank my supervisors Victor Buchli and Daniel Miller for ‘converting’ me into material culture anthropology and patiently guiding through every step of this challenging journey. The world will never be the same again. I would like to thank University College London for supporting my initiatives of conducting research in Spain and providing funding for Spanish language courses. I have to mention the incredible support that I received from Diana Goforth, who in times of complete doubt of possibility of this research, major difficulties of receiving visas and different permissions helped me to keep my head high and provided support in administrative management of this research. My research would have not been possible without hospitability of the Institute of Heritage Sciences of the Spanish National Research Council (Instituto de Ciencias del Patrimonio, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas) that not only rescued me from the bureaucratic limbo, but also provided with very valuable academic and methodological guidance for conducting research in Spain. I could not thank enough my colleagues and friends who despite their busy schedules found time to talk to me about my research, read drafts and posed important questions, addressing which allowed for better understanding of the material, in particular Razvan Nicolescu, Peter Oakley, Tom McDonald, Inge Mascher Brizuela, Alice Elliot, Alison Macdonald, Aaron Parkhurst, Matan Shapiro, Chih-I Lai, Shu-Li Wang, Caitlin Ham, Ania Shegurova, Erica Farmer, Vita Peacock; I also would like to thank Nick Gadsby, Elizabeth Stanfield, Tiziana Traldi and other members of Danny Miller’s dinner group who quite literally became my family in London; and also my wonderful colleagues 7 ! Adeline Remy, Ludovic Coupaye and Alicia Jimenez for their positive outlook and adventurous attitudes. Preliminary versions of some chapters of my thesis were presented in different workshops and conferences. An earlier version of Chapter 1 was presented at workshop of Spanish National Research Council in January 2010 in Madrid (Spain); an earlier version of Chapter 5 was presented at the International Congress of Residential Tourism in February 2011 at the University of Alicante (Spain); an earlier version of Chapter 3 was presented at the Commission on Urban Anthropology Annual Conference in May 2011 in Corinth (Greece); an earlier version of Chapter 4 was presented at the workshop of Heritage Laboratory in December 2011 in Santiago de Compostela (Spain); an earlier version of Chapter 8 was presented at the conference of European Association of Social Anthropology in June 2012 in Paris (France); an earlier version of Chapter 6 was presented at the Midterm conference of the Research Network 35 “Sociology of Migration” of European Sociological Association in September 2012 in Paris (France). I wish to thank the participants of these workshops and conferences for their insightful comments and suggestions. Above all, however, I would like to thank Christoph Krit, my husband, for his continuous support during the last four years, for insightful conversations and the realist’s approach of an architect, which helped to counter balance my romantic vision of constructing a house. Mostly however, I would like to thank him for creating a home where I found peace and could write this thesis and most importantly, for believing in me, without which I would never be able to finish this work. Finally, my special gratitude goes to my informants, who due to our personal agreements must remain anonymous. I could never thank them enough for the time that they gave me and the kindness with which they allowed me into their houses and into their lives. Especially I would like to thank the families who allowed me to live with them, celebrate holidays and generally not feel lost, being a ‘red spy’ outsider in the town. Also, I am very grateful for support from the local architects and estate agents who introduced me to their clients, and the 8 ! historian of the town, who not only shared archival pictures with me, but also organized multiple trips to local museum enthusiasts, local factories and other important sites in the area. 9 ! Prologue Spring 2011. The Guardian journalist Duncan Campbell reported his impressions on the life of lifestyle migrants in Spain from the city of Alicante. He gave his article a title ‘Most Brits in Spain say no gracias to integration’ and further commented: “The popular image of British expats here is of either reclusive retirees watching EastEnders on satellite TV, a Daily Mail on their lap, glass of cheap wine at their elbow and a full English breakfast in their belly or of boozed-up, drugged-up, football-loving young ravers. Journalist Benny Davis, who writes for the expat paper, EuroWeekly News, said [that] Brits tend to live in a bubble. With more and more information available in English, there's less reason to learn Spanish and, as a consequence, less opportunity

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