The GISI funded research that Dr. Hayes undertook in 2013 helped him to develop a cultural sociology of lifestyle migrant narratives. Lifestyle migrants in Ecuador have developed a discourse of the ugly American, which delimits between legitimate forms of transnationalism, and non-legitimate or profane forms. Dr. Hayes argues that these discourses illustrate the emergence of a cosmopolitan cultural field, one that attempts to bridge cultural differences in the context of greater global mobility on the part of North Americans, especially elderly retirees.
Two papers on this topic were presented on two international conferences in the summer of 2012:
“They will come to hate us here:” Identity Formation Amongst North Americans in Ecuador
The paper looks at identity construction of residential migrants from North American to Ecuador. The paper is based on qualitative interviews with 76 migrants from Canada and the United States to two locations in Ecuador. North Americans adjusting to their new surroundings attempt to build a space for themselves in relation to other migrants as well as locals in the population. In this paper, I explore some of the distinction narratives that circulate amongst the North Americans in Ecuador. North Americans attempt to distinguish themselves from other migrants through narratives that mobilize the meaning of migration, constructing an identity as good migrants, specifically through attention to practices of integration. These meaning-discourses give meaning to individual experiences by categorizing certain types of interaction with the local population as being ‘obnoxious.’ Additionally, the paper explores the ethnic identity of North Americanity in a Latin American context, where its meaning comes to take on new importance. North Americans are very aware of the social inequalities that mark their experience in Ecuador, and part of their integration process is to find ways to mediate these inequalities and make sense of them. The paper explores identity formation in this context.
Residential Migration and the Ecuadorian Real Estate Boom
This paper looks at local and transnational practices of accumulation through real estate investment. It places attention on the arbitrage opportunities open to real estate actors in an increasingly transnational field of real estate investment. North Americans, most of them retirees, have been moving to Ecuador in increasing numbers since the mid-2000s, and perhaps especially after 2008-09, forming small communities in various Ecuadorian cities. International lifestyle marketers have given destinations in Ecuador a great deal of publicity since 2009, based on methodologies that highlight relatively low real estate and living costs. The growth of post-productive mobility amongst North American baby-boomers offers new opportunities for real estate developers in an increasingly transnational real estate investment environment. As real estate development in North America has become more competitive, a growing number of small and middle sized developers and sales people have located to Latin American destinations, where there are still possibilities to make large gains on lifestyle migrants looking for inexpensive holiday or retirement homes on limited incomes. These gains are also facilitates by national policies in countries like Ecuador, which have deliberately sought to support real estate development through monetary and lending policies for the domestic middle classes. The resulting increases in prices for homes and rentals have displaced some lower income residents resulting in a form of transnational gentrification.