Touristic security: not a ‘win-win’ global security practice

ABSTRACT

Touristic security – the practice of securing tourists to sustain tourism – has become a highly pertinent and powerful global security practice. Many organisations, governments, industry stakeholders, consultants, and scholars claim touristic security to be a ‘win-win’ security practice supportive of global sustainable development for all. But is this true? This paper interrogates this claim in two steps. First, it sets out an international political sociology inspired approach to theorising security as a global practice shaped by and shaping of the continued coloniality of power, and, second, it uses this approach to select, connect, and analyse diverse critical studies of tourism for the emergence, enactment, and consequences of touristic security in the Global South. Put together, the critical studies of tourism analysed suggest that touristic security is a neoliberal security practice that centres international – often white Western – tourists’ fears and vulnerabilities, and, following, that it is (re)producing the coloniality of inequalities, insecurities, and immobilities. Far from a ‘win-win’ security practice, then, critical studies of tourism imply that touristic security is feeding into an endless process of (in)securitisation that is antithetical to global sustainable development.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism
• security
• coloniality
• development
• mobilities

Introduction

Touristic security – ‘the practice of securing tourists to sustain tourism’¹ – has become a highly pertinent and powerful global security practice, especially in the post-9/11 and COVID-19 contexts. Many organisations, governments, industry stakeholders, consultants, and scholars claim touristic security to be an uncontentious ‘win-win’ security practice by using the following three-part logic: (a) that tourism is a powerful tool of global sustainable development; (b) that there is no tourism without tourists, and because tourists are generally highly risk adverse, personal security for tourists is a fundamental precondition for tourism; and, following, (c) that making the world safe for tourists, and thus for tourism-driven global sustainable development, is an indirect way of making the world richer and safer for all. While this logic is being used to ‘justify’ the spread and enactment of touristic security around the world, there is ample evidence that challenges it. Indeed, even advocates of touristic security, such as the United Nations World Tourism Organisation (UNWTO), admit that: there is ‘a lack of comprehensive data on tourism’s impacts on all three aspects of sustainability’; ‘more knowledge is required to truly appreciate and advance the links between tourism and peace’; and, touristic security strategies can ‘sometimes, undermine the principles and goals of sustainable tourism development’.² Even more damning are ‘critical’³ insights from diverse social scientists who argue that tourism is fundamentally entangled with climate change, environmental destruction, and colonial relations of domination, exploitation, and violence, as well as highlight the nefarious consequences of securing places and people for tourists.⁴ Yet, despite these insights, the ‘win-win’ logic has yet to be directly interrogated.

This paper takes up this task in two steps: first, it sets out an international political sociology (IPS) inspired approach to theorising security as a global practice shaped by and shaping of the continued ‘coloniality of power’,⁵ and, second, it uses this approach to select, connect, and analyse critical studies of tourism for the emergence, enactment, and consequences of touristic security in the Global South. Guillaume and Bilgin define IPS as a ‘pluri-disciplinary’ approach that focuses on practices and engages with the international, political, and sociological simultaneously.⁶ To date, scholars taking IPS approaches to security practices have tended to focus on the securitisation of migration and border security within the Global North. In doing so, they highlight how the geopolitical inequality between the Global North (former colonising countries, ‘the West’) and the Global South (former colonised countries, ‘the Rest’) and the body-political inequality between ‘white Westerners’ and ‘racialised Others’ is shaped by and shaping of border security’s emergence, enactment, and consequences.⁷ In contrast to the considerable attention given to border security, relatively few critical scholars focus directly on touristic security.⁸ Likewise, critical insights into how the continued coloniality of power is related to touristic security’s emergence, enactment, and consequences are highly fragmented across diverse social science studies of tourism.⁹ This paper brings these fragmented insights together, providing a more thorough understanding of how touristic security is entangled with contemporary coloniality.

Methodologically, then, the paper is grounded in a theoretically informed selection and analysis of diverse critical social science studies of tourism. More specifically, following its IPS approach and a normative concern for the coloniality of power, the paper includes and analyses academic literature that provides critical insights into the valorisation, vulnerabilisation, and problematisation processes associated with touristic security’s emergence; how touristic security is enacted as a global practice aimed at making tourists feel safe and keeping them from bodily harm; and, what touristic security’s consequences are in terms of inequalities, insecurities, and immobilities. In particular, relevant insights can be found in three broad sets of critical literature: political economic studies of the global tourism industry; studies of the links between (tourism) mobilities, governance, violence, and risk; and, ethnographic studies of tourism in the Global South. While touristic security is found in all places seeking to be destinations, it is particularly pertinent, challenging, and transformative within the Global South, justifying focusing on this part of the world.¹⁰ Reflecting the author’s geographical expertise, there is a bias towards studies focused on Latin America and the Caribbean. In focusing on this literature and part of the world, this paper does not claim to systematically review all critical studies with relevant insights into touristic security. Following, its findings should not be seen as definitive, but rather as pointing towards highly problematic tendencies that cast serious doubt on the ‘win-win’ logic.

