Studies on global (im)mobility regimes (Feldman 2011; Glick Schiller and Salazar 2013; Bauer-Amin, Schiocchet and Six-Hohenbalken 2022), hospitality (Derrida 2000; Berg and Fiddian-Qasmiyeh 2018; McFadyen 2020; Farahani 2021), othering (Buchowski 2020), tourism labour regimes (Szivas, Riley and Airey 2003; Cañada 2019), and the dynamics of segregation and solidarity (Tyerman 2022) shed light on how mobility regimes categorise and govern various groups of people on the move, whether as guests, tourism workforce, or commodities within broader economic structures.
This panel seeks to explore how tourists, migrant workers, asylum seekers, and other displaced persons interact with tourism-driven economies and are shaped by them (Bloch 2018). Tourist destinations attract diverse tourists in terms of social class, nationality, ethnic background and gender. Moreover, these destinations are not only visited by tourists but also by thousands of migrant workers who sustain the tourism sector through flexible and often precarious labour, both in formal and informal economies. In the panel, we ask the question: how do tourist spaces contribute to reproducing social inequalities, or alternatively, to fostering intercultural encounters and relationships that respect diversity?
We invite ethnographic and theoretical contributions that examine hospitality, solidarity, and the commodification of mobility in tourism settings, focusing on the complex dynamics within these environments. Papers may explore intersections between migration and tourism in various areas, such as arrival infrastructures, housing, informal and formal labour markets and local economies, offering a deeper understanding of the interactions that shape these spaces. We particularly encourage discussions on how different mobile subjects, whether asylum seekers, economic migrants, digital nomads, or seasonal tourism workers navigate the legal, social, and economic landscapes of host societies, shedding light on the challenges they face and the strategies they employ to adapt.
Ultimately, this panel aims to contribute to a broader understanding of how mobility regimes shape hierarchies of inclusion and exclusion, influencing contemporary socio-economic structures in tourism and beyond. We particularly welcome contributions from diverse academic traditions, including perspectives from the Global South and peripheral anthropologies (Milano 2017), to foster a more inclusive and multidimensional discussion on mobility, labour, housing, and governance in tourism contexts.
For the Mobile Lives Forum, mobility is understood as the process of how individuals travel across distances in order to deploy through time and space the activities that make up their lifestyles. These travel practices are embedded in socio-technical systems, produced by transport and communication industries and techniques, and by normative discourses on these practices, with considerable social, environmental and spatial impacts.
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