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Abstract
While most research into amenity/lifestyle migration still focuses on rural places in the Global North, it has recently been acknowledged that international North–South migration is a growing phenomenon. Against the backdrop of strong media attention to Global North immigration, there is a need to focus more on the rapidly increasing – but much less visible – migration streams of lifestyle/amenity movers to the Global South, and particularly on their implications for local and global inequalities. This is what this paper proposes, and it pursues this goal by providing a comprehensive review of the growing interdisciplinary literature on amenity/lifestyle migration in Latin America. From a critical geographical perspective, it firstly discusses key political economic factors that drive the production of high-amenity places in Latin America. The focus will be on real estate business and land markets. Secondly, the article analyses the local to global socio-spatial consequences of international amenity/lifestyle migration. The paper argues that amenity/lifestyle migration to Latin America builds on, and deepens, historically inherited global and local inequalities, which in many areas – rural and, increasingly, also urban – manifest themselves through growing social-spatial exclusion and fragmentation.
Acknowledgements
Three anonymous reviewers provided incisive comments which improved the final version of the paper. The usual disclaimers apply.
Disclosure statement
The author reports no conflicts of interest. The author alone is responsible for the content and writing of this article.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial or not-for-profit sectors.
Notes on contributor
Gerhard Rainer studied geography and history at the University of Innsbruck (Austria) and Seville (Spain). In 2016 he received his PhD from the University of Innsbruck with a thesis on ‘Globalization and the Political Ecology of Tourism and Amenity Migration in the Calchaquí Valleys (NW-Argentina)’. Since October 2016 he has worked as a postdoc in the department of geography, Catholic University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (Germany). Regionally, his research focuses on Latin America with a particular focus on Argentina, Brazil and Chile, where he has also completed various short-term and long-term research stays. Thematically, his interests include the globalisation of rural space, amenity/lifestyle migration and the restructuring of the global wine industry. Conceptually, he is interested in human–environment relations (particularly political ecology) and social studies of economisation.
Notes
1 Benson and Osbaldiston, “New Horizons in Lifestyle Migration Research”; Gosnell and Abrams, “Amenity Migration”; Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration”; Lekies et al., “Amenity Migration in the New Global Economy”; McCarthy, “Rural Geography: Globalizing the Countryside.”
2 In the international debate, two strands of research analysing consumption-led, lifestyle-oriented and amenity-driven migration have become increasingly dominant in recent years: (1) research into amenity migration and (2) research into lifestyle migration. Researchers analysing amenity migration generally focus on the socio-economic and socio-ecological construction of particular destinations, planning issues, and implications of amenity migration for the respective communities and environments; eg Gosnell and Abrams, “Amenity Migration”; McCarthy, “Rural Geography: Globalizing the Countryside.” Scholars working on lifestyle migration more commonly put the movers at the centre of analysis, exploring what drove their decision to relocate and how migrants negotiate identity and belonging in (and between) places; see Benson and O’Reilly, “Migration and the Search”; Benson, “Lifestyle Migration.” Nevertheless, a glance at the lifestyle migration hub, an international platform that unites scholars working on lifestyle migration (and most lifestyle migration scholars are effectively part of the hub), shows the plurality and overlappings between the migration concepts discussed. The hub currently hosts 90 scholars (Lifestyle Migration Hub, http://www.uta.fi/yky/lifestylemigration/people.html, accessed December 12, 2017) as ‘a focal point for researchers in the fields of lifestyle migration and other tourism-informed mobilities’. In their personal keywords, 25 scholars mention lifestyle migration, 21 retirement migration, one retirement, one retirement mobility, four amenity migration, three second homes, five residential tourism and four lifestyle mobility/ies – just to mention some of the self-identifications found (multiple entries possible). There have been recent calls for stronger connections to be established between research on lifestyle and that on amenity migration; eg Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration”; Benson, “Lifestyle Migration.” To avoid privileging or giving more weight to one or other of the two concepts, in this paper I have chosen to speak about amenity/lifestyle migration.
