John Field ‘ Migration and workforce aging ’ In

International migration is expanding rapidly, and the experience of aging is changing with it. The Spanish sociologist Manuel Castells describes our society as dominated by a ‘space of flows’ arising from the rapid interchange of information and ideas through new information systems; but the movement of people throughout what Castells calls ‘the space of places’ is an equally striking characteristic of life in modern societies (Castells 1996, 409-15). In 1960, an estimated 77 million people emigrated; by 2010, the number of migrants reached 214 million (OECD 2012b, 16). Overwhelmingly, these are people of working age; and nearly two thirds live in what the United Nations (UN) defines as the developed nations (UN 2010).