Re-making lives abroad: lifestyle migration and socio-environmental change in Bocas del Toro, Panama

Abstract

The globalization of travel, technology, markets, and ideas is rapidly transforming Latin American cities and rural landscapes. In particular, new migration patterns affect local livelihoods, cultures, and natural ecosystems through changes in land tenure arrangements, alternative employment opportunities and growing economic disparities, and land cover change due to new forms of land use. Lifestyle migration constitutes one such migratory phenomenon, and is typically characterized by flows of relatively affluent people from developed to developing countries, searching for so called 'lifestyle' destinations, with warm climates, cheaper costs of living and perceived higher quality of life. Ideal lifestyle migration destinations include rural and environmentally sensitive locations throughout the developing world, such as the Bocas del Toro Archipelago in northwestern Panama. Socio-economic and cultural differences between individuals of the countries of origin and destination, and imported attitudes and behaviors have significant impacts on natural resources and human communities. Informed by existing debates within migration studies, political ecology, and human-environment research, my research explores lifestyle migrants' reasons for moving to and experiences of living in Bocas del Toro, local perceptions of socio-environmental change, and evaluates associated land cover changes throughout the archipelago.