Contribution short abstract

A critical discourse analysis of Galápagos tourism debates reveals how “regenerative tourism” policies—though framed as transformative—reproduce structural inequalities when divorced from power and participation, highlighting the need for justice-centered governance in tourism transitions.

Contribution long abstract

The Galápagos Islands have experienced a 260% increase in tourist arrivals over the past two decades, driven largely by the expansion of land-based tourism. In response to growing concern about overtourism in Galápagos—most notably from UNESCO—local authorities have adopted a strategy of “ecotourism with a regenerative focus” and introduced two landmark growth management policies in 2024: a significant visitor fee increase and a hotel regulation plan. While these measures appear aligned with regenerative tourism principles to move “beyond growth” in tourism, their implementation sparked widespread contestation and local protest. Drawing on a critical discourse analysis of radio interviews with national and local political actors, this chapter examines how these policies were framed, justified, and resisted in public debate. It argues that regenerative tourism, despite its transformative rhetoric, cannot succeed if implemented as a technocratic fix divorced from the political realities of power, representation, and equity. By bringing political ecology into conversation with regenerative tourism and degrowth, the chapter reveals how divergent visions of “ideal” tourism are tied to structural asymmetries in destination governance. The Galápagos case thus serves as a microcosm of the broader challenge facing regenerative tourism: without confronting the power structures that underlie tourism development, efforts to move “beyond growth” risk reinforcing the very inequalities they seek to dismantle. The chapter concludes by proposing a research agenda for regenerative tourism that centers power analysis, social justice, and participatory governance.

Contribution short abstract

Can tourism be re-signified for the social reproduction of the popular classes —as part of the degrowth project— outside the logic of capital?

Contribution long abstract

Tourism has become distorted into an excuse for a bulimic mobility, interpreted as a form of sweet and naive nihilism in the era of imminent catastrophe (Rodríguez, 2025), while it is glorified as an activity available only to the privileged populations of the Global North. First, our research seeks to explain the processes underpinning compulsive consumerism, which we interpret—following Andrews (2023)—as culturally rooted in the myth of the Land of Cockaigne. Second, we examine the disqualification of mass tourism as a “barbaric” taste, analysing the classement of its practitioners (Bourdieu, 1972) as a mechanism of top-down exclusion. Third, we investigate how this discourse distorts the degrowth political project, rendering it more exclusive (Blanco-Romero et al., 2023). Fourth, we explore bottom-up social responses to touristification by analysing the counter-hegemonic discourse produced by seven civil society organisations in the Balearic Islands that advocate for a socio-ecological transformation of the islands’ tourism model. Finally, our research agenda asks whether tourism can be re-signified for the social reproduction of the popular classes—as part of the degrowth project—outside the logic of capital.

Andrews, H. (2023). Tourists and the Carnivalesque: Partying in the Land of Cockaigne. Journal of Festive Studies, 5, 167-189. https://doi.org/10.33823/jfs.2023.5.1.142

Blanco-Romero, A., Blázquez-Salom, M., & Fletcher, R. (2023). Fair vs. fake touristic degrowth. Tourism Recreation Research, 50(2), 435–439. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2023.2248578

Bourdieu, P. (1979). La Distinction: Critique sociale du jugement. Paru aux Éditions de Minuit.

Rodríguez, E. (2025). El fin de nuestro mundo. La lenta irrupción de la catástrofe. Traficantes de Sueños.

Contribution short abstract

This paper calls not for fixing or transforming tourism, but for ending tourism and migration as currently structured, known, and practiced.

Contribution long abstract

Tourism is increasingly contested, creating much needed space for dialogue and debate about its future. There are different discourses on how to ‘deal with’ tourism. Most commonly, there is the long-standing effort to ‘fix’ tourism; that is, make it more environmentally, economically, and/or socially sustainable. Dissatisfaction with this approach has led to numerous alternatives, such as degrowth, post-capitalist, and justice-oriented frameworks, which aim to fundamentally ‘transform’ tourism. Taking a decolonial and critical mobilities approach, this paper argues that the latter alternative discourses (often) do not go far enough. Focusing on the global (im)mobility regime (Shamir 2005, Turner 2007), this paper conceptualises tourism and migration as archetypal modes of privileged and marginalised mobility that are simultaneously (re)produced through the continued ‘coloniality of power’ (Quijano 2000). From this perspective, then, it is not enough to transform tourism; rather, critical scholars of tourism and migration need to join efforts to support the decolonisation of the global (im)mobility regime (Sheller 2011, 2018). Doing so, it is argued, would end both tourism and migration as currently structured, understood, and practiced. In support of ‘ending’ tourism, this paper proceeds in three steps. First, it theorises how the continued coloniality of power underpins the co-production of ‘tourism’ and ‘migration’; second, it identifies imaginaries and practices where these processes are being contested, resisted, and/or inverted; and, finally, third, it queries whether these examples can support the decolonisation of the global (im)mobility regime and help bring about more socially and ecologically just futures for all.