3 McCarthy, “Rural Geography: Globalizing the Countryside,” 131.
4 Croucher, “Privileged Mobility in an Age of Globality”; Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration”; Lekies et al., “Amenity Migration in the New Global Economy”; Matarrita-Cascante and Stocks, “Amenity Migration to the Global South.”
5 Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege”; Croucher, The Other Side of the Fence; Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry”; Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Walker, “Commentary for Special Issue of GeoJournal”; Walker and Fortmann, “Whose Landscape? A Political Ecology”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural.
6 Benson, “Lifestyle Migration,” 18.
7 The demand side of amenity/lifestyle migration (the [individual] factors that lead people to desire a relocation and to take the decision of migrating) will not be the focus of this paper.
8 Ávila-Garcia and Sánchez, “Environmentalism of the Rich”; Lizárraga Morales, “US Citizens Retirement Migration”; Lizárraga Morales, Mantecón, and Huete, “Transnationality and Social Integration.”
9 Demajorovic et al., “Complejos Turísticos Residenciales.”
10 Janoschka, “Contested Spaces of Lifestyle Mobilities”; Matarrita-Cascante et al., “International Amenity Migration: Examining Environmental Behaviors”; Matarrita-Cascante and Stocks, “Amenity Migration to the Global South”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
11 Benson, “Postcoloniality and Privilege in and through Lifestyle Migration”; Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Spalding, “Lifestyle Migration to Bocas del Toro.”
12 Hayes, “We Gained a Lot”; Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives.”
13 Borsdorf and Hidalgo, “Fresh Air, Tranquillity and Rural Culture”; Marchant and Rojas, “Local Transformations and New Economic Functionalities”; Matarrita-Cascante, Zunino, and Sagner-Tapia, “Amenity/Lifestyle Migration in the Chilean Andes”; Zunino, Hidalgo, and Zebryte, “Utopian Lifestyle Migrants in Pucón, Chile.”
14 González et al., “Las movilidades del Turismo y las Migraciones de Amenidad”; Otero et al., “Amenity Migration in the Patagonian Mountain Community”; Rainer and Malizia, “Los Countries en el Country”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural.”
15 See Hayes, “We Gained a Lot”; and van Noorloos and Steel, “Lifestyle Migration and Socio-Spatial Segregation” for the case of Cuenca (Ecuador); Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; and Sigler and Wachsmuth, “Transnational Gentrification” for the case of Panama City; Torres and Momsen, “Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space” for the case of Cancun (Mexico).
16 e. g., Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Marchant and Rojas, “Local Transformations and New Economic Functionalities”; Matarrita-Cascante, Zunino, and Sagner-Tapia, “Amenity/Lifestyle Migration in the Chilean Andes”; Otero et al., “Amenity Migration in the Patagonian Mountain Community”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural.”
17 Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; Viteri, “Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cotacachi.”
18 Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry.”
19 Demajorovic et al., “Complejos Turísticos Residenciales”; ECLAC, 2007 Foreign investment in Latin America; Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry”; Janoschka, “Contested Spaces of Lifestyle Mobilities”; Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration”; Rainer, “Constructing Globalized Spaces of Tourism”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?; Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space.”
20 Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama,” 17.
21 Harvey, “Globalization and the ‘Spatial Fix.’”
22 Sayre, “Commentary: Scale, Rent, and Symbolic Capital,” 438.
23 Smith, “Toward a Theory of Gentrification,” 575.
24 Ibid., 543.
25 Darling, “The city in the country: wilderness gentrification and the rent gap.”
26 Ibid., 1022.
27 Sayre, “Commentary: Scale, Rent, and Symbolic Capital,” 438.
28 Slater, “Planetary Rent Gaps,” 117.
29 Sigler and Wachsmuth, “Transnational Gentrification”; Steel, van Noorloos, and Klaufus, “Urban Land Debate in the Global South”; van Noorloos and Steel, “Lifestyle Migration and Socio-Spatial Segregation.”
30 Sigler and Wachsmuth, “Transnational Gentrification.”
31 Ibid., 708.
32 Steel, van Noorloos, and Klaufus, “Urban Land Debate in the Global South.”
33 Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
34 Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space.”
