Tourism Geographies Special Issue
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Goals and scope of the Special Issue
This special issue advances conceptual and empirical scholarship on tourism mobilities and their enmeshment with other forms of social mobility. It is focused on positions, representations and narratives of ‘communities’ that are mobilised, engaged, and contested through tourism.
This collection will take a relational and performative perspective on the intersection between physical and social mobilities, bringing forth the multiple nexa, contradictions, paradoxes, and material and discursive struggles that unfold in tourist places and involve their visitors, temporary inhabitants and ‘resident’ communities. These cases can pose critical challenges for place resilience. However, they can also enable innovative pathways for social empowerment. The pandemic times have unveiled the juxtaposition of mobilities and immobilisations that have been historically constructed on leisure mobilities, identifying encrusted reproductions of social inequality or the opening of new opportunities for emancipation. We respond to this ‘pandemic turn’ by using the mobilities paradigm and its deployments in tourism studies as an epistemological canvas.
Despite a generic perception of living in an extremely mobile world, changing rapidly and unfolding through dense routes of global and local mobilities, people have access to different degrees of ‘motility’ or ‘potential for mobility’ (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006; Kaufmann, 2003). On the other hand, mobility is enabled by technology and ‘infrastructural moorings’ (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006) – airports are especially crucial in this sense – which are not isotopically distributed in space and across society. That is why, if ‘most people travel’ (Hannam, 2008), travelling can be easier for some and harsher for others, unevenly exposed to sociotechnical regimes of regulation, surveillance and sanctioning of such mobilities through visa policies, security and surveillance systems. Indeed, such inequalities stand nowadays as a crucial and contested social and power divide.
For historical, geopolitical, economic or logistic reasons (or for a combination of them) mobility, including tourism mobilities, is for some people a natural, bodily feature of life that benefits from ‘smooth corridors’ (Lassen. 2006), while for others it is a longed-for dream or a life-threatening challenge. Mimi Sheller’s recent call for ‘mobility justice’ critiques descriptions of tourists and other mobile elites freely roaming, while migrants and those most in need are abandoned and imprisoned at borders (Sheller, 2018). However, engaging with the mobilities paradigm also suggests considering mobility paradoxes. This is the case, for instance, of migration linked to tourism sector jobs. On the one hand, it can be a great career opportunity for some people. Yet, on the other hand, it is steeped in precariousness and labour exploitation for others.
The global Covid-19 pandemic has emerged in a global scenario already characterised by uneven mobilities. As a result of global mobility itself, the pandemic has had a direct impact on the politics and practices of tourism mobilities – their rhythms, routes, directions and feelings. Old and new im/mobilities are thus confronted, exacerbated, or mixed up, bringing us to a new way to problematize the nexus between social and spatial mobility as it is performed through tourism mobilities encountering multifarious local communities.
This kaleidoscope of topics and insights that will be covered by the Special Issue – ranging from the intersection of leisure travel and diasporic mobilities in the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa to the emerging geography of social and gendered injustice outlined by tourism workers and pandemic immobilisations in Barcelona, to name but two – may represent a step forward in the inquiry on the politics of tourism mobilities. In this way, the framework outlined by the Special Issue will open up new ways of understanding the relationship between space and communities by acknowledging the entanglement of relational mobilities and immobilities. Both as a field of theorization and empirical engagement to design sustainable options, the tourism mobilities framework proposed will contribute to provide timely answers to contemporary societal and spatial challenges, ranging from the pandemic transition to a more sustainable future that acknowledges global citizenship.
This special issue advances conceptual and empirical scholarship on tourism mobilities and their enmeshment with other forms of social mobility. It is focused on positions, representations and narratives of ‘communities’ that are mobilised, engaged, and contested through tourism.
This collection will take a relational and performative perspective on the intersection between physical and social mobilities, bringing forth the multiple nexa, contradictions, paradoxes, and material and discursive struggles that unfold in tourist places and involve their visitors, temporary inhabitants and ‘resident’ communities. These cases can pose critical challenges for place resilience. However, they can also enable innovative pathways for social empowerment. The pandemic times have unveiled the juxtaposition of mobilities and immobilisations that have been historically constructed on leisure mobilities, identifying encrusted reproductions of social inequality or the opening of new opportunities for emancipation. We respond to this ‘pandemic turn’ by using the mobilities paradigm and its deployments in tourism studies as an epistemological canvas.
