Empowering marginalised groups for inclusive tourism: a call for critical studies

The creation, maintenance and definitions of margins – alongside the socio-cultural meanings and experiences of marginalisation and the marginalised – have long been a topic of extensive debate among scholars, policymakers, and politicians. Within academia, researchers have discussed margins and the social position of individuals (or groups) in relation to the margins as a process where inclusion and exclusion constitute two intertwined ends of a continuum. The boundaries of inclusion and exclusion are governed by the layered understanding of social norms (influenced by our experiences, culture and time), values (shared understanding of true vs false, acceptable vs unacceptable), expectations (shared understanding of what ‘should’ be), and the valued (shared understanding of what is important and worthy) (Munn & Lloyd, 2005). From this perspective, anyone who does not fully align with the ‘standards’ underpinning social norms, values, ‘the expected’ and ‘the valued’ is expected to be placed on the end of the continuum representing exclusion and thus labelled as marginalised. However, sociologists have argued that the systems of marginalisation are rarely simple or defined by an ‘either-or equation’ – one where individuals are excluded if not included – and that can exist in complex realities where instances of inclusion and exclusion often overlap. Messiou (2012) discusses this point in her work and delineates four ways for conceptualising margins (creation and recognition of the boundaries) and marginalisation (maintenance and experience of the boundaries), as shown in Table 1 below.

Table 1. Conceptualisation of Marginalisation (Adapted from Messiou, 2012).

Experienced by	Recognition by
Individual	Recognised by individuals and others
Individual	Recognised by individuals but not by others
Labeled as marginalised	Not recognised by the individual but labeled by others as belonging to a marginalised community.
Individual	Denied by the individual

It is important to note here that Messiou (2012) highlights the difference between an individual's experience of marginalisation, the recognition of that experience by others, and the discrepancies between the two. This perspective points to an essential critical research discourse that questions the labels we associate with a community – and, in particular, interrogates whether the community should have a voice in such a labelling process. It is also essential to underscore that marginalisation not only refers to the exclusion of individuals from an ecosystem but also involves the feelings induced in them during, and as a result of, continued reminders that they do not belong in that ecosystem (Mowat, 2015).

Research around marginalisation and the marginalised has developed around different aspects of exclusion. While some commentators have debated the detrimental implications of not being able to participate in a community’s socio-cultural and political activities (Petrou et al., 2009), others have discussed the challenges associated with financial marginalisation (poverty) (Carter-Wall & Whitfield, 2012; Dickerson & Popli, 2016; Ridge, 2011). Furthermore, while a number of social scientists has documented the lived experiences of those who identify as marginalised and issues of identity formation underpinning social exclusion (Hjörne & Säljö, 2012; Macleod, 2012; Orsati & Causton-Theoharis, 2013; Skovlund, 2014), a part of the academic community has also embraced a more incisive ‘emancipation perspective’ to create a space for – and give a voice to – the marginalised (Slee, 2012).

Marginalisation and the marginalised in tourism

Although tourism is perceived as a force for the larger good because of its capacity to influence sociocultural structures and narratives (Higgins-Desbiolles, 2006), travel is considered a privilege where individuals with power, status, and influence are the natural consumers and participants of the ecosystem. In contrast, Others are placed or remain on the margins. Margins are created and maintained in a tourism ecosystem that limits the physical, emotional and psychological interaction of the marginalised in the path of becoming total beneficiaries of tourist experiences (Baah et al., 2019). Tourism scholars have not neglected marginalisation issues and the power structures underlying them. Indeed, in the last twenty years, critical tourism scholarship has been quite vocal in denouncing structures of marginalisation in tourism and giving voice to the marginalised (Abdullah et al., 2023). However, there has not been consensus on how marginalisation should be approached, what the critical components of marginalisation are, who should be labelled as marginalised, and, most importantly, how marginalisation issues should be solved in/through tourism. While previous studies in tourism and the social sciences have provided different conceptualisations and explanations of marginalisation, in this special issue, we mobilise the properties listed by Hall (1999) to frame and examine how they are contextualised in building structural marginalisation in the tourism industry. Building on their previous work, Hall (1999) highlighted 14 properties that constitute marginalisation, out of which ten represent the processes of separating people (e.g. intermediacy, differentiation, secrecy and others), while four discuss the result of being placed in a marginalised position (e.g. reflectiveness, hope, and others) (see Table 2).