Contribution short abstract

Antarctic tourism markets itself as ‘responsible travel’ while reinforcing neo-colonial power structures, commodifying animals and dying ecosystems. This paper calls for degrowth in Antarctic tourism, moral encounters, and the recognition of ecological rights in relation to climate injustices.

Contribution long abstract

Antarctic tourism transforms one of Earth’s most threatened ecosystems into a stage for elite and carbon-intensive consumption. Despite promoted as environmentally responsible by the International Association of Antarctica Tour Operators (IAATO, 2024), the industry relies on flights, luxury cruises, and extractive infrastructures that intensify the climate crisis tourists come to witness. Through a Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) (Hannam & Knox, 2005) of promotional narratives on IAATO members’ websites, this paper examines how discourses of responsibility, stewardship, and ‘last-chance’ imaginaries are mobilized to justify expanding human presence in a region under extreme ecological stress (Cordero et al., 2025).

These narratives reproduce climate coloniality (Sultana, 2025) by positioning Antarctica as empty and awaiting salvation through Global North wealth and mobility. The continent is framed as a disappearing resource whose loss must be personally experienced, turning melting ice and wildlife into consumable spectacles. Such logic erases nonhuman agency and disregards Antarctica’s intrinsic ecological rights.

Drawing on debates on tourism degrowth (Murray et al., 2025), the paper argues that no form of ‘responsible tourism’ can reconcile the industry’s dependence on high-emissions mobility with the urgent need for climate justice (Rastegar et al., 2024). Genuine ethical and moral encounters (Mostafanezhad & Hannam, 2016) require confronting the entitlement underpinning Antarctic tourism.

A key contribution of this paper is to show how the growth of 'responsible tourism' perpetuates climate coloniality and modern imperialism (Nash, 1989), and calls for degrowth through decolonial theory (Said, 1979) and posthumanism (Guia, 2021) in addressing growth and its entanglement with climate injustice.

Contribution short abstract

The so-called quasi-tourists share the same concerns as local residents in destinations that are attractive for living, working, studying, and visiting, as is the case with Barcelona

Contribution long abstract

The international tourist attraction of Barcelona is not new, since 1992, when the city hosted the Olympic Games, the number of tourists and accommodations has not stopped increasing. Online marketplaces such as Airbnb have revolutionized this growth and contributed to the so-called “airbnbfication” process that has come into conflict with residential housing. To these international tourists, we have to add international student, expats, and digital nomads who look for a new experience in the city, which entails staying in a neighborhood and living it intensely. This ongoing research analyzes 1) the housing effects of this intense accommodation demand (short-term and mid-term rentals) in urban destinations that are touristically consolidated with high airbnbfication density, 2) the changes and transformations that neighborhoods are suffering regarding commerce, social interaction, and public space caused by these new international lifestyles, and 3) the public policies to manage these flux of population. Methodologically, it is analyzed the grey literature and secondary data related to tourists, foreigner entries and their sociodemographic characteristics published by INE and those provided by Barcelona City Council and Catalan Universities. It also uses primary data collected from a survey with 150 respondents (ex-pats, acadèmic tourists and digital nomads), which has led to some preliminary results about the changes and new lifestyles in the day-to-day life of cities according to this transnacional gaze, and the challenges and concerns for the local administration management.

Contribution short abstract

The study examines touristification in Gröden, showing how housing pressures and tourism monocultures generate local discontent. Drawing on policy analysis and interviews, we offer empirical insight into deeper-seated power imbalances and economic inequalities shaping Alpine tourism destinations.

