ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY. Sociology 4013B: Privileged Mobilities - from Tourism to Lifestyle Migration Fall 2014

Transcription

1 ST. THOMAS UNIVERSITY DEPARTMENT OF SOCIOLOGY Sociology 4013B: Privileged Mobilities - from Tourism to Lifestyle Migration Fall 2014 Time: Tuesdays and Thursdays, 2:30-3:50PM, MMH 201 Professor: Matthew Hayes Office: 303 ECH mhayes@stu.ca Office hours: by appointment or drop-in Course Description: The last two decades have witnessed an unprecedented increase in global mobility. Not only has international trade and investment doubled over that time, but other forms of mobility have also dramatically increased, creating new public policy problems, and new cultural environments, but so too has the increased flow of people tourists, travelers and migrants. People in the Global North today have grown up in a cultural environment shaped by international travel and cross-cultural experiences, in part due to their relatively low cost, and also due to the cultural prestige associated with transnational travel. Their high mobility is reshaping the way the social sciences see the world. One very significant transnational flow is that of people moving temporarily or permanently from the Global North to locations in the Global South. This class will focus primarily on the growth and implications of these types of tourism, travel and migration. In 2012, the number of international tourists topped 1 billion people for the first time (1/7 th of humanity now travels across borders every year, most of them from the Global North), an increase of almost a third since just a decade ago. While almost half of all global tourists are in Europe, the fastest growing regions are in Africa, Asia and South America. Tourism and travel are among the fastest growing industries in the world, and implicate large industrial interests from the hotel and development sectors, as well as transportation and travel, all of whom have positioned themselves to reap the rewards of low cost travel by more mobile generations of West Europeans, Japanese and North Americans. The main focus of this course will be to observe the implications of increased transnational travel in the cultural lives of mobile individuals, primarily people from developed countries in the Global North. We will also look at the impact this mobility has on receiving communities, especially in developing countries. Individuals from the Global North generally have more wage-earning power than the average member of the communities they visit, and may carry ideas that represent a colonial continuity with the racist, unequal and segregated relations that demarcate Global North and Global South.

2 Assignments: 1. In class presentation on one week s reading: 10% 2. Attendance: 5% (you lose 0.25% for each unexcused absence) 3. Interview with a tourist (due October 9 th ): 10% The assignment requires that you interview someone who has travelled abroad (if to the US, they must be a snowbird, e.g., someone who lives in the US for several months of the year). The purpose of the assignment is to be able to identify narratives that tell you a) about the transformation or construction of self through travel and mobility; and/or b) the imaginary that the traveler has of the place they travel to, where this imaginary comes from, and how it shapes their (im)mobility. Ethics procedures must be followed for this assignment. All interviewees must be anonymized. Any identifiable information in your transcript, which will be shared with the class, will result in a zero for this assignment. The transcript should be at least 1 full page (single space, 12 font Times New Roman), and no more than 5 (if transcribing a recording). The transcript should provide as much detail as possible about your interview. 4. Content Analysis of lifestyle migration websites (2-3 pages, due November 13 th ): 20% For this assignment, you will look at websites related to lifestyle migration in a developing country. You can pick the location, but if you need help, I can provide some guidance. You will look at 2-3 websites (at least 1 migrant blog, but you don t have to look at more than a few postings). Your paper will pull out how the location is talked about and depicted (you can include photos, but not as part of the page limit). What rationalities and what imaginaries are present? How are local people discussed or depicted? Discuss these questions in relation to course material. 5. Reflection pieces (5): 5% each 25% total 6. Final paper, pages, 30% For the final paper, take your interview with a tourist, or your content analysis and build a longer paper about what cultural ideas and ideals circulate in the experience of travel. You might want to reflect on one of your own travel experiences. Or you might be interested in investigating a location you would like to travel to. I am available to discuss potential topics in greater detail during office hours.