Indeed, put together, the critical literature analysed suggests that touristic security is a neoliberal security practice that centres international – often white Western – tourists’ fears and vulnerabilities, and, following, that it is (re)producing the coloniality of inequalities, insecurities, and immobilities. Far from a ‘win-win’ security practice, then, critical studies of tourism imply that touristic security is feeding into an endless process of ‘(in)securitisation’¹¹ that is antithetical to global sustainable development, as defined by the United Nations 2030 Agenda.¹² In the course of providing the first direct interrogation of the dominant win-win logic ‘justifying’ touristic security, this paper also provides new insights into the wider ‘development-security-mobilities nexus’. Indeed, as most critical scholars of this nexus focus on migration and border security, they have tended to overlook the fact that, just as the Global North is being secured against so-called ‘threatening Others’ from the Global South via border security, the Global South is being secured for privileged ‘white Westerners’ from the Global North via touristic security.¹³ Likewise, by focusing on the securitisation of tourism and the practice of touristic security in the Global South, this paper highlights the importance of critically investigating border security’s under-researched ‘sister’ security practice.

The paper proceeds as follows: first, it outlines the dominant ‘win-win’ logic that underpins the spread and enactment of touristic security; second, it sets out its IPS-inspired approach to theorising the relationship between global security practices and the continued coloniality of power; third, it uses this approach to connect and analyse critical studies of tourism for the emergence, enactment, and consequences of touristic security in the Global South; and, fourth, it concludes with a brief discussion of the need for further critical research into touristic security, especially in the post-COVID-19 context.

Touristic security: the ‘win-win’ logic

Tourism is regularly conceptually reduced to travelling for holidaymaking by laypersons and scholars alike. However, tourism policy and statistics define it as: 'the activities of persons travelling to and staying in places outside their usual environment for not more than one consecutive year for leisure, business and other purposes not related to the exercise of an activity remunerated from within the place visited'.¹⁴ Following, of the 1,460 million international tourist arrivals recorded around the world in 2019, only 55 per cent were categorised as travelling for leisure, recreation, and/or holidays.¹⁵ As this suggests, the object of tourism policy, and thus of touristic security, is not merely holidaymaking. Rather, it is a broader set of highly privileged, non-daily human spatial mobilities characterised by ‘choice, circularity, formalization, and consumption’.¹⁶ Likewise, following Becklake, ‘tourism’ is used here as an umbrella concept to include diverse forms of privileged human spatial mobility, such as, but not limited to: holidaymaking, business and work travel, studying and volunteering abroad, and visiting friends and family.¹⁷

Various international organisations, governments, industry stakeholders, consultants, and scholars regularly argue that tourism is supportive of the economic, environmental, and social dimensions of global sustainable development.¹⁸ For example, the UNWTO claims that tourism can: increase exports and trade; create forward and backward economic linkages; provide jobs and entrepreneurial opportunities; produce economic grounds for the protection of the environment, bio-diversity, and culture; redistribute wealth between rich and poor countries; and, foster tolerance of difference and global citizenship.¹⁹ Emphasising the last point, some organisations and scholars claim tourism to be the ‘global peace industry’ capable of supporting greater human security for all.²⁰ Following these claims, the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for global sustainable development states that it is ‘determined to promote sustainable tourism’,²¹ specifically naming tourism as an important factor in three of its seventeen sustainable development goals (SDGs); the United Nations General Assembly named 2017 the International Year of Sustainable Tourism for Development; and, the UNWTO claims that sustainable tourism can contribute to all seventeen SDGs.²² As this suggests, making tourism more sustainable has taken on significant global policy importance. While this goal is often approached through a reform logic aimed at making tourism’s impacts more economically, environmentally, and socially sustainable, this reformism is implicitly underpinned by a security logic aimed at securing tourism in order to support tourism-driven global sustainable development. In other words, securing tourism is deemed a prerequisite to making tourism’s impacts more sustainable.

