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.