Geographies of marginalization: encountering modern slavery in tourism

At first glance, relating modern slavery to tourism might seem excessive and an exaggeration to what are seemingly unrelated concerns. While modern slavery practices in the global textiles, mining, agricultural, domestic services and sex industries have been on the receiving end of much critical research and mainstream commentary, the global tourism supply chain has not faced the same extent of investigation and critique. Even the UNWTO, the globe's tourism industry cheerleader, has so far avoided making such explicit linkages and has mostly celebrated the sector’s potential to contribute to development, and in isolation to how this manifests in the global tourism supply chain. However, TUI the world’s largest consolidated travel company has taken the lead on formally acknowledging the reality that modern slavery exists in the tourism supply chain with their Modern Slavery Statement. In their statement, TUI (2018) declares:

Modern slavery and its components of forced labour and human trafficking are of particular concern given their egregious nature and increasing prevalence. In this statement, we address how we seek to identify, mitigate, and prevent cases of modern slavery in our operations and our supply chain.

That tourism is inherently labor intensive, provides ideal conditions for potential transgressions that leverage human exploitation, especially concerning labor and human rights. Accordingly, this should signal to tourism geographers that the association between modern slavery practices and tourism presents a potentially rich seam for critical tourism geographies research.

On the eve of his death over two decades ago, Britton argued that geographers steeped in the study of tourism had largely failed ‘to recognize explicitly the capitalistic nature of the phenomenon’ (1991, p. 453). Britton was prescient in contending that any examination of people, place and space, fundamental pillars of human geography, is inextricably linked to capital and the neoliberal incentive that binds the touristic enterprise. More recently, Bianchi advanced Britton’s critique and in doing so chided research on tourism for not giving due consideration to ‘the material inequalities generated in the tourism economy’ (2009, p. 486). According to Bianchi, structural power in tourism contexts is deserving of a more thorough interrogation and this lay at the heart of the so-called critical turn that should be ‘grounded in a structural analysis of the material forces of power and inequality within globalizing capitalism and liberalized modes of tourism development’ (2009, p. 498).

In essence, Britton and Bianchi appeal for critical research that unveils aspects of tourism production and consumption that are tied to the construction and reinforcement of practices and institutions that lead to the marginalization of tourism-dependent host communities. Such manifestations are arguably more prevalent in less-developed contexts where tourism as a dominant economic endeavor tends to generate manifold issues typically steeped in debilitating power relations, enduring inequalities and the diminution of local agencies. The issue of marginality as a broad framework is now central to many critiques of tourism in the developing world where one of the preeminent and nagging themes concerns the extent to which host communities might garner more favorable outcomes (Burns & Novelli, 2008; Spenceley & Meyer, 2017). In particular, the question of how inherently vulnerable groups engage in the production of tourism (Frenzel, 2014) and whether this encounter leads to outcomes that enhance well-being (Buzinde, Kalavar, & Melubo, 2014), livelihoods (Gibson, 2008), resilience (Cheer & Lew, 2018; Lew & Cheer, 2018) and future prospects (Edgell, 2016), resounds. More recently, tourism has been linked to the Millennium Development Goals (Cheer, 2010; Saarinen & Rogerson, 2014) and today, the Sustainable Development Goals have taken over as benchmark goals to 2030 (UNWTO, 2015).

That geographies of marginalization and tourism geographies intersect is unsurprising, and while at present this link is not overtly and directly made, much research has been framed around related themes including pro-poor tourism (Hall, 2007), poverty (Scheyvens, 2011) gender empowerment (Cole, 2018), geographies of compassion (Mostafanezhad, 2013), indigenous agency (Espeso-Molinero, 2018), (un)ethical encounters (Gibson, 2010), over tourism (Milano, 2017) and responsible tourism (Goodwin, 2011), among other broader social justice and economic development concerns. In employing the term geographies of marginalization, distinction must be made between it and the geographies of compassion that broadly focus on the visitor, their motivations and subsequent engagement with people and place. Geographies of marginalization are situated in social and cultural geography and derived from ruptures and reconfigurations at both local and global contexts (Trudeau & McMorran, 2011). Such transformations emerge through economic and political change, social justice movements, gender empowerment initiatives and intense focus on rectifying development concerns, especially poverty alleviation and under development.

Indeed, tourism as an agent of marginalization is the antithesis of tourism for development as sanguinely framed in the UNWTO’s Year for Tourism as Development in 2017. In tourism, marginalization, inequity and social justice are intertwined and often derived from a number of sources in both obvious and ambiguous manifestations, not all apparent immediately, with most underlined by slow, unfolding regressive transformations that tend to exist beyond the clutches of authorities, and seemingly oblivious to the travelling public who inadvertently compound matters. For tourism geographers, this opens up obvious avenues to critical research that moves beyond the managerial and boosterish exigencies of the sector and its governors, potentially giving marginalization and social justice concerns proportional weighting.

