LANDac PhD research disseminated in Costa Rica and Nicaragua

Local workshops on residential tourism and its implications for development

Though often gone unnoticed in the debate on large-scale land acquisitions, tourism and in particular residential tourism* can be important causes of land alienation. LANDac PhD graduate Femke van Noorloos did research on residential tourism and its implications for development in Costa Rica, and was invited by the development NGO Alba Sud to provide local students, professors and policy makers in Nicaragua and Costa Rica with more insight into his topic. In April and May 2013 she gave guest lectures for a wide public at the Universidad Nacional (UNA) in Liberia, Costa Rica, and at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de Nicaragua (UNAN) in Managua, Nicaragua. Proceedings and powerpoints of the Nicaragua workshop can be accessed on Alba Sud’s website (in Spanish):
http://www.albasud.org/viewnews.php?id=428

In addition, two Spanish-language papers on her PhD research were published and widely disseminated by Alba Sud :
http://www.albasud.org/publ/docs/58.pdf (general overview of the thesis)
http://www.albasud.org/publ/docs/60.pdf (focus on residential tourism in the ‘land grab’ debate)

*Residential tourism is the temporary or permanent mobility of relatively well-to-do citizens from mostly western countries to a variety of tourist destinations, where they buy (or sometimes rent) property. This mobility is driven by the search for a better way of life, a lower cost of living, etc. The residential tourism industry, with its focus on land transactions and urbanisation, constitutes an urgent research topic in debates on land and development.