The security logic starts from the argument that tourism – as a human spatial mobility practice that underpins the global tourism industry – is vulnerable to harm. As there is no tourism without tourists, the vulnerability of tourism is especially understood as coming from anything or anyone deemed capable of reducing tourists’ ability, need, or desire to travel.²³ While this includes financial and environmental crises, Bianchi notes that ‘[t]ourism analysts have consistently emphasized the fact that tourists are particularly susceptible to perceived security threats related to crime … political instability and violence … health risks (e.g. SARs, HIV/AIDS) and natural disasters’.²⁴ This focus arguably reflects the fact that the majority of tourists tend to be highly risk adverse and, thus, value personal safety and security. Indeed, a survey done by the Association of British Travel Agents found that ‘safety and security were the number one priorities for customers; 89 per cent of tourists chose this issue as important or very important to their holiday choice’.²⁵ While various scholars have shown that some tourists are attracted to danger and risk, even these tourists do not want to come to actual bodily harm.²⁶ Reflecting this, tourism stakeholders often conclude that providing tourists with high levels of personal security – no matter where they are – is a fundamental precondition for tourism-driven global sustainable development. As the UNWTO asserts, ‘[e]nsuring safety and security – for visitors and locals alike – is essential for peaceful societies and a thriving sustainable tourism sector’.²⁷ Following, tourism consultants provide stakeholders with expert advice on how ‘best’ to secure tourists and, thus, tourism.²⁸

Tourism, then, is widely argued to be a key tool of global sustainable development, yet this tool is deemed dependent on the provision of personal security for tourists. Likewise, touristic security – the practice of securing tourists to sustain tourism – is regularly presented as an uncontentious ‘win-win’ security practice, whereby making the world safe for tourists and, thus, for tourism-driven global sustainable development, is deemed an indirect way of making the world richer and safer for all. While this ‘win-win’ logic is being used to ‘justify’ the spread and enactment of touristic security around the world, it has yet to be adequately interrogated.

Theorising security as practice: emergence, enactment, consequences

While critical scholars interested in the ‘development-security-mobilities nexus’ have tended to ignore tourism, tourism scholars rarely adequately engage with theories of security. Taking an IPS-inspired approach, this section develops a framework for theorising how the emergence, enactment, and consequences of touristic security are shaped by/shaping of the continued coloniality of power.

In the vernacular security often refers to a desired state of being (safety from harm) and, thus, insecurity the contrary (fear and risk of harm). While certainly how this is articulated is not universal,²⁹ any account of security should pay attention to its affective desirability and how this supports security practices. Security practices involve producing, sharing, and consuming (in)security knowledge about, and, thus, helping to construct security referent objects (that seen at risk of harm), threats (that seen as capable of harming a security referent object), and risks (the probability that a threat will cause harm to a security referent object), and developing and enacting (in)formal security projects, strategies, and tactics to reduce a security referent object’s risk of coming to harm from a threat. As this suggests, (in)security knowledge helps to co-produce security objects and threats through defining risk relationships, giving rise to security projects that aim to govern and mediate risk relationships.³⁰ While some scholars argue the impossibility of determining the ‘realness’ of threats and risks, and, thus, limit themselves to studying their discursive construction,³¹ others take a critical realist approach, arguing that there are indeed very real dangers in the world, but recognise that all knowledge of them is political, partial, and fallible.³² Those taking the latter approach interrogate dominant (in)security knowledge and try to produce more accurate accounts of lived insecurities, often with the aim of recognising and ameliorating disadvantaged groups’ everyday embodied experiences of fear, vulnerability, and harm. This paper falls into the latter critical realist camp.

To understand the emergence of security practices, Bigo points to the importance of paying attention to (non-)discursive elements, political/ethical judgements, and competitive claims over ‘what is security, what is insecurity, and what is fate’.³³ Expanding on this, this paper argues the importance of paying attention to intertangled and contested material/symbolic processes of valorisation, vulnerabilisation, and problematisation. While security referent objects can be many, they are always deemed worthy of protection (i.e. valorised) and facing risk of harm from a threat (i.e. vulnerabilised). In other words, if an object is valued, but not deemed to be vulnerable, or, an object is vulnerable, but not deemed to be valuable, it is unlikely to become a security referent object giving rise to security projects. In reverse, threats are identified and made relevant as such through their real and/or perceived ability to cause harm to a socially designed ‘valuable-vulnerable’ security referent object and the problematisation of the risk they pose. Indeed, some very real threats/risks may be ignored, normalised, and/or tolerated and, thus, do not give rise to security projects.³⁴ Numerous critical scholars highlight the valorisation of the activities and actors of neoliberal global capitalism, but also their (self-)vulnerabilisation through the inequalities, poverty, and environmental destruction they (re)produce.³⁵ As anything deemed threatening to neoliberal economic growth is deemed a ‘problem’ for dominant classes, this has given rise to the securitisation of ‘free’ markets, or security projects designed to protect the actors and activities of neoliberal global capitalism.

