Elderly Migration in Southern Europe: Patterns of Migration across Municipalities in Spain and Italy

The aim of this research is to identify which municipalities in Italy and Spain have experienced a high-level of elderly migration (individuals over 65 years old) and analyse the spatial and contextual factors which may explain this migration flows. Our analysis is based on a unique collection of migration data and territorial variables covering the Local Administrative Units (LAU) level, i.e., municipalities for Spain and Italy between 2011 and 2020. The migration data comprises annual internal and external immigration and emigration flows from one LAU to another of the country, or from/to other countries. These flows have been disaggregated by citizenship and age into three groups: 45-59, 60-74 and over 75 years old. We have computed migration ratios for elderly people for the period here analysed for each municipality of Italy and Spain and some age structure indexes related to the process of migration. Methods applied belong to Explorative Spatial Data Analysis and refer to local scale analysis. The indicators are thus merged to local geographical domains. Choropleth maps are used to describe the spatial distribution of the different indicators, while specific spatial autocorrelation local analysis has been run to detect local clusters of municipalities in which the distribution of the indicators is not spatially random. Our first results reveal that areas which are attractive for the elderly are characterised by higher availability of specific local social services and amenities. In fact, elderly migration differs considerably from the one related to those individuals aged 45-59, with differences between Spanish and Italian municipalities. These findings underline the need of a specialisation in the model of territorial development, in function of the age structure of internal and international migration flows.