In linking geographies of marginalization and modern slavery to tourism research and theory development, there are a number of contemporary problems that merit linkage including over tourism, sex tourism, gender equality, indigenous rights, land security and natural resource integrity, among others. Modern slavery is variously defined and broadly refers to practices and institutions that undermine, restrict or extinguish human freedoms while at the same time exploiting human assets through legal and illegal means (Allain, 2013). If indeed tourism is one of the globe’s most pervasive industries and is a fundamental pillar for development, acknowledging and scrutinizing the incidence of modern slavery remains pressing. While invoking the term modern slavery in the tourism discourse may be construed as excessive and unwarranted beseeching, what is clear is that where bondage and exploitation is characteristic of the production and consumption of tourism, the term remains appropriate.

One of the clearest manifestations of modern slavery in tourism is the practice of orphanage tourism in less developed contexts where tourist interactions with ‘orphaned’ children are central to traveller itineraries and experience making. This occurs in a number of ways through casual or planned visitations to orphanages as well as longer engagements underlined by voluntourists working in and amongst orphans in institutions (Carpenter, 2015; Guiney & Mostafanezhad, 2015). Very often, such engagements are built around the teaching of English and participation in community development initiatives through the construction of dwellings and basic infrastructure, economic diversification projects and childhood development initiatives. Underlining orphanage tourism is the fact that the vast majority of children (over 80%) in orphanage institutions are not orphans and have become the victims of intentional attempts by poor families to give children access to education opportunities, and consistent and reliable nutrition (van Doore, Nave, & Travers, 2017). However, such desires are easily exploited, and there are limited means by which families are able to ascertain the veracity around whether children are definitely receiving the care they have been promised.

Orphanages themselves are very often for-profit enterprises, ceasing on the desire of tourists and volunteers to ‘do good’ while travelling. Thus, the commodification of good intentions cycle begins and becomes embedded in the tourism supply chain where children become attractions and the focus of tourist consumption, and orphanages become sites of tourism production (Guiney, 2017; Proyrungroj, 2017). Orphanage tourism experiences have become mostly tied to the voluntourism movement where the monetization of care underlines the volunteer assignment, and the voluntourist pays institutions to partake in the development of what is essentially a for-profit enterprise, largely removed from care concerns. In linking orphanage tourism to modern slavery practices, tacit acknowledgement is made that at stake for children are their human rights, as they become commodities for the explicit purpose to pose as orphans (ReThink Orphanages, 2017).

In the realm of tourism geographies, the geographies of marginalization are arguably under acknowledged in weighing up the transgressions and breaches that occur through the host-guest encounter. The theoretical implications that arise in the attempt to link modern slavery practices to orphanage tourism are steeped in human geography relations, and intrinsically aligned to geographies of marginalization, and this, in turn, offers tourism geographers nuanced and particular emphases. Conceptual frameworks that are in synchrony with geographies of marginalization may be drawn from scholarly demarcations including cultural and development studies, cultural anthropology, sociology, law, international relations and international development, among others. However, as Trudeau and McMorran are quick to point out, marginalization is an ‘inherently socio-spatial process’ (2011, p. 448). Such processes are embedded within the gambit of tourism geographies research that like the geographies of marginalization seeks to interrogate ‘causal processes and find practical ways to work against them’ (2011, p. 451).

Following Trudeau and McMorran, the implications for tourism geographers are that through adopting conceptual frameworks immersed in the geographies of marginalization, examining transgressions at the host–guest interface must acknowledge the ‘spatiality of performances and practices that bring exclusionary boundaries into the theater of everyday life’ (Trudeau & McMorran, 2011, p. 451). Spatiality is of primary concern within the tourism system, and where exclusion is inherent, it defines spaces and practices for tourists and hosts that are not always mutually inclusive, and in many ways at odds.

In recent and forthcoming work, we couch the exploitative nature of orphanage tourism through a modern slavery lens, adamant that this sub-sector of tourism inhabits ground that is exclusionary and exploitative, and preys on the desperately poor (Cheer, Mathews, Goldsworthy, & Kanodia, 2017). More specifically, we take a cross-disciplinary approach leveraging development, economic, legal and cultural geographies, and a multidisciplinary focus employing perspectives from law, childhood studies, cultural anthropology, international relations and area studies. In weighing up, the theoretical frameworks that are best suited to linking geographies of marginality and modern slavery in tourism, Gibson offers a pertinent reminder that ‘consequences of encounters are often far from straightforward” (2009, p. 419), and “tourism creates a range of sites for intensified collisions and assemblages’ (Gibson, 2009, p. 419). Arguably, Gibson’s call vindicates the invitation for tourism geographers to embrace interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary research approaches in linking geographies of marginalization to tourism geographies. This offers tourism geographers a potentially rich vein of research from which nuanced inquiries into modern slavery and social justice concerns may be made.

Joseph M. Cheer
Tourism Department, School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Linguistics, Monash University, Caulfield East, Australia
[email protected]

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.