Table 2. Hall's properties of marginalisation with contextualised tourism examples.

Properties	Contextualised meaning for tourism spaces	Example
Intermediacy	Boundaries for separation and protection also cover territorial invasion and the dangers of living in conflicted geographies.	Limited travel access for migrants and refugees (Pappas & Papatheodorou, 2017)
Differentiation	Structures stemming from cultural and personal uniqueness/rarity also cover the stigmatisation of cultures and populations.	Black travel experiences and harassment (Park et al., 2022)
Power	Access to tangible and intangible resources within a tourism space also includes the advantages associated with enforcement capacity and legacy.	Accessibility issues for disabled tourists (Darcy & Pegg, 2011; Patterson et al., 2012)
Secrecy	Controlling of information sharing regarding self and group – how they are portrayed; also includes the advantages that come with the access to insider knowledge and resources.	Gatekeeping of LGBTQ individuals (Ong et al., 2022)
Reflectiveness	Events and processes that force the development of survival skills due to constant vigilance or attention in a tourism space; also includes over-analysis of social encounters.	Autoethnographic account of solo female researchers during fieldwork (Manfreda & Ye, 2022)
Voice	Acceptance/rejection or validation/invalidation of expression of one's experiences; also covers addressing/dismissal of lived experiences.	Harassment against solo female travellers (Wilson & Little, 2011)
Liminality	Experiences considered rare and opportunities of limited generalisation; also covers risks associated with alienation.	Experience of caregivers for individuals with disability (Lehto et al., 2018)
Exteriority	Process of establishing how an individual is not a part of the system.	Accessibility issues for disabled tourists (Darcy & Pegg, 2011; Patterson et al., 2012)
Constraint	Physical restriction experienced due to being trapped in violent geographies; also includes physical exploitation.	Sanctions on travel (Seyfi et al., 2022; Seyfi & Hall, 2020)
Eurocentrism	Ideology that puts European and North American elements (languages, skin colour, culture, food and others) over and above everything; also covers that any other element should, and must, revolve around those central elements of whiteness.	Production of tourism knowledge (Wijesinghe et al., 2019); Mobility discussions in the world beyond Europe (Cohen & Cohen, 2015)
Economics	Discussion or survival and otherwise; also covers access to food, clothing, shelter and jobs that can ensure the same.	Discriminatory hiring practices against refugees in hotels (Underthun & Jordhus-Lier, 2017; Wendt et al., 2020)
Seduction	Exoticization and commodification of tourism products (people, culture and destinations); also covers depersonalisation.	Exoticism of tourism destinations (Minca, 2000)
Testimonies	Acknowledgement of personal statements and narratives; also includes validation and education.	Testimonies of children involved in dark tourism (Israfilova & Khoo-Lattimore, 2018)
Hope	Positive view towards future; also includes perceptions of liberation related to involvement in the tourism ecosystem and being a beneficiary in it.	Economic upliftment/poverty eradication via tourism (Briedenhann & Wickens, 2004)

As Table 2 shows, Hall's (1999) marginalisation properties can be linked to issues discussed in the tourism literature. For example, if intermediacy is referred to, the narrative of marginalisation in tourism is evident in how the image of an ‘ideal’ tourist is socially constructed – a financially stable non-disabled white heterosexual male who travels to ‘exotic’ places for leisure. Conversely, other groups, such as immigrants and job seekers, are not allowed to participate in forms of tourist consumption without challenges (Pappas & Papatheodorou, 2017). In other words, within tourism ecosystems, Others are often kept on the margins (differentiation, exteriority) with limited options of access to resources (power) and information (secrecy), as documented by researchers covering harassment and challenges of Black travellers (Park et al., 2022), women (Yang et al., 2017), LGBTQ people (Ong et al., 2022) and diversely-abled travellers (Darcy & Pegg, 2011; Patterson et al., 2012). Table 1 also points to issues of marginalisation for non-white participants through the lens of Eurocentrism and postcolonial theory. In this respect, non-white experiences have been documented in tourism research by examining the invalidation of their lived experiences (voice, liminality, testimonies), challenges (constraint, hope) (Lehto et al., 2018; Pastor & Kent, 2021; Rodríguez-Campo et al., 2021; Ryan & Martin, 2001), and experiences of commodification (Minca, 2000).