Contribution long abstract

Tourism has long been promoted as a means to revitalize the economies of peripheral rural areas, generating employment and income diversification amid agricultural decline. The touristification of mountain regions has accordingly capitalized on their rich natural environments and transformed the socio-economic fabric into prestigious tourism destinations. This research builds upon the burgeoning political ecology literature by critically engaging with rural tourism development in mountain destinations, enriching the current state of the debate with empirical insights from Gröden in South Tyrol. The case study highlights how touristification in the Alpine valley is generating growing discontent, which emerges in response to intensifying housing market pressures and widening disparities in access and affordability. Our qualitative empirical fieldwork, built on regional policy analyses and interviews, reveals how contested negotiations over tourism development often feature "scapegoat topics" that deflect attention from deeper structural issues, such as power imbalances, economic inequality, and extractive tourism practices. The key tensions identified relate to the elitization of housing markets, a growing reliance on a tourism monoculture that accelerates outmigration, and still nascent but increasingly responsive policy efforts. Touristification and valley development is thus showing to legitimize and benefit some interests, whilst marginalizing and dismissing others. Overall, the study confirms and deepens current understandings of how and why tourism has become a highly polarized affair, and scrutinizes how governance arrangements, power asymmetries, and development ideologies shape rural touristification.

Contribution short abstract

We discuss how communities contest land speculation and tourism financialization that transform neighborhoods into corporate assets. Drawing on Wright’s framework and speculative fiction, we trace resident resistance to displacement, financialization, and the erasure of vernacular practices.

Contribution long abstract

Our contribution interrogates the speculative logic structuring contemporary tourism geographies at the intersection of land speculation and dispossession in the so-called post-capitalist moment. Building on Erik Olin Wright’s framework of capitalist power relations and emancipatory alternatives, alongside critical engagements with speculative fiction as a method for imagining post-capitalist futures, it examines how land becomes a financial asset through enclosures for hotels, guesthouses, and short-term rentals. Speculative capital enlists mobility, culture, and amenities to transform community dwellings into investment vessels and neighborhoods into corporate portfolios. As land values detach from social and communal resources, tourist flows, rather than communal land stewardship, drive new sociocultural values. These processes erode affordability, trigger outmigration, and deepen housing precarity, with residents increasingly replaced by temporary, highly skilled remote workers untethered to place. As accumulation by dispossession unfolds through financialization schemes, it overwrites vernacular practices and everyday ecologies, replacing them with curated experiences and branded place narratives.

Through case studies in touristified Southern Mexico and Hawai'i, our contribution traces contestations to how finance capital speculations extract value, displace residents, and reconfigure socio-ecological land relations. In these spaces, capitalist accumulation is an ongoing process that encloses not only land but also environments, culture, and livelihoods, reconfiguring everyday geographies into staged travel experiences. And yet, neighbors are contesting these uneven growth futures by building community archives of practice that document collective resistance, preserve vernacular knowledge, and envision alternative possibilities for land stewardship and belonging.

Contribution short abstract

The interconnected struggles and the organisation of numerous meetings to discuss the impacts of touristification in Barcelona have consolidated an ecosystem of actors and recentred the debate from tourism to city issues, transcending tourism and amplifying spaces of hope and transformation.

Contribution long abstract

Barcelona has been for the last decade a paradigmatic example of resistance to tourism, as well as of attempts from the local administration to manage its impacts. These grassroots movements have, over time, woven networks that transcend tourism itself. In this way, the boundaries between struggles against touristification, the fight for housing, and the defence of air quality or public resources have become increasingly blurred, with these synergies paradoxically facilitated by local authorities in their attempts to manage tourism. Numerous meetings, and even the creation of participatory bodies such as Consell Turisme i Ciutat, have gradually consolidated an ecosystem of actors somehow connected to tourism in Barcelona. Despite divergences, the normalized rapprochement between various actors nurtures an opportunity for hope, which can be understood as “a way of processing new emotional ecologies that constitute the possibility of living in other worlds” (Scribano, 2023:15). We propose slightly shifting the debate on the necessary management of tourism mobilities and practices—on which disagreements may sometimes seem insurmountable—towards domains that go beyond tourism itself: the city as the commonplace. This slight deviation, within a context where a network of organized movements exists, provides a renewed framework for understanding the city's issues, in which tourism plays a part, while amplifying spaces of hope and transformation (Fletcher et al.,2021) both in and beyond tourism.

Fletcher, Robert, et al. (2021). Pathways to post-capitalist tourism. Tourism Geographies, 25(2–3), 707–728. https://doi.org/10.1080/14616688.2021.1965202

Scribano, Adrián (2023). Hacia una geometría teórica de la sociología de la esperanza. Boletín Onteaiken, (36), 1–17.

