Snowbirds' Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

David Frati — 2017-11-07T06:00:00Z

Each year, 200,000 retired people spend the winter in and around the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, in the Sonoran desert. Some 50,000 of them live in informal housing: campers, tents, cars and trucks, and self-constructed cabins. In the field with the most economically marginal of these “desert snowbirds,” David Frati observes the complex gift economy that structures their social lives.
Every winter, retired snowbirds reach the small town of Quartzsite, Arizona, one of the few places in

- From the Field / camps, care, housing, alternative housing, United States, ethnography, sociabilities, poverty, assistance, informal housing, Arizona, money, resourcefulness, desert, gift economy, nomadism, retirement, snowbirds, concern for others, neighborliness

Aging in self-managed housing

Stéphanie Vermeersch & translated by Claudio Cambon — 2011-03-02T08:33:31Z

What happens to old people when they find themselves in a state of dependence? As an alternative to retirement homes, self-managed housing consists of organizations set up mostly by women who have created spaces where people can age well by taking care of themselves and others.
---- Series: Mutual Housing If the employment of seniors holds the attention of politicians and the media today, the issues surrounding aging will weigh on public authorities all the more so tomorrow. Housing for

- From the Field / care, aging, alternative housing

Metropolitics

Snowbirds' Gift Economy in the Arizona Desert

Aging in self-managed housing