Given that invalidation of voices creates an avenue for marginalisation, it is essential to find ways to document and validate the lived experiences of the marginalised. In addressing this concern, critical tourism research has garnered attention in recent years as an answer to the calls involving developing possible practices and actions to document and resist marginalisation by non-traditional thinking methods and alternative epistemologies (Wijesinghe et al., 2019). Authors in tourism have also used their works to bring attention to the challenges faced by marginalised communities, thereby giving their voices a space to be heard and acknowledged. Small and Harris (2014)’s study on the experience of crying babies on planes reveals how this often-neglected aspect sheds light on the challenges faced by parents and caregivers during air travel, illustrating yet another dimension of marginalisation in tourism. Tavakoli and Mura (2015), in their research, discuss women's travel behaviour from troubled and restricted geography, highlighting tourism in constrained geographies. In contrast to the popular tourism literature that focuses on the safety of travellers at the destination, Thomas and Mura (2018) explore the travel experience and normalisation of the unsafeness of solo female travellers, thereby exploring the hope within tourism. The work by Yang et al. (2019) highlights the challenges faced by Asian solo female travelers, which presents a different perspective against Eurocentricism. Research by Yang et al. (2022) shows how children in Cambodia can be empowered without enforcing the ‘white saviourism’ or Western emancipation attempts. Despite the plethora of emerging studies documenting and supporting marginalised communities and their challenges and recommendations for empowerment in tourism structures (Darcy & Pegg, 2011; Thomas & Mura, 2018; E. C. Yang et al., 2019), we conceived this special issue in recognition of the additional work needed to unveil the intricacies of marginalisation and the lived experiences of the marginalised in tourism. Moreover, in the call for contributions, we emphasised the importance of praxis in critical research and encouraged authors to discuss the practical implications of their work. By doing so, we conceive this special issue alongside other critical work produced by tourism scholarship as an opportunity to provide solutions to address marginalisation issues.

An overview of the special issue

Overall, the fifteen articles constituting the special issue approach issues of marginalisation and empowerment in tourism from a diverse array of perspectives and social actors, which can be broadly categorised into three main areas of interest, namely:

1. ‘Tourism as a context to reflect on marginalisation’ (articles 1-4)

2. ‘Marginalised hosts’ (articles 5-9)

3. ‘Marginalised guests’ (articles 10-15).

Tourism as a context to reflect on marginalisation

The first area (articles 1-4) includes a group of papers in which tourism represents a setting for introspection and action about inclusion and exclusion dynamics. More specifically, this collection of articles conceives different tourist spaces, events and experiences as opportunities to engage in deep thought – and possibly political action – about various aspects intersecting marginalisation, including multiculturalism, neo-colonialism, and privilege in society. Against this backdrop, the work offered collectively by Eva Maria Jernsand, Helena Kraff, Sayaka Osanami Törngren, Caroline Adolfsson, Emma Björner, Lillian Omondi, Thomas Pederson, and Sofia Ulver is the most emblematic example of this way of conceiving tourism. Through an autoethnographic reflexive approach, this collective of diverse authors recounts their own embodied tourist experiences to unveil the marginalised and privileged positions ingrained in tourist spaces and encounters. In their analysis, memories of marginalisation and privilege cannot transcend concepts like ‘whiteness’, Eurocentrism, race, nationality and ethnicity. The following contribution by Tracey Dickson, Stirling Sharpe and Simon Darcy focuses on mega-sport events as potential opportunities for traditionally marginalised First Nations groups to be included as volunteers in tourism-related activities and practices. Notably, the authors provide a framework to guide future research and practice on how marginalised communities like First Nations could become more involved in sports events. Helena Kraff and Eva Maria Jernsand also focus on events as contexts to reflect upon the tourism-marginalisation nexus. Their article critically discusses multicultural food events as occurrences that tend to exoticise and commoditise ethnic minorities for ethnic majorities’ consumption. By doing so, under politically-driven slogans of multiculturalism and integration, multicultural food events constitute spaces of exclusion and prejudice. Finally, Monica Cerdan Chiscano and Simon Darcy conclude this first area of interest by focusing on museums and their role in incorporating discourses of value co-creation for people with disabilities in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. As the authors point out, museums supporting the value of co-creation discourse can eventually result in more inclusive tourist spaces for people with disabilities.