Contribution short abstract

This contribution examines how plantation afterlives shape touristified futures in Mauritius, showing how heritage, resorts, and smart-city developments narratively rework colonial landscapes - and how local actors contest these future imaginaries.

Contribution long abstract

The afterlives of the sugar-cane plantation continue to shape Mauritius’s socio-ecological landscape, creating uneven access to land, labour, and mobility. Promoted as a major pillar of sustainable development, tourism has become a key arena in which these spatial histories are reworked and future visions for the island negotiated. Drawing on discussions of Political Ecologies of Futurity (Moulton & Harris 2025) and situating the case within wider debates on the Plantationocene as an analytical concept (Wolford 2021; Chao et al. 2024), I explore how the interplay of heritage, place-making, and nature amid global socio-ecological change has become pivotal in struggles over touristic futures.

I examine three contemporary configurations that translate plantation logics into new regimes of touristic value creation: (1) the heritage-making of plantation houses, where curated atmospheres sanitise histories of forced labour; (2) coastal resorts that aestheticise colonial architecture to stage fantasies of authenticity and harmony with nature; and (3) smart-city projects on former sugar-cane land that recast extractive relations as sustainable, future-oriented urbanism. Across these settings, the plantation is not merely preserved or nostalgically revived but narratively futurized - mobilised as a storytelling device that legitimises tourism-led development while obscuring socio-ecological violence. Finally, the paper highlights contestations of these narratives, particularly from environmental initiatives, community actors, and local artists who craft counter-imaginaries that challenge dominant visions of touristic growth and articulate post-plantation futures.

Contribution short abstract

We focus on recent protests against touristification on the Canary Islands and the participatory process Canarias Palante from an ecofeminist approach. Drawing on participatory observation, media coverage, reports and interviews we explore the role of women in the production of island alternatives.

Contribution long abstract

April 20, 2024, one of the most crowded demonstrations in recent decades in the Canary Islands took place. It was followed by others under the same slogan: “The Canary Islands have a limit!”. The touristification of all aspects of life (human and non-human) led to deep unrest among the population and a loss of quality of life (i.e., difficulties in access to affordable housing, poor redistribution of wealth, deterioration of natural spaces, abandonment of the primary sector, etc.).

After the first of the demonstrations, numerous groups announced the start of a broad participatory process, “Canarias Palante,” with the aim of giving continuity to their demands. In a participatory manner, the document “80-something measures for changing the model. Addressing sustainability in the Canary Islands” was drawn up. This is a roadmap to guide the change of model towards one that respects the territory and culture of the place, as well as being oriented towards a better life.

Women have played a significant role in the demonstrations, demands, and proposals. It not surprising that when the defense of life is at the center, women are at the forefront of the struggle to confront dominant discourses and try to overcome the dualism that separates reason and emotion, body and mind, nature and culture, aspects that must be understood in an integrated way and that must be part of an ethic of responsibility and care.

Contribution short abstract

This work examines how the 37th America’s Cup is reshaping Barcelona’s seafront, using a blue and climate justice lens to highlight growing tensions between economic interests and citizens’ rights to coastal space.

Contribution long abstract

Barcelona has undergone continuous transformations along its waterfront, and the 1992 Olympic Games marked a turning point in its relationship with the sea. This urban milestone symbolized the city's opening to the sea, transforming previously marginalized areas into accessible public spaces. However, in recent years, growing tensions have emerged between economic and industrial interests and citizens' demands for equitable access and participation in coastal governance. Processes of privatization, elitism, and touristification, exacerbated by climate change, have deepened socio-spatial inequalities, particularly affecting traditional communities like the Barceloneta neighborhood. This article examines these dynamics from the perspective of blue and climate justice, focusing on the 37th America's Cup (Barcelona, 2024) as a critical case study. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it analyzes how the event catalyzed new urban reforms and sparked citizen mobilizations in defense of coastal commons. The study argues that the America's Cup represents both a symptom and a trigger for broader conflicts about who benefits and who is displaced by contemporary coastal development. By centering the voices and strategies of local residents, the article explores pathways toward more just, inclusive, and environmentally grounded approaches to urban coastal policy and collective empowerment, while also engaging with ideas of degrowth as a framework to envision more livable and sustainable coastal cities.