Especially within international relations (IR), the enactment of security practices has been associated with the state and, more recently, with private businesses.³⁶ Nevertheless, anthropologists, geographers, and sociologists have long shown how various actors engage in diverse (in)formal security practices in their everyday lives.³⁷ Important, then, is how security practices may be understood and enacted differently by diverse actors in distinct geo-social spaces, as Bigo shows in the case of border security.³⁸ While the enactment of security practices is always shaped by local context, scholars have also highlighted the emergence of global security practices, or those that can be found in most places around the world (albeit in localised form). Indeed, today it is possible to find the same (in)security logics, norms, strategies, and equipment in many places around the world.³⁹ This is linked to intensified international mobilities. On the one hand, while many economies and lifestyles have become dependent on international mobilities, on the other hand, international mobilities have deterritorialised and/or created new actual/perceived threats/risks to states and their populations.⁴⁰ Consequently, along with the spread of security practices, there has also been an increase in security practices focused on identifying and sorting ‘good’ from ‘bad’ international mobilities, finding ways to facilitate the former and hinder the latter.⁴¹ As Abrahamsen and Williams argue, this has led to the rise of complex ‘global security assemblages’ that see public and private security actors work together to facilitate the ‘safe’ movement of ‘good’ (i.e. neoliberal) mobilities within and across different spaces/places.⁴²

Critical scholars debate the consequences of security practices. While some point to security practices as potential sources of emancipation from lives of severe vulnerability,⁴³ others argue that they (re)produce fears, vulnerabilities, and exclusions, and give rise to new spaces and modes of oppressive governance.⁴⁴ Following the later perspective, Bigo argues that security should be ‘analysed as a process of ‘(in)securitization’, whereby security practices are justified by their claimed ability to create reassurance, protection, and certainty, but actually generate ‘unease, uncertainty, and new struggles’; likewise, ‘[in]security and security may grow simultaneously’.⁴⁵ Yet, like all social practices, security practices can take different forms. Indeed, there are at least two logics that can underpin security practices: a transformative or a defensive logic. While a transformative logic encourages strategies to change the wider conditions which gave rise to threat/risk relations in the first place, a defensive logic encourages strategies to defend ‘the threatened’ from ‘the threatening’. As opposed to assuming a priori that all security practices follow a defensive logic and have nefarious consequences, it is important to examine different security practices, paying attention to who is the securitising actor, what knowledge they are drawing upon and producing, and what their wider consequences are.⁴⁶ Adding to this is the need for an analysis of the ‘politics of protection’⁴⁷ along the lines of valorisation, vulnerabilisation, and problematisation, which are highly shaped by the continued ‘coloniality of power’.⁴⁸

Decoloniality scholars argue that there is an enduring colonial matrix of material, symbolic, and epistemic power that continues to shape ‘all dimensions of social existence’.⁴⁹ As Mignolo and Tlostanova explain, this ‘matrix of power’ was established via four interdependent European imperial practices – capitalist exploitation, colonial territorial rule, the imposition of Christianity, and the control of knowledge – which were all ‘justified’ by racism.⁵⁰ This continued ‘coloniality of power’⁵¹ is especially evident in two key enduring axes of inequality: the geopolitical inequality between the Global North (former colonising countries, ‘the West’) and the Global South (former colonised countries, ‘the Rest’) and the body-political inequality between ‘white Westerners’ and ‘racialised Others’.⁵² Reflecting these inequalities, critical scholars highlight that white Western subjects are regularly deemed ‘valuable-vulnerable’ security referent objects and, following, anything/anyone deemed capable of producing white Western fears or vulnerabilities are problematised as ‘threats’.⁵³ As the white gaze often conceptualises ‘racialised Others’ as potential threats,⁵⁴ those who fit this subject position may come to sit at ‘the sharp end’⁵⁵ of defensive white security projects, which, in turn, (re)produce fear in and create vulnerabilities for those deemed ‘threatening’ to white subjects,⁵⁶ creating a self-sustaining system of neo-colonial (in)security.

