Residential Tourism and Multiple Mobilities: Local Citizenship and Community Fragmentation in Costa Rica

Abstract

Current patterns of -move-in move-out‖ hypermobility are perfectly exemplified by residential tourism: the temporary or permanent mobility of relatively well-to-do citizens from mostly western countries to a variety of tourist destinations, where they buy property. The mobility of residential tourists does not stand alone, but has broader chain effects: it converts local destinations into transnational spaces, leading to a highly differentiated and segmented population landscape. In this article, residential tourism's implications in terms of local society in Guanacaste, Costa Rica, are examined, starting from the idea that these implications should be viewed as complex and traveling in time and space. Mobile groups, such as residential tourists, can have an important local participation and involvement (independently of national citizenship), although recent flows of migrants settle more into compatriot social networks. The fact that various migrant populations continually travel back and forth and do not envision a future in the area may restrict their opportunities and willingness for local involvement. Transnational involvement in itself is not a problem and can be successfully combined with high local involvement; however, the great level of fragmentation, mobility, temporariness and absenteeism in Guanacaste circumscribes successful community organizing. Still, the social system has not completely dissolved.

Los Sistemas de Información Geográfica (SIG) en Turismo como Herramienta de Desarrollo y Planificación Territorial en las Regiones Periféricas

“…De hecho, la planificación turística tiene un impacto directo en el crecimiento de la actividad turística como tal, lo que contribuye al desarrollo local (Bercial & Timón, 2005). Además, esto contribuye a alcanzar objetivos que estimulen el beneficio colectivo propuesto (Clavé & Reverté, 2011) y mitigar el surgimiento de problemas socioespaciales como la segregación, la generación de guetos, los desplazamientos, la exclusión, el consumo y venta de drogas, la prostitución, la privatización del patrimonio natural y los problemas de tipo medioambiental (Ibarra, 2007;Jolin & Parent, 2011;Van Noorloos, 2013).…”

Amenity/Lifestyle Migration in the Chilean Andes: Understanding the Views of “The Other” and Its Effects on Integrated Community Development

“…A line of research within the amenity/lifestyle migration has focused on this issue from a community development perspective, understood here as a process that is locally conceived and implemented in which resources are mobilized seeking the improvement of local living conditions [46]. This literature has acknowledged the existence of a population within migrants and locals that actively participates in local development efforts of amenity communities [9,10,30,35,47]. Nonetheless, commonly, the projects/programs members of each group participate in reflect diverging goals [8,[36][37][38]48,49].…”

“…A limited number of studies including [11,32,35,47] have looked deeper at this lack of integration within the context of community development in amenity/lifestyle migration communities. These studies suggest that the lack of integration in development efforts results primarily from socioeconomic and cultural differences which materialize in the forms of different languages, worldviews, behaviors, and homophily [32,35,47].…”

“…Nonetheless, commonly, the projects/programs members of each group participate in reflect diverging goals [8,[36][37][38]48,49]. Further, even when common goals exist, migrants and locals frequently engage in development efforts separately, that is, only with members of their own group [32,35,47].…”

Spatio-temporal differentiation of residential land for coastal town: A case study of Dalian Jinshitan

“…Due to beautiful natural environment and the development of urbanization facilities in coastal tourist resort areas, coastal tourism occupies an advantageous niche in the tourism industry (Onofri and Nunes, 2013). The business of tourism real estate (Van Noorloos, 2013;Yang et al, 2016) thrives as a consequence of a booming tourism industry, and is characterized by development that is distinct from that of general real estate. Those in the tourism real estate business are required to balance between economic and environmental benefits Long et al, 2014;Levine and Feinholz, 2015).…”