The gringos of Cuenca: How retirement migrants perceive their impact on lower income communities

Abstract

This paper looks at the concern North Americans express about the impact their relatively higher incomes are having on lower income workers in Cuenca, Ecuador. North Americans who retire to Cuenca often perceive their impact to be minimal or benign, yet a large amount of discussion within the community of “expat” migrants is about different ways North Americans are affecting the local economy, and how to minimise these impacts. Of particular concern is the racialised price system that migrants perceive to be in effect. North Americans racialise their economic impact, seeing “gringo pricing,” rather than their higher incomes, as a threat to the receiving community. Participants evoked moral codes to discuss price levels, and sought to diminish their impact – not merely out of concern for Ecuadorians who might be displaced by higher prices, but out of a sense of ruining the authenticity of Cuenca, a UNESCO World Heritage site.

Touristification, transnational gentrification and urban change in Lisbon: The neighbourhood of Alfama

“…As a result, these new residents exert upward pressure on local house prices, accelerating processes of gentrification. Closely related to lifestyle-oriented mobilities in recent years, lifestyle migration studies (Benson, 2016; Hayes, 2018) have been incorporated into gentrification studies (Janoschka et al, 2014). We argue that transnational gentrification is also related to urban colonisation by new ‘foreign’ real estate investors entering the urban landscape as homebuyers.…”

Migration and development: The overlooked roles of older people and ageing

“…The most sophisticated analysis of the development implications of North–South retirement migration comes from Hayes’ research on North American retirees in the historic city of Cuenca in the Ecuadorian Andes (Hayes, 2014, 2015, 2018a, 2018b, 2021). He introduces the term ‘geographic arbitrage’ (or ‘geoarbitrage’), which consists of relocating day-to-day living expenses to low-cost destinations; put another way, the ‘outsourcing of retirement’ (Hayes, 2014).…”

Towards a political ecology of lifestyle migration: Local perspectives on socio‐ecological change in Bocas del Toro, Panama

“…International flows of people from developed to developing countries represent a subset of contemporary international migration patterns and are typically characterised by a search for so‐called “lifestyle” destinations with warm climates, relatively low costs of living, and a perceived high quality of life. Reflexive scholarship on the concept of lifestyle migration is rapidly expanding (see Benson & O’Reilly, ; Cohen et al, ; Hayes, ; Rainer, ), raising important questions about the local implications of these new transnational migration pathways (Huete & Mantecón, ; Matarrita‐Cascante et al, ; Sigler & Wachsmuth, ). Indeed, intersecting colonial histories, neoliberal political economies, and imported attitudes often have significant impacts on both natural resources and human communities in lifestyle destinations, including racialised land conflicts (Mollett, ; Thampy, ) and socio‐spatial change (Huete & Mantecón, ; Spalding, ; van Noorloos & Steel, ).…”

“…Indeed, intersecting colonial histories, neoliberal political economies, and imported attitudes often have significant impacts on both natural resources and human communities in lifestyle destinations, including racialised land conflicts (Mollett, ; Thampy, ) and socio‐spatial change (Huete & Mantecón, ; Spalding, ; van Noorloos & Steel, ). However, only recently have scholars started to study the local impacts of these new migratory pathways (see Hayes, ; Huete & Mantecón, ; Rainer, ; Spalding, ).…”