The colonial politics of protection also shapes the ‘politics of (im)mobilities’.⁵⁷ Indeed, critical scholars demonstrate how constructing and sorting ‘good’ from ‘bad’ international human spatial mobilities is deeply informed by the geo-political inequalities between the Global North and the Global South and discriminatory stereotypes that deem ‘racialised Others’ as potential threats to Western societies and subjects.⁵⁸ Focusing primarily on those human spatial mobilities deemed ‘bad’ (i.e. irregular migration, asylum seeking, trafficking), these scholars interrogate security practices employed to hinder/stem the human spatial mobilities of (often poor) ‘racialised Others’. Duffield, for example, explains that the Global North aims to protect itself through a geopolitical policy of containment and a biopolitical policy of development. While the policy of containment aims to keep so-called ‘threatening Others’ from the Global South out of the Global North via border security, the policy of development aims to lessen the flow of ‘threatening Others’ seeking opportunity and/or refuge in the Global North via socio-economic ‘help’.⁵⁹ Yet, by largely ignoring human spatial mobilities deemed ‘good’, such as tourism, Duffield (and many others) overlooks three important points: first, that securing the ‘good life’ in the Global North requires keeping Westerners moving as tourists; second, that tourism has become the tool of economic development within many countries in the Global South; and, finally, third, the previous two points beget and depend on touristic security. Full understanding of the contemporary coloniality of protection and (im)mobilities, then, necessitates also focusing on touristic security.

Interrogating touristic security: not a ‘win-win’ security practice

Drawing upon the above theoretical framework, this section analyses critical studies of tourism for how the continued coloniality of power shapes and is shaped by the emergence, enactment, and consequences of touristic security in the Global South.

Emergence: neoliberal valorisation, vulnerabilisation, and problematisation

Touristic security is not new. Indeed, personal security was deemed essential for European tourists visiting the colonies in the nineteenth century.⁶⁰ However, it has become an increasingly pertinent and powerful global security practice, especially in the post-9/11 context. As a result, many scholars point to terrorism’s role in the contemporary ‘securitization of tourism’.⁶¹ This paper takes a different approach. Indeed, as many critical political economic studies of the global tourism industry highlight, neoliberalism has played a central role in the valorisation, vulnerabilisation, and problematisation underpinning touristic security’s contemporary emergence.

According to Harvey, global neoliberalisation – or the spread of ‘free’ market logics, policies, and practices around the world via consent and coercion – is best understood as a ‘project’ aimed at restoring the material dominance of capitalist classes in the Global North.⁶² It aims, in other words, to reinforce the continued coloniality of material power. Neoliberalisation reconceptualised national economic development as ‘successful participation in the world economy’ with the ‘slogan’ of the day being: ‘Find your niche in the global marketplace’.⁶³ In order to develop, states were/are encouraged to find their comparative or build competitive advantages. In the Global South, this has led to increased emphasis placed on agriculture, manufacturing, mining, and tourism.⁶⁴ Indeed, as the Global South is widely argued to have a ‘competitive advantage in terms of selling sun, sea, sand and sex’,⁶⁵ tourism is often seen as its only ‘realistic development path’.⁶⁶ Following, tourism-led economic growth has increasingly been pursued by international organisations, governments, investors, donors, and non-governmental development organisations,⁶⁷ helping turn tourism into one of the largest industries in the world.⁶⁸ Especially in the Global South, many economies and livelihoods have become economically dependent on tourism⁶⁹ and, following, there is fierce competition for international tourists.

While neoliberalisation encouraged the proliferation of touristic development, tourism is also central to the function, spread, and sustainability of global neoliberal capitalism.⁷⁰ For a global ‘free’ market to function there must be circulation, not only of capital, goods, and services, but also of business personnel and consumers. The global tourism industry, then, provides much of the architecture for the ‘good circulation’ that permits ‘liberal economic life’.⁷¹ Furthermore, as Fletcher argues, through tourism’s ability to turn practically anything into an experiential commodity; through creating service worker jobs; and, through encouraging the consumption of nature in situ, tourism is able to temporarily ‘fix’ some of capitalism’s central contradictions, helping to sustain it.⁷² Since the 1990s the global tourism industry has itself progressively been neoliberalised,⁷³ helping spread neoliberal logics and practices around the world. The ubiquity of neoliberal logics, which conceptualises and constructs individuals as ‘free’ market consumers, has also fed into popular arguments that tourism is a human right in need of protection.⁷⁴ These discourses support upper- and middle-class subjects’ lifestyles and identities.⁷⁵ A threat to tourism, then, is deemed a problem for neoliberal global capitalism and the economies, livelihoods, lifestyles, and identities that have come to depend on it.

