Amenity/lifestyle migration to the Global South: driving forces and socio-spatial implications in Latin America

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.