3 Readings: 1. Intro to main ideas re: mobility (September 4) Korpela, Mari Lifestyle of Freedom? Individualism and Lifestyle Migration. In Understanding Lifestyle Migration, edited by Michaela Benson and Nick Osbaldiston, This week s introduction looks at travel, migration and the individual creation of one s own self through mobility. The reading focuses on lifestyle migration, but many of the points Korpela makes apply equally to tourists who envisage not just seeing the world and other cultures, but also self-transformation through travel and mobility. This week will serve as an introduction to the course and its main themes. 2. Travel, Self-Invention and Late Modern Life: the meaning of travel (September 9 and 11) Oliver, Caroline Imagined Comunitas: Older Migrants and Aspirational Mobility. In Going First Class? New Approaches to Privileged Travel and Movement, edited by Vered Amit, New York: Berghahn Books. This week will look at how narratives of travel are tied up with constructions of mobile selves, identities and a sense of transnational communities. Emphasis will be placed on creating the self through travel. 3. Narrating the Self and Identity Through Travel (September 16 and 18) Elsrud, Torun Risk Creation in Travelling: Backpacker Adventure Narration. Annals of Tourism Research 28 (3): O Reilley, Camille C. (2005) Tourist or Traveller? Narrating Backpacker Identity. Discourse, Communication and Tourism edited by Jaworski and Pritchard, Clevedon, UK: Channel View Publications. This week pays attention to the stories that we tell about the travels we have taken. These stories are also about self-transformation, a key cultural aspect of travel and tourism. We travel not merely to see the world, but to discover ourselves. Attention will also be paid to ethnographic and qualitative methods, which are the hallmark of most of the studies that we will look at in the course. 4. Neocolonial discourses and Third World Travel (September 23 and 25) Echtner, Charlotte and Pushkala Prasad The Context of Third World Tourism Marketing. Annals of Tourism Research 30 (3):

4 Simmons, Beverley Ann Saying the Same Old Things: A Contemporary Travel Discourse and the Popular Magazine Text. In Tourism and Postcolonialism, edited by Michael C. Hall and Hazel Tucker, New York: Routledge. Readings address the way that tourism marketing depicts locations in ways reminiscent of colonialism, with its attempt to control, dominate and conquer space. 5. Gender and Indigenous Identities in the Context of Cultural Exchange: Case Study, The Sacred Valley of Peru (September 30 and October 2) Ypeij, Annelou The Intersection of Gender and Ethnic Identities in the Cuzco-Machu Picchu Tourism Industry: Sácamefotos, Tour Guides, and Women Weavers. Latin American Perspectives 39 (6): Gómez-Barris, Macarena Andean Translations: New Age Tourism and Cultural Exchange in the Sacred Valley, Peru. Latin American Perspectives 39 (6): These readings will enable us to explore how the extension of mass tourism in Peru since the 1990s has affected the lives of the people living there, especially indigenous and indigenous-mestizo groups. While many travelers and tourists talk about their experiences of self-transformation while travelling, this week allows us to see that the people these travelers go to see are also profoundly affected by contact with tourist cultures. 6. Tourism, Migration and the Politics of Displacement: Case Study, Sinai, Egypt (October 7 and 9) Karkabi, Nadeem Lifestyle Migration in South Sinai Egypt: Nationalisation, Privileged Citizenship and Indigenous Rights. International Review of Social Research, 3 (1): Jacobs, Jessica Paradise and Deserts Tourist Landscapes on the Margins of Modernity. In Sex, Tourism and Postcolonial Encounter: Landscapes of Longing in Egypt, Surrey, UK: Ashgate. This week s readings look at the specific case of European and Israeli tourism and migration to communities on the Southern coast of the Sinai peninsula, between Egypt and Israel. We will look at how holidays can also be political events, pitting different actors against one another in the definition of space, culture and tradition. The readings will also introduce us to some of the overlaps between lifestyle communities and tourism, and how these North-South flows influence land use and struggles for control of land and space.

5 7. Power, Ethical Tourism, Voluncations and Colonial Continuities (October 14) Baptista, Joao A The virtuous tourist: Consumption, development, and nongovernmental governance in a Mozambican village. American Anthropologist 114 (4): Reading and class will give us the opportunity to critically explore some of the more popular forms of tourism today. As mass tourism has increasingly been attacked, especially by more educated groups of travelers, new forms of reflexive tourism have developed, such as volunteer opportunities where you pay to volunteer in a developing country during your vacation. We will discuss these and similar types of ethical tourism, which have become popular in recent years. 8. The political economy of residential migration (developing countries) (October 16, 21, 23, 28 and 30) Bastos, Santiago Territorial Dispossession and Indigenous Rearticulation in the Chapala Lakeshore. In Contested Spatialities, Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism, London: Routledge. Lizárraga Morales, Omar US Citizens Retirement Migration to Los Cabos, Mexico: Profile and Social Effects. Recreation and Society in Africa, Asia and Latin America 1 (1): Hayes, Matthew We gained a lot over what we would have had : The Geographic Arbitrage of North American Lifestyle Migrants to Cuenca, Ecuador. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies. Film: Land, TVO (Canada), 2010 Film: Paraiso for Sale (Panama), 2011 or Un caos en la ciudad (in Spanish, with simultaneous translation provided), Panama, 2013 These two weeks explore themes of economic interest and economic displacement. As global accumulation strategies change, and are drawn ever further into real estate and financial speculation, international lifestyle and real estate firms position different populations and different locations for new types of exploitation and development. NOTE: OCTOBER 23, FILM: Film: Venice Syndrome (Germany) 2012 We will watch and discuss the film. While it deals specifically with Venice, the process it describes is similar to the types of transnational gentrification and economic displacement that occur in tourist and lifestyle locations around the globe. Pay particular attention during the film to the institutional actors

