A women’s world or the return of men? The gendered impacts of residential tourism in Costa Rica

Abstract

Land is increasingly commercialized worldwide: in the past decade, land and real estate markets in the global South have shown much dynamism. While the debate on the “global land grab” has mostly focused on land investments for food supply and biofuels, it has now been widely accepted that the debate should be extended beyond food and fuel investments alone: for instance, large land acquisitions are taking place in the context of climate change mitigation and adaptation, mining concessions, urbanization, and speculation, and through the establishment of large-scale tourism complexes and residential tourism resorts (Borras Jr et al., 2012; Zoomers, 2010; Zoomers & Kaag, 2014).