Introduction

Abstract

This book focuses on living well — it explores how human wellbeing is constructed in particular locations, how these constructions change as part of the process of international migration and how wellbeing ‘travels’ across spatial boundaries. Though isolated attempts have been made to apply concepts such as life satisfaction or quality of life to studies of migration, to date no single book exists that applies human wellbeing analysis to the case of international migration. This book seeks to go some way towards bridging this gap. To explore how human wellbeing is constructed and how it ‘travels’ across spatial boundaries, this study draws on empirical research, which I undertook between 2005 and 2007 with Peruvian migrants based in London and Madrid, and their Peru-based relatives and close friends. Following a conceptual overview (Chapter 2) and the contextualisation of this research in London and Madrid (Chapter 3), the empirical work is divided into two chapters. Chapter 4 examines what Peruvian migrants identify as important for living well in the contexts of London and Madrid, whilst Chapter 5 compares these experiences with the perspectives of their Peru-based relatives and close friends to reveal how, with the out-migration of kin, the conceptions of wellbeing for those that remain in Peru also change.