6 (municipality, developers, etc.), whose strategies are shaped by competition in the tourist industry. 9. Distinction and Travel (November 4 and 6) Oliver, Caroline and Karen O'Reilly A Bourdieusian Analysis of Class and Migration: Habitus and the Individualizing Process. Sociology 44: Benson, Michaela A Desire for Difference: British Lifestyle Migration to Southwest France. In Lifestyle Migration: Expectations, Aspirations and Experiences, edited by Michaela Benson and Karen O Reilly, Week, Lara I am not a tourist: Aims and implications of traveling. Tourist Studies, 12 (2): This week we look at distinction narratives through a Bourdieusian lens. Travel and mobility provide opportunities for conspicuous display of rarified forms of cultural capital. This week s readings look at the production of distinction narratives. 10. Gender and privileged mobility (November 13) Croucher, Sheila The Gendered Spatialities of Lifestyle Migration. In Contested Spatialities, Lifestyle Migration and Residential Tourism, edited by Michael Janoschka and Heiko Haas, London: Routledge. Meisch, Lynn Gringas and Otovaleños: Changing Tourist Relations. Annals of Tourism Research 22 (2): This shortened week will look at the issue of First World women s mobility and privilege in developing countries. Migration and travel are also gendered processes men and women undertake these types of mobility in different ways. Much of the literature on gender and mobility looks at the disadvantaged place that women have in transnational familial relocation. We will focus primarily on the agency and privilege of women, especially racialized white women, in transnational migration and travel. 11. Racialized identities of North American expatriates (November 18 and 20) Benson, Michaela Pp , Negotiating Privilege in and through Lifestyle Migration. In Understanding Lifestyle Migration, edited by Michaela Benson and Nick Osbaldiston, Hampshire, UK: Palgrave-Macmillan. Fecther, Anne-Meike The Other Stares Back: Experiencing Whiteness in Jakarta. Ethnography 6 (1):

7 Lan, Pei-Chia White Privilege, Language Capital and Cultural Ghettoisation: Western High-Skilled Migrants in Taiwan. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 37 (10): Optional: Hayes, Matthew. Forthcoming. It is hard being the different one all the time : Gringos and Racialized Identity in Lifestyle Migration to Ecuador. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 18 pages. This week looks at white identity in the context of migration. This area has been overlooked, despite its relevance, in tourism, but a few good studies have emerged of white identity formation in the context of residential migration. We will look at how racialized white individuals deal with their somatic difference in non-white public spheres, what identities they develop, and what practices emerge from these identities. Bearing in mind the historical variability of white identity formation in the context of travel and migration, we will pay close attention to the reflexivity that white migrants now appear to demonstrate, especially relative to colonial histories. This reflexivity generates new types of identities and practices that equally require deconstruction and critical interrogation. 12. Sex Tourism (November 25 and 27) Frohlick, Susan I m More Sexy Here : Erotic Subjectivities of Female Tourists in the Sexual Paradise of the Costa Rican Caribbean. In Gendered Mobilities, edited by Tanu Priya Uteng and Tim Cresswell, O Connell Davidson, Julia and Jacqueline Sanchez Taylor Fantasy Islands: Exploring the Demand for Sex Tourism. In Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean, edited by Kamala Kempadoo, Oxford, UK: Rowan and Littlefield Publishers, Inc. Documentary: Love Under Cuban Skies, CBC, This week, we will look at sex tourism involving men and women who travel to the Caribbean and meet exoticized others, with whom they may develop relationships. Many of these relationships are not sex tourism in the classic sense, as we shall see. Yet, almost all imply significant power imbalances that are shaped by international political economy as well as by gender. 13. Conclusion to the course (December 1 and 3) Michaela Benson Conclusion: distinction, ambivalence, authenticity, in The British in Rural France, New York: Manchester University Press. We will conclude the course, catch up (if need be) and review key concepts and ideas.