Migration and tourism are two dimensions of people’s spatial mobility that need to be studied and conceptualized together (Hall, Williams 2002; Bloch, Adams 2023). Although through the prism of the (im)mobility regimes, they evoke different moral reactions and are founded on binary categories (work vs. leisure, production vs. consumption, precarity vs. privilege, etc.), migration and tourism often intertwine and generate one another. One of the reasons is that the tourism sector stimulates migration. This is especially true when talking about the informal sector, which is inclusive but involves seasonality and precarious working conditions. The aim of this panel is to scrutinise the overlapping fields of migration and tourism by exploring: 1/ the life trajectories of migrant tourism workers (the precarity of their work but also the aspirations, hopes, and visions of a better life); 2/ the situations when migrant tourism workers become tourists, engaging in leisure activities; 3/ and when tourists turn into migrants, either occasionally or permanently, trying to earn their living from catering to the needs of other tourists. We intend to look critically at the relationship between the privileged mobilities of tourists and the (im)mobility of migrants in tourist destinations – how they reflect the regimes of (im)mobility.
We thus invite researchers who will address – although not exclusively – the following topics:
- Global division of labour in the tourism sector
- Formal vs. informal sector in tourism
- Gender/age/ethnic/caste/class dimension of migrant work in the tourism sector
- Precarity and aspirations in migrant work in the tourism sector
- Other than economic benefits from work in the tourism sector (e.g. searching for a better life)
- Tourism practices of migrant tourism workers
- Tourist-turned-migrants & migrant tourist-workers
- Migrants as hosts in tourist destinations
- The role of social networks in migrant work in the tourism sector
