Pathos of Love in Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica: Emotion, Travel and Migration

Abstract

Most literature on local–tourist intimate relations focuses on the aspirational migration of Third World subjects, and often presumes the unencumbered mobility of tourists. Yet Northern tourists seek out belonging, emplacement and attachment in the global South for reasons to do with love. In this paper I draw upon research in Costa Rica with European and North American women whose emotional subjectivities, I suggest, shape their mobility shift from tourist to migrant. Using a transnational framework to examine the remaking of emotion in global encounters, I show how emotion, travel and migration are linked, and how cultural and transcultural notions of ‘love’ profoundly affect migration experiences.

Key Words:

• Emotions
• migration
• heterosexuality
• subjectivity
• tourists
• transnational

Notes

1. Puerto Viejo is a real place. However, ‘Iris’ is a pseudonym, as are all the names of participants included in this paper. I have tried to alter real names and identifying characteristics of research participants enough to protect their anonymity while retaining as much accuracy as possible. I apologise to those who feel I didn’t get the balance quite right. I also acknowledge the time and expertise of many people in Costa Rica who partook in my research so generously and patiently. I also express my gratitude to the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for the research grant (2004–07) that funded this study. The insightful comments from Russell King, Nicola Mai and the rest of the participants in the Love, Sexuality, and Migration Workshop at the University of Sussex in 2008, and from two anonymous reviewers, greatly strengthened this paper, and I wish to extend my thanks to all of them. Thanks to IMISCOE for funding my travel to the workshop are also definitely warranted. As always my deepest gratitude goes to Alex and Breck for their love, at home and away, is always with me.

2. Race is a complex feature of Costa Rican society, which has long imagined itself as a ‘white settler nation’ (Sandoval‐García, 2004). I use the term ‘black’ fluidly, as it is generally used in Costa Rica to variously denote African, Caribbean or Afro‐Costa Rican identity, and when it is used in conversation as an index of cultural difference. I use the term ‘local men’ as an inclusive category that includes Nicaraguan, Panamanian and Colombian immigrants living in the area who may or may not be Costa Rican by nationality, as well as white Costa Rican nationals, black Costa Rican and mixed nationals, and indigenous men.

3. http://www.usatoday.com/travel/deals/inside/2006-07-26-safe-womens-travel_x.htm

4. For Mariella to refer to her relationship with her estranged husband as his ‘girlfriend’ suggests how sexual subjectivity had, perhaps, shifted for her while living in Costa Rica. In Costa Rica, to be a man’s ‘girlfriend’ (novia) is to have no claim on him at all, merely a casual romantic acquaintance, which contrasts greatly with the status and identity conferred as a man’s ‘woman’.

5. Thanks to Nick Mai for pointing this out to me. It remains a potentially productive line of analysis as well as of future research into the lives and subjectivities of the women prior to their arrival in Costa Rica.