Description
Book SynopsisAtalia Shragai examines the motivations for immigration, patterns of movement, settlements, and processes of identity-making among U.S. Americans in Costa Rica from post–World War II to the late 1970s.
Trade Review"Atalia Shragai's
Cold War Paradise is a success. It makes apt insights about lifestyle migration, and the author packages measured observations with stories that resonate emotionally and convey a sense of profound intimacy with her subjects. It is a welcome contribution to the underdeveloped literature on privileged travelers in Latin America. It reminds us that the power imbalances affecting migration extend beyond the contexts of those who uproot their lives because of dire need or immediate threats. People benefiting from favored status and who are fortunate enough to exercise transnational mobility on their own terms often escape the cultural and social responsibilities typically demanded of travelers who lack similar wealth and position."—Pete Soland, H-Environment
"Shragai deserves high praise for producing an accessible and smart ethnography of US American identity formation in Cold War-era Costa Rica."—Carmen Coury, H-LatAm
“A critical intervention in global studies. Analyzing the migration of U.S. citizens to Costa Rica in search of a deterritorialized American Dream, Atalia Shragai challenges how we think about topics like diaspora, gender, and the natural world. With her creative use of oral history and ethnography, Shragai shows how new sources and methods can change our understandings of the past.”—Jeffrey Lesser, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and director of the Halle Institute for Global Research at Emory University
“This is a very important subject if we are to understand an unexplored part of U.S. history from a global perspective: the migration of U.S. citizens to the world outside the American Dream. . . . This is a strong contribution to oral history and to the history of identity from an ethnographic perspective.”—David Díaz Arias, professor of history at the Universidad de Costa Rica
“A fascinating look at U.S. citizens living in Costa Rica during the Cold War. . . . Packed with interesting details and grounded in timely theoretical perspectives, this carefully researched book makes a valuable contribution to the growing scholarship on lifestyle migration specifically and global migration more generally.”—Sheila Croucher, professor of global and intercultural studies at Miami University
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
List of Tables
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Crossroads: The Movement of Individuals within the Sociopolitical Context
2. Places and Networks: Settlement, Community-Building, and Identity-Making
3. From Cowboys to the Guardians of Eden: Identity Work in Costa Rican Nature
4. Becoming a U.S. Woman in Costa Rica: Gender, Immigration, and Transnationalism
5. Material Culture on the Move: Things and Meanings between the United States and Costa Rica
6. Looking Back in Amazement: Negotiating Identities as Privileged Immigrants
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index
