Journey’s End? Old Age in France’s Migrant Worker Hostels

This chapter elaborates the book’s central research question. The current state-of-the art in return migration theory holds that ‘geographically single’ male migrants who are retired or economically inactive will be among the most likely candidates for return to countries of origin in older age. However, the behaviour of the population to which this book is devoted – older North and West African men living in migrant worker hostels in France – is puzzling in this respect. The men’s preference for regular back-and-forth circulation over definitive return to wives and children in places of origin calls into question the current state-of-the-art. Firstly, the hostel residents’ behaviour challenges the assumptions of the ‘myth of return’ literature, which explains non-return on the basis of family localisation. Secondly, the men’s behaviour is puzzling insofar as it is irrational from a neo-classical economics perspective. The men remain unmoved by the financial incentives of a return homewards, where their French state pensions would have far greater purchasing power. The paradox of non-return becomes yet more unexpected when one considers the cramped accommodation, ill-adapted to the needs of older people, in which the men elect to grow old, as shown in the photo essay which concludes the chapter.