While neoliberalisation has played a central role in the valorisation of tourism, it has also played a role in its vulnerabilisation through generating ‘touristic threats’, defined as anything and anyone deemed capable of reducing tourists’ ability, need, or desire to travel. As many have argued, neoliberalisation has increased inequalities, poverty, and precarity, as well as environmental destruction, social unrest, violence, and crime.⁷⁶ In so far as these changes increase potential and actual tourists’ fear or risk of harm, they can be argued to generate touristic threats.⁷⁷ The neoliberalisation of tourism development has also been linked to ‘overtourism’,⁷⁸ which has spurred contempt, inhospitality, protest, and backlash against tourism and tourists in some locales. Beyond this, some scholars argue that terrorists target international tourists as a surefire way to make the global news and damage government and elite interests linked to tourism-led export-oriented development, but also as proxies for Western culture and imperialism, expressed and spread through neoliberal global capitalism.⁷⁹ Especially because so many economies have come to depend on tourism, touristic threats have been highly problematised by tourism stakeholders, leading to calls for touristic security. For example, the International Association of Tourism Safety and Security states that: ‘the importance of tourism dollars driving local and global economies has heightened the focus on designing, creating, and maintaining safe environments for all tourists’.⁸⁰

While in principle ‘touristic security aims to secure all tourists’, in practice ‘not all tourists are deemed equally valuable or vulnerable’ to harm.⁸¹ Most tourists do not cross international borders.⁸² Despite the numerical dominance of domestic tourists, international tourists are particularly valued for export-oriented development, their spending power, and their ability to signal that places are safe for travel and, thus, for foreign investment.⁸³ Not everyone can be a tourist, let alone an international tourist. At the very least, access to international tourism requires economic resources, passport power, and security clearance, which is highly structured by the continued coloniality of power.⁸⁴ Even though domestic and regional international tourism numerically dominate, Cohen and Cohen note that many postcolonial states still prioritise international long-haul tourism in their development policies and plans.⁸⁵ While an increasing number of international long-haul tourists are now originating in newly powerful economies, especially in Asia, only a small segment of the Asian population has access to international tourism and those who do tend to travel regionally or to the ‘prestigious’ West.⁸⁶ Consequently, in the Global South, international long-haul tourists still tend to be from the Global North.

While international – often Western – tourists are deemed highly economically and symbolically valuable in the Global South, Becklake notes that tourism scholars regularly argue that they are also particularly vulnerable to harm due to a lack of contextual knowledge, social visibility, and disembeddedness; being off-guard and engaging in risky practices; and, being associated with the West and their relative wealth to local people.⁸⁷ Touristic security, then, is founded on a hierarchy of victims and protection with international (often Western) tourists deemed the most valuable and vulnerable of potential victims and, thus, ‘deserving’ of protection. While this logic feeds a moral (instead of economic) argument for privileging international tourists’ protection, it is, as Becklake asserts, highly debatable.⁸⁸ Indeed, Bianchi argues that ‘the vast majority of tourists remain unharmed [even] in areas of conflict and violence’.⁸⁹ Rather than hyper-vulnerability, then, touristic security focuses on international tourists as mobile consumers and proxies for tourism-supported neoliberal global capitalism and export-oriented economic growth. In doing so, it splits the tourist-subject: while value is found in its economic support for tourism, threat is found in its human concern for personal security. Likewise, while touristic security certainly appeals to tourists as humans, it does so in its aim to secure the economies dependent on their commodified movement. Touristic security, then, is a form of consumer protection, whereby tourists’ personal security is tied to their ability to be mobile consumers, which is conveniently connected to their human security rights.

Enactment: centring international – white Western – tourists

Tourism stakeholders do not want international tourists to come to harm and, thus, damage the tourism industry upon which they economically depend. Following, they work hard to make international tourists feel safe and keep them from bodily harm.⁹⁰ Like other contemporary security practices, this is guided by ‘pre-emptive’⁹¹ and ‘precautionary’⁹² logics. While touristic security is enacted as part of the spectacular securitisation of mega-events, such as the World Cup and Olympics,⁹³ it is also an everyday practice involving a diversity of tourism stakeholders, including: international organisations, governments, businesses, non-profit development organisations, communities, and individuals. Becklake argues that tourism stakeholders come to form defensive ‘touristic security projects’, of which there are two key types: a global cooperative project, which aims to make ‘the world’ safe for tourists/tourism, and competitive destination projects, which compete for tourists by offering higher levels of personal security.⁹⁴ The everyday enactment of touristic security highlights complex collaboration and crossover between public and private security actors⁹⁵ around the world, pointing to the emergence of a global touristic security assemblage akin to those identified and studied by Abrahamsen and Williams.⁹⁶