35 See also van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
36 Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space.”
37 Gibson, “Locating Geographies of Tourism.”
38 Torres and Momsen, “Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space,” 327.
39 Cañada, “Turismo en Centroamérica,” 11.
40 Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration.”
41 Rainer, “Constructing Globalized Spaces of Tourism.”
42 Ibid.; also Rainer, “Producing Nature for Tourism.”
43 Smith, “Toward a Theory of Gentrification,” 543; Darling, “The city in the country: wilderness gentrification and the rent gap.”
44 Cañada, “Turismo en Centroamérica”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Rainer, “Constructing Globalized Spaces of Tourism”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
45 Cañada, “Turismo en Centroamérica”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
46 Aalbers and Christophers, "Centring Housing in Political Economy,” 376.
47 Ávila-Garcia and Sánchez, “Environmentalism of the Rich”; Cañada, “Turismo en Centroamérica”; Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry”; Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Rainer, “Constructing Globalized Spaces of Tourism”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?; Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space.”
48 Demajorovic et al., “Complejos Turísticos Residenciales”; ECLAC, 2007 Foreign investment in Latin America; Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama.”
49 Cañada, “Turismo en Centroamérica”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
50 Living in a low-cost place in the Global South while receiving income in a higher cost place in the Global North; see Hayes, “We Gained a Lot.”
51 Ibid.; also Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry”; Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Miles, “Health Care Imaginaries and Retirement Migration”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; Viteri, “Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cotacachi.”
52 Miles, “Health Care Imaginaries and Retirement Migration,” 42.
53 Viteri, “Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cotacachi,” 126.
54 Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama,” Citation17, stress the importance of International Living for promoting Panama in the USA and in Canada and for increasing foreign investments in the Panamanian real estate business.
55 Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives”; Hayes, “We Gained a Lot”; Miles, “Health Care Imaginaries and Retirement Migration”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural.”
56 Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration,” 2–3.
57 eg Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Janoschka, “Contested Spaces of Lifestyle Mobilities”; Matarrita-Cascante and Stocks, “Amenity Migration to the Global South”; Rainer and Malizia, “Los Countries en el Country”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; Sigler and Wachsmuth, “Transnational Gentrification”; Torres and Momsen, “Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
58 Nelson, Trautman, and Nelson, “Latino Immigrants and Rural Gentrification”; Nelson and Nelson, “Global Rural: Gentrification and Linked Migration.”
59 Even though there are some exceptions, as the immigration of workers from Nicaragua to amenity/lifestyle destinations in Costa Rica suggests; see Janoschka, “Nuevas geografías migratorias en América Latina”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
60 Rainer, “Constructing Globalized Spaces of Tourism”; Torres and Momsen, “Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
61 See, for example, Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege”; Janoschka, “Contested Spaces of Lifestyle Mobilities”; Rainer, “Constructing Globalized Spaces of Tourism”; Torres and Momsen, “Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space.”
62 Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege”; Matarrita-Cascante and Stocks, “Amenity Migration to the Global South”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; Torres and Momsen, “Gringolandia: The Construction of a New Tourist Space”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
63 Cortes, Matarrita-Cascante, and Rodriguez, “International Amenity Migration: Implications for Integrated Community development opportunities”.
64 Matarrita-Cascante and Stocks, “Amenity Migration to the Global South.”
65 Cortes, Matarrita-Cascante, and Rodriguez, “International Amenity Migration.”
66 Matarrita-Cascante and Stocks, “Amenity Migration to the Global South,” 96.
67 Borsdorf and Hidalgo, “Fresh Air, Tranquillity and Rural Culture”; González et al., “Las movilidades del Turismo y las Migraciones de Amenidad”; Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Janoschka, “Contested Spaces of Lifestyle Mobilities”; Lizárraga Morales, “US Citizens Retirement Migration”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; Steel, van Noorloos, and Klaufus, “Urban Land Debate in the Global South”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?; van Noorloos and Steel, “Lifestyle Migration and Socio-Spatial Segregation”; Viteri, “Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cotacachi”; Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space.”
