Europeanization is related to member states as it has to do with citizens and citizenship. EU citizens have been conferred the right both to move and reside within the EU, and the right to vote and stand as a candidate in European and municipal elections in the Member State of residence. In a wider sense, Union citizens enjoy the right to equal treatment in terms of nationality and the protection
... [Show full abstract] of fundamental rights. More and more European citizens study, get married, or work in a Member State of which they are not nationals - mobility within the Union is a growing matter of fact. Within this scenario, the migration of retired European citizens, mainly from northern European member states to Mediterranean destinations, is a rising aspect of the practical use of the freedoms EU citizenship provides to its members. Spain, and especially its coastal areas, is by far the most important destination for elderly individuals relocating either permanently or temporarily.
This paper focuses on the characteristics and intensity in which foreign EU elderly citizens are using their civil and political rights as residents in Spain. Paying a particular attention to local and European electoral behaviour, it takes into consideration different forms and opinions of informal political involvement. In addition to this, the text will deal with the way they feel part of the host community in political terms. Such aspects are related to questions regarding political integration, the quality of democracy and the practice of European citizenship – a widely understudied topic, especially if the case of foreign UE senior citizens’ ideological self-identification and voting behaviour is considered.
Our research has been developed in the framework of a major collaborative research project of the Spanish National Research Council and seven Spanish universities named MIRES-3i (International Retirement Migration in Spain: Identity, Impacts, Integration, 2009-2012), in which multiple facets of European retirement migration to Spain have been tackled. As part of that interdisciplinary research, a representative survey among foreign senior citizens in Spain was carried out during 2011, applying a standardised questionnaire addressed to 720 European retirees (aged above 50 years) of 16 nationalities. It is the first representative European survey national in scope that addresses such a population. In addition to provide analytic insights to some of the results of the survey, the paper analyses also basic data provided by both the electoral census and the population census.