Within the tourism-dependent Global South, the everyday enactment of touristic security is an integral part of global tourism competition. Global tourism competition entails ‘tourism reflexivity’,⁹⁷ or learning to see and, thus, know one’s place and people through target markets’ tourist gazes and embodied experiences of space/place. It is through these gazes and experiences that destination stakeholders ‘discover’ their touristic competitive (dis)advantages, which informs how places and peoples are represented, restructured, and governed as desirable and safe ‘tourism destinations’ and ‘touristic figures’.⁹⁸ It really matters, then, who can be an international tourist and how they see and experience the world. As noted above, in the Global South, global tourism competition tends to focus on Western international tourism. While Western international tourists are certainly not always white, inequalities within the Global North combine with discriminatory security practices⁹⁹ in ways that work to maintain the whiteness of Western international tourism. Not all white Westerners see and/or experience the Global South in the same way. Nevertheless, reflecting wider (post-)colonial discourses of the ‘threatening Other’,¹⁰⁰ distinctions of the familiar/strange,¹⁰¹ uneven global distributions of poverty, violence, and crime,¹⁰² and uncomfortable embodied experiences of being the racial minority,¹⁰³ critical studies of tourism suggest that Westerners often imagine and sometimes experience the Global South as particularly risky for travel. Indeed, Carter highlights a global geography of touristic (in)security in the Western tourist imagination which puts the Global South at a touristic security competitive disadvantage.¹⁰⁴

As part of global tourism competition, then, tourism stakeholders draw upon dominant white Western ways of seeing/experiencing the Global South, which, in turn, shapes their enactment of touristic security.¹⁰⁵ Becklake argues that this is also highly gendered, with especially female, white Westerners imagined to be the most ‘touristically threatened’, while male, racialised and/or ethnic ‘Others’ are regularly imagined as the most ‘touristically threatening’.¹⁰⁶ These imaginaries shape diverse touristic security strategies, which Becklake heuristically categorises as: ‘touristic assuring’, ‘touristic disciplining’, ‘touristic bubbling’, and ‘touristic webbing’.¹⁰⁷ Focusing on these different strategies highlights the many registers and tactics used to keep international – white Western – tourists touring, as well as how they may overlap and, in some cases, work at cross-purposes. In fact, while the presence of ‘hard’ forms of security (e.g. military, police) can help make tourists feel safe, it can also do the opposite; likewise, a balance is often sought between spectacular and inconspicuous forms of touristic security.¹⁰⁸ Attention is now turned to these strategies and some of the tactics used to make white Western tourists feel safe enough to visit and keep them from actual bodily harm as they visit the Global South.

Touristic assuring aims to give tourists the trust and confidence that they have nothing to fear and often employs marketing and censoring tactics. Likewise, critical studies of tourism highlight how destination marketing employs discursive strategies to challenge Western imaginaries of the ‘risky’ Global South in an effort to make places appear ‘familiar’, ‘hospitable’, and ‘safe’ for consumption. This includes, for example, using representations that emphasise past Western control over Othered places/people¹⁰⁹; highlighting the contemporary ‘whiteness’ of countries¹¹⁰; focusing on women and children as the ‘non-threatening face of Otherness’; and, using images of ‘vulnerable’ white Western women visiting the Global South to help enact the gendered security logic: ‘If they can safely travel there, than so can I’.¹¹¹ Conversely, censoring tactics focus on controlling the spread of potentially touristically damaging information, narratives, and images.¹¹² For example, tourism stakeholders lobby key markets in the Global North to change their travel advisories¹¹³; petition their citizens to avoid speaking badly of their countries so as not to ruin the national tourism image; local news media may refrain from publishing stories that could damage the tourism industry¹¹⁴; and, histories of violence may be ‘sanitised’.¹¹⁵ While censoring tactics may struggle to be effective with the rise of social media, tourism stakeholders are now using online influencers from their target markets in order to spread ‘good’ destination stories. Alternatively, some tourism stakeholders strategically market war, violence, crime, and poverty to tourists looking for ‘adventure’, ‘risk’, and/or ‘purposeful travel’, while simultaneously assuring tourists of their personal security.¹¹⁶

Touristic disciplining aims to create touristically supportive relations and embodiments of place, whether through disciplining local people to be hospitable to tourists or disciplining tourists to adopt performances appropriate to the contexts they visit. In regards to the former, this entails both pedagogical and coercive tactics. In support of creating docile ‘hospitable Others’, Tourism Awareness Programmes work to sensitise citizens to the national value of tourism, as well as teach them how to behave ‘properly’ towards international tourists.¹¹⁷ In the Caribbean, such programmes include, for example, national media campaigns asking the public to help create a kind, friendly, clean, and safe environment for tourists; training service workers on tourists’ needs and expectations and how ‘best’ to meet them; introducing tourism education into the national curriculum; and, providing tourism awareness and service training to immigration and police officers.¹¹⁸ Those who engage with international tourists in the ‘wrong way’–that is, by (un)wittingly making them feel uncomfortable, unwelcomed, or fearful, or by causing them material or bodily harm – often find themselves targets of public and private security forces. Indeed, to threaten international tourists is to threaten national economic security, and, thus, to become an internal enemy of the state.¹¹⁹ Likewise, in the name of tourism-driven economic development in the Global South, postcolonial states have used martial law, deployed the military, developed tourism-specific police forces and laws, and created special and sped-up procedures of justice for international tourists.¹²⁰

