Imaginaries of North American lifestyle migrants in Costa Rica

Abstract

The world is currently experiencing an unprecedented wave of migration. Much scholarly and popular attention has been paid to refugees and migrants crossing borders for political and economic reasons. Of increasing interest to investigators is “lifestyle migration,” the movement of individuals from economically advantaged settings in search of improved quality of life. Costa Rica has a relatively large and fluid population of “lifestyle migrants” from the United States and Canada. This paper examines their generalised images and understandings of Costa Rica that combined with personal ones are referred to as imaginaries in the scholarly literature. I consider in particular how these imaginaries are expressed in the publicly available blogs, discussion forums, and Facebook posts of North American lifestyle migrants. Three critical points in the migrant experience are examined: preparation and arrival, the adaptation process, and reconciliation with a new cultural setting or departure.

Entre la patria y la madre patria: imaginarios de la (in)movilidad a España en la sección de comentarios de «Clarin.com»

“…Impregnan aquello que determinada sociedad considera propio o parte de sí misma, dando lugar a una determinada forma "de vivirse, de verse y de actuarse" (Castoriadis, 2013, p. 249), pero también afectan las percepciones sobre otros territorios y orientan las decisiones en torno a la conveniencia o no de desplazarse o no hacia ellos (Huang, 2022;Salazar, 2018Salazar, , 2020. Así, los imaginarios sociales sobre cada posible destino inciden en las visiones que las personas desarrollan sobre el mundo, y determinan sus valoraciones y clasificaciones jerárquicas entre países en relación con aquellos aspectos que los hacen más o menos deseables para un eventual asentamiento, tales como la percepción de seguridad, la calidad de vida o la libertad individual (Belloni, 2020;Morrissey, 2018). De ese modo, lo imaginario orienta la disposición a actuar, las alternativas de intervención en la sociedad.…”

Geographies of global lifestyle migration: Towards an anticolonial approach

“…At the risk of oversimplifying, we have summarized the literatures associated with various terminologies in Table 1 in order to demonstrate some of the key differences between them. In this review we draw across all Benson, 2013Benson, , 2015Benson and O'Reilly, 2018;Botterill, 2017;Ertugrul, 2016;Escher and Petermann, 2014;Green, 2014Green, , 2017Hayes, 2014Hayes, , 2015bHayes, , 2015cHayes, , 2015dKarkabi, 2013;Knowles, 2005;Kordel and Pohle, 2018;Morrissey, 2018;Ono, 2015;Spalding, 2013aSpalding, , 2013bTherrien and Pellegrini, 2015;Van Noorloos and Steel, 2016 Migrant motivations, identity, and experiences…”

Medical Brigades to El Salvador and Honduras: Travel imaginaries and volunteer tourist recruitment

“…Those attracted to ideal and idealized locations generally recall visual images from movies and television programs and may well have traveled to similar locations for vacations. The performative ways in which longer-term travelers, for example, expatriates, spend their time are similarly unclear beyond recreational activities, but are linked to a sense of freedom, happiness, and the broadly-held belief that travel is transformative (Morrissey, 2018; see, also, Benson and Osbaldiston, 2016; Hayes, 2014; Lean, 2012).…”