Despite a generic perception of living in an extremely mobile world, changing rapidly and unfolding through dense routes of global and local mobilities, people have access to different degrees of ‘motility’ or ‘potential for mobility’ (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006; Kaufmann, 2003). On the other hand, mobility is enabled by technology and ‘infrastructural moorings’ (Hannam, Sheller, & Urry, 2006) – airports are especially crucial in this sense – which are not isotopically distributed in space and across society. That is why, if ‘most people travel’ (Hannam, 2008), travelling can be easier for some and harsher for others, unevenly exposed to sociotechnical regimes of regulation, surveillance and sanctioning of such mobilities through visa policies, security and surveillance systems. Indeed, such inequalities stand nowadays as a crucial and contested social and power divide.
For historical, geopolitical, economic or logistic reasons (or for a combination of them) mobility, including tourism mobilities, is for some people a natural, bodily feature of life that benefits from ‘smooth corridors’ (Lassen. 2006), while for others it is a longed-for dream or a life-threatening challenge. Mimi Sheller’s recent call for ‘mobility justice’ critiques descriptions of tourists and other mobile elites freely roaming, while migrants and those most in need are abandoned and imprisoned at borders (Sheller, 2018). However, engaging with the mobilities paradigm also suggests considering mobility paradoxes. This is the case, for instance, of migration linked to tourism sector jobs. On the one hand, it can be a great career opportunity for some people. Yet, on the other hand, it is steeped in precariousness and labour exploitation for others.
The global Covid-19 pandemic has emerged in a global scenario already characterised by uneven mobilities. As a result of global mobility itself, the pandemic has had a direct impact on the politics and practices of tourism mobilities – their rhythms, routes, directions and feelings. Old and new im/mobilities are thus confronted, exacerbated, or mixed up, bringing us to a new way to problematize the nexus between social and spatial mobility as it is performed through tourism mobilities encountering multifarious local communities.
This kaleidoscope of topics and insights that will be covered by the Special Issue – ranging from the intersection of leisure travel and diasporic mobilities in the Mediterranean island of Lampedusa to the emerging geography of social and gendered injustice outlined by tourism workers and pandemic immobilisations in Barcelona, to name but two – may represent a step forward in the inquiry on the politics of tourism mobilities. In this way, the framework outlined by the Special Issue will open up new ways of understanding the relationship between space and communities by acknowledging the entanglement of relational mobilities and immobilities. Both as a field of theorization and empirical engagement to design sustainable options, the tourism mobilities framework proposed will contribute to provide timely answers to contemporary societal and spatial challenges, ranging from the pandemic transition to a more sustainable future that acknowledges global citizenship.
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Authors Instructions
This special issue invites papers from the 3rd International Seminar of the ATLAS Special Interest Group ‘Space Place Mobilities in Tourism’, (http://www.atlas-euro.org/event_2021_padova/tabid/377/language/en-US/Default.aspx#abstract). The seminar took place online on May 27-28, 2021. Therefore, this special issue is not an open call. Authors should adhere to author guidelines. All papers will undergo a double-blind review process, overseen by the guest editors. Guest Editors Antonio Paolo Russo, Universitat Rovira i Virgili, Tarragona, Spain, [email protected] Chiara Rabbiosi, University of Padua, Italy, [email protected] Federica Letizia Cavallo, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy, [email protected] Special Issue Timeline
Keywords Social mobility; place performance; tourism immobilities; local communities; multiscalarity |
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References cited
Hannam, K. (2008). Tourism Geographies, Tourist Studies and the Turn towards Mobilities. Geography Compass, 2(1), 127–139. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00079.x
Hannam, K., Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings. Mobilities, 1(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450100500489189
Kaufmann, V. (2013). Re-thinking mobility: Contemporary sociology. London: Routledge.
Lassen, C. (2006). Aeromobility and Work. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 38(2), 301–312. https://doi.org/10.1068/a37278
Sheller, M. (2018). Mobility justice: The politics of movement in the age of extremes. Verso: New York.
Hannam, K. (2008). Tourism Geographies, Tourist Studies and the Turn towards Mobilities. Geography Compass, 2(1), 127–139. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-8198.2007.00079.x
Hannam, K., Sheller, M., & Urry, J. (2006). Editorial: Mobilities, Immobilities and Moorings. Mobilities, 1(1), 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/17450100500489189
Kaufmann, V. (2013). Re-thinking mobility: Contemporary sociology. London: Routledge.
Lassen, C. (2006). Aeromobility and Work. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 38(2), 301–312. https://doi.org/10.1068/a37278
Sheller, M. (2018). Mobility justice: The politics of movement in the age of extremes. Verso: New York.