68 Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Rainer and Malizia, “Los Countries en el Country”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?; Viteri, “Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cotacachi.”
69 Lizárraga Morales, “US Citizens Retirement Migration,” 83.
70 Ávila-Garcia and Sánchez, “Environmentalism of the Rich”; Lizárraga Morales, “US Citizens Retirement Migration.”
71 Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Lizárraga Morales, “US Citizens Retirement Migration”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
72 Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?; van Noorloos and Steel, “Lifestyle Migration and Socio-Spatial Segregation.”
73 Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration.”
74 Borsdorf and Hidalgo, “Fresh Air, Tranquillity and Rural Culture”; Demajorovic et al., “Complejos Turísticos Residenciales”; Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Janoschka, “Contested Spaces of Lifestyle Mobilities”; Rainer and Malizia, “Los Countries en el Country”; Steel, van Noorloos, and Klaufus, “Urban Land Debate in the Global South”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?
75 Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry,” 12.
76 Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives”; Sigler and Wachsmuth, “Transnational Gentrification”; van Noorloos and Steel, “Lifestyle Migration and Socio-Spatial Segregation.”
77 Sigler and Wachsmuth, “Transnational Gentrification,” 708.
78 Benson, “Postcoloniality and Privilege in and through Lifestyle Migration”; Benson, “Negotiating Privilege in and through Lifestyle Migration”; Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege”; Croucher, The Other Side of the Fence; Kordel and Pohle, “International Lifestyle Migration in the Andes.”
79 Benson, “Postcoloniality and Privilege in New Lifestyle Flows; Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege”; Benson and Osbaldiston, “New Horizons in Lifestyle Migration Research”; Fechter and Walsh, “Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities”; Korpela, “Lifestyle of Freedom? Individualism and Lifestyle Migration.”
80 Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege,” 27.
81 See also Benson, “Postcoloniality and Privilege in New Lifestyle Flows.”
82 eg Cresswell and Merriman, Geographies of Mobilities; Sheller and Urry, “The New Mobilities Paradigm.”
83 Croucher, “Migrants of Privilege,” 485; also Croucher, The Other Side of the Fence.
84 Politics understood, as stated by Cresswell, “Towards a Politics of Mobility,” 21, as “social relations that involve the production and distribution of power.”
85 Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives.”
86 Hayes, “Introduction: The Emerging Lifestyle Migration Industry,” 10–11.
87 As Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives,” does in his paper.
88 Benson, “Postcoloniality and Privilege in New Lifestyle Flows”; Benson, “Class, Race, Privilege”; Croucher, The Other Side of the Fence; Croucher, “Migrants of Privilege”; Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives.”
89 McCarthy, “Rural Geography: Globalizing the Countryside.”
90 Janoschka and Haas, “Contested Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration,” 2–3; see also Fechter and Walsh, “Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities,” 1207.
91 Smith, “Toward a Theory of Gentrification,” 543.
92 Slater, “Planetary Rent Gaps,” 117.
93 Sigler and Wachsmuth, “Transnational Gentrification,” 708.
94 Ibid., 708; also Hayes, “Moving South: The Economic Motives”; van Noorloos and Steel, “Lifestyle Migration and Socio-Spatial Segregation.”
95 Borsdorf and Hidalgo, “Fresh Air, Tranquillity and Rural Culture”; González et al., “Las movilidades del Turismo y las Migraciones de Amenidad”; Hayes, “Into the Universe of the Hacienda”; Jackiewicz and Craine, “Destination Panama”; Janoschka, “Contested Spaces of Lifestyle Mobilities”; Lizárraga Morales, “US Citizens Retirement Migration”; Matarrita-Cascante and Stocks, “Amenity Migration to the Global South”; Rainer and Malizia, “En Búsqueda de lo Rural”; Steel, van Noorloos, and Klaufus, “Urban Land Debate in the Global South”; van Noorloos, Whose Place in the Sun?; van Noorloos and Steel, “Lifestyle Migration and Socio-Spatial Segregation”; Viteri, “Cultural Imaginaries in the Residential Migration to Cotacachi”; Zoomers, “Globalisation and the Foreignisation of Space.”