Marginalised hosts

The second area of interest (articles 5-9) includes studies that focus on marginalisation in tourism from a host perspective. In this section, Skye Akbar and Anne Sharp give voice to nine Aboriginal tourism operators in remote Australia to explore how they use marketing for business growth. Their work emphasises the importance of strengthening Aborigines’ marketing skills after the COVID-19 pandemic, a crucial prerequisite to expanding their tourism businesses in colonial economies and empowering them. Taufik Abdullah, Neil Carr and Craig Lee engaged with twenty-five Indonesian street vendors, part of Indonesia's hospitality industry, to explore the empowerment of disadvantaged groups. Their article offers a model in which self-empowerment is conceived as a process incorporating various external and internal components to resist marginalisation, such as external support, agency, autonomy and consciousness. The following contribution by Karla Boluk, Antonia Canosa and Sandro Carnicelli mobilises a feminist ethic of care and a ‘childist’ ontological stance to examine the narratives of young people engaged in advocacy work in tourism host communities. Guided by a braided narrative analysis approach, their inquiry emphasises young people's crucial role in advocating for – and propelling – change for sustainable futures. Kathleen Smithers offers the fourth article on this area of interest, whose paper employs art-based research to unveil the experience of children hosting school tours in Zimbabwe. Through drawings, interviews and observations with a group of Zimbabwean children teachers, school founders and tourism personnel – by inviting them to be co-researchers in the work rather than just participants, Kathleen's work underlines how school tours were perceived differently by adults and children, with the former group recognising more benefits than the latter. A group of Iranian scholars – Zahed Ghaderi, Rokhshad Tavakoli, Fatemeh Bagheri and Saeedeh Pavee – concludes the section on ‘marginalised hosts’ with a study on the role of gender equality in Iranian female tourism entrepreneurs’ success. Their article highlights the multiple constraints that Iranian women in general, and Iranian female entrepreneurs in particular, have to face in starting a tourism business, including legal, sociocultural and psychological disparities. Importantly, their work acknowledges instances in which Iranian women resist – and partially overcome – their marginalised status.