Contribution short abstract

This paper explores how accumulation by securitization functions in tourism, reflecting on longstanding research in Guatemala's Maya Biosphere Reserve. It proposes four key processes through which accumulation by securitization unfolds and prospects for alternative touristic development pathways.

Contribution long abstract

A growing body of research has revealed a trend toward the securitization of conservation in the past several decades worldwide and explored the forms of accumulation enabled by such securitization. This article builds on the idea of accumulation by securitization in conservation to explore specifically how tourism enables and even drives this process. We examine more than 25 years of world heritage and global biodiversity conservation in the Maya Biosphere Reserve of Guatemala to identify four types of accumulation by securitization through tourism in a globally prized conservation area. These include: 1) accumulation by securitization of territory, 2) touristic securitization of heritage, patrimony and culture, 3) accumulation by securitization through ‘sustainable development,’ and 4) practices of touristic securitization that “fix” identities and produce vulnerable and threatening subjects. Each of these forms of securitization provide an additional frontier for accumulation related to tourism, with clear implications for spatial relations, mobility, resource management, heritage claims, and relations of governance. Drawn from more than ten years of combined ethnographic and collaborative research in northern Guatemala and building from literatures across tourism studies, security studies, and political ecology, this article ultimately suggests that tourism in many cases may depend on accumulation by securitization, which then plays a key role in further processes of tourism expansion. We contend that this analytic may be useful to explain -- and perhaps help counter -- observed dispossession, violence, and exclusion related to touristic development.

Contribution short abstract

A comparative study of Naples and Barcelona analysing how housing and anti-touristification struggles shape class composition under rentier urbanism and open space for degrowth-aligned claims.

Contribution long abstract

This paper examines how anti-touristification and housing struggles in Naples and Barcelona intersect with processes of class composition under rentier urbanism. Drawing on ongoing comparative ethnographic research, it analyses how movements connect tourism growth with rent extraction, displacement, and pressures on social reproduction. Rather than treating touristification and housing as separate fields, the paper explores how activists weave them together as manifestations of a broader rentier regime that concentrates gains while externalising socio-ecological costs. The comparison highlights distinct political cultures and repertoires, yet in both cities conflicts around short-term rentals, tenants’ rights, and neighbourhood change offer a strategic lens on emerging post-growth agents of change. These mobilisations articulate limits to speculative expansion, demands for redistribution, and forms of collective organisation that resonate with degrowth debates but remain grounded in situated material struggles. By focusing on class interests and alliances—tenants, service workers, informal residents, and municipal actors—the paper contributes to political ecology discussions on who drives transitions beyond growth. It shows how classed grievances and organising practices shape contestations of tourism-led development and open pathways toward more socially and ecologically viable urban futures.

Contribution short abstract

Tourism megaprojects are reshaping Barcelona socio-ecology. Through interviews and system dynamics, this study reveals hidden infrastructural territorialization strategies analyzing how over-tourism, digital nomadism and innovation strategies drive housing pressures and reinforce urban extractivism

Contribution long abstract

Tourism-oriented megaprojects and mega-events are increasingly central to urban strategies of competitiveness, yet they intensify socio-ecological conflicts and deepen uneven territorial transformations. This contribution examines how Barcelona’s infrastructure agenda—starting from The Nineties Olumpic Game till the recent the expansion of the El Prat Airport, the America’s Cup (Copa América) or the innovation district 22@—reshapes urban space through processes of infrastructural territorialization, amplifying pressures related to over-tourism, digital nomadism, and housing financialisation. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with key stakeholders involved in both projects - public authorities, neighbourhood associations, environmental organisations, and sectoral actors - the study analyses the competing narratives that justify growth-oriented interventions while foregrounding the lived experiences of those who bear the socio-environmental costs. Methodologically, the research adopts an inductive mixed-method design, combining Gioia coding with housing price data and causal loop diagramming. This system dynamics approach reveals reinforcing feedback loops between tourism expansion, short-term rental markets, speculative expectations, infrastructural investment, and the displacement of local residents. Preliminary findings indicate that, once negative externalities and extracted value are considered, the claimed spillovers of tourism megaprojects become net negative for many communities and ecosystems. By centring political ecology and local struggles, the contribution interrogates who benefits from tourism-driven infrastructural futures, who absorbs the risks, and how alternative, community-rooted imaginaries may open pathways toward post-growth, just, and ecologically grounded urban transitions.