Marginalised guests

‘Marginalised guests’ is the third area of interest constituting this special issue. This section includes six papers discussing the experiences of marginalisation from the perspective of different travelling groups (e.g. people with disabilities, transgender men, senior citizens, terminal patients, and Muslim women) alongside the opportunities for empowerment tourism can offer to marginalised groups. Ana Gomes and Celeste Eusébio open the section with a study on the role of rural tourism in empowering people with visual disabilities. Their work highlights the various strategies employed by people with visual disabilities to overcome the barriers encountered while visiting rural areas, including the use of technology alongside the support from travel companions and residents. Notably, the article provides a set of guidelines to improve rural tourism destinations’ barriers. Likewise, marginalisation is discussed within the frame of disability by Rosliyana Perangin-Angin, Rokhshad Tavakoli and Camelia Kusumo, whose article focuses specifically on wheelchair tourists. Through the lens of critical and exclusion-inclusion theories, their paper presents the experiences of a group of Indonesian wheelchair tourists alongside the barriers behind travelling in a wheelchair. Coauthored by Carlos Monterrubio, Sheilla Rodríguez Madera and Javier Pérez, the following contribution focuses on transgender men in tourism. More specifically, informed by an intersectional stigma perspective, their work explores the tourist experiences of transgender tourists in two Latin American countries. The empirical findings unveil tourism's dual role in providing discriminatory and liberating experiences and spaces. The fourth article of this section, written by Sahil Raj, Brinda Sampat, Abhishek Behl and Kokil Jain, investigates senior tourists’ motivation to use virtual reality for religious tourism purposes. By incorporating multiple behavioural theories, the study emphasises the importance of virtual reality technology in providing enjoyable and immersive experiences to senior tourists despite the barriers of adopting virtual reality technologies. In the following article, Gregory Willson, Alison McIntosh and Cheryl Cockburn-Wootten decode the meaning of tourism by conducting the critical discourse analysis of websites grantingwishes to terminally ill patients. By exploring the nexus between terminal illness and tourism, the authors discuss how the latter may present avenues for both reinforcing marginalisation and providing more inclusive paths to terminally ill patients. Finally, in the last chapter of this area, Sujood, Samiha Siddiqui and Naseem Bano investigate the factors that influence the solo travel intention of Indian Muslim Women. Through a quantitative approach, their work tests various variables affecting Indian Muslim female travellers, including motivation and perceived risk.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Prachi Thakur

Prachi Thakur is a tourism and gender researcher who examines how structural changes can lead to more inclusion of traditionally marginalized groups. She is a two-time TEDx speaker and diversity strategist who co-wrote the regional report for Asia and the Pacific on Gender in Tourism for UNWTO in 2022. She has trained women across multiple organizations to build their way forward through her critical conversation program. Dr. Thakur's primary research interests revolve around diversity training, inclusion, and social sustainability.

Paolo Mura

Paolo Mura is a Professor in the College of Interdisciplinary Studies at Zayed University, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He holds a PhD in Tourism from the University of Otago, New Zealand. His research areas explore tourist experiences and behavior, including gendered experiences and representations in tourism, traveling subcultures, expressions of art in tourism, and critical and qualitative approaches to research. He is the co-editor of a book series entitled Perspectives on Asian Tourism, published by Springer, and one of the managing editors of Tourism Management Perspectives. Paolo enjoys supervising postgraduate students and has supervised to completion 10 PhD students and over 20 master's students.

Jess Sanggeyong Je

Jess Sanggyeong Je is a Ph.D. candidate at Griffith University, Australia's Department of Tourism, Sport and Hotel Management. She is interested in social sustainability, gendered employment issues, and the CSR framework. Recently, her paper was awarded as the Best Hospitality & Society Paper at CAUTHE 2022 conference. For her Ph.D. thesis, she examines the effectiveness of gender equality initiatives in hospitality organizations with a critical realism approach.

Catheryn Khoo

Catheryn Khoo holds a PhD in Marketing and has worked in Malaysia, United States and now Australia. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Florida, Associate Professor at Taylor's University Malaysia, and Associate Professor at Griffith University Australia before taking up the current position as Professor at Torrens University Australia, and to start her own consultancy, FirstClass.co. She is the Editor-in-Chief of Tourism Management Perspectives; and Series Editor for the “Perspectives on Asian Tourism” published by Springer. She is also the founder of Women Academics in Tourism (WAiT); Consultant to the United Nations World Tourism Organization (UNWTO); and Special Advisor to World Women Tourism. Catheryn has published several books and over 100 research articles on hospitality and tourism management. She has appeared in, and been cited by, international media including TV, radio, and newspapers.

Mona Ji Hyun Yang

Mona Ji Hyun Yang is a qualitative researcher and consultant specializing in sustainable and inclusive tourism and empowering marginalized groups. She is passionate about promoting socially vulnerable groups' rights in tourism. Her passion led her to explore tourism impacts on host children in developing countries, using innovative visual research methods, for her doctoral research project. Mona has attended several international conferences as a keynote speaker, panelist and presenter on empowering marginalized groups. She has published several journal articles on marginalized groups in renowned journals.