Touristic bubbling strategies aim to make spaces and places safe for tourists. The most well-known example of this is the construction of private, sanitised, and fortified tourist enclave resorts, which often represent ‘safe destinations’ for Westerners going to the Global South.¹²¹ Beyond enclave resorts, the touristic bubbling of city centres, parks, heritage sites, and transportation hubs, systems, and routes relies upon profiling, screening, and sorting tactics, as well as aestheticisation, gentrification, privatisation, criminalisation, militarisation, and/or fortification.¹²² While touristic bubbling focuses on making spaces/places safe for tourists, touristic webbing focuses on securing tourists on the move between bubbles and within ‘risky’ spaces/places and often includes surveillance, tracking, chaperoning, and pacification tactics, the latter of which overlaps with touristic disciplining. Indeed, private security companies provide international tourists going to ‘risky’ destinations with real-time security information, advice, and assistance via security apps that track their movements.¹²³ Within the Global South, international tourists may be provided with military- or police-convoys, private body guards, or local community guides that broker ‘safe’ access in ‘risky’ places and communities.¹²⁴ These tactics are especially used when international tourists leave ‘inauthentic’ tourism bubbles in search of ‘real’ experiences of the Global South, effectively bringing the logics, strategies, and consequences of touristic security with them. Finally, insurance companies offer international tourists reassurance that if something does go wrong they will – at least – be compensated.

Consequences: (re)producing inequalities, insecurities, and immobilities

The fact that many tourism stakeholders in the Global South aim to provide white Western tourists with high levels of personal security speaks to both Ong’s work on neoliberal mutations in citizenship¹²⁵ and Boatcă’s work on the continued coloniality of citizenship.¹²⁶ As Ong argues, individuals who support and embody neoliberal global capitalism ‘are highly valued and can exercise citizenship-like claims in diverse locations’, while those who do not ‘become devalued and thus vulnerable to exclusionary practices’.¹²⁷ As shown above, the contemporary economic importance of tourism is lending the privileged few a form of flexible global citizenship, whereby they can expect and receive high levels of personal security practically anywhere in the world. Indeed, international tourists’ security may be prioritised over citizens’ security,¹²⁸ as especially seen in times of disaster.¹²⁹ As this suggests, the continued coloniality of citizenship is not only enacted via the exclusionary logic of de jure national citizenship, as found by Boatcă in the Global North,¹³⁰ but also by the highly exclusive inclusionary logic of de facto neoliberal global citizenship, as seen via the enactment of touristic security in the Global South. While this reflects the continued coloniality of power, touristic security is also (re)producing geo- and body-political inequalities, insecurities, and immobilities.

Abrahamsen and Williams argue that ‘globetrotting travellers [often] expect First World security as they explore newly “discovered” destinations’ in the Global South.¹³¹ As small- and medium-sized local tourism businesses often cannot meet ‘First World’ standards,¹³² they struggle to compete. This reinforces the Western dominance of the global tourism industry. Indeed, the global tourism and security industries are both dominated by transnational corporations headquartered in the Global North, where the profits and well-paid jobs generated by them disproportionally accrue.¹³³ Through keeping international – often white Western – tourists touring and creating a booming market for Western security technologies and services, touristic security supports these industries and the flow of economic capital to the Global North. Furthermore, through helping facilitate Western tourists to travel the world, touristic security enables their collection of ever greater economic, cultural, and symbolic capitals, which can then be used in increasingly competitive global education and labour markets, supporting the (re)production of privilege. Indeed, for white Westerners, travel to the ‘risky’ Global South can increase their social prestige and economic power. While the former is linked to the collection of cultural capital and the high symbolic value given to whiteness in some places in the Global South, the latter is linked to differences in exchange rates, the cost of living, and new business and employment opportunities, often in the tourism industry.¹³⁴ Conversely, touristic security strategies often support ‘racialised dispossession’,¹³⁵ whereby indigenous peoples are dispossessed of their material and cultural resources and, following, are then forced to perform ‘Otherness’ for international – often white Western – tourists as an economic survival strategy.¹³⁶

Touristic security also creates insecurities for ‘Others’ within the Global South.¹³⁷ As noted above, creating ‘safe’ destination images often entails the (re)production of (post-)colonial discourses through tourism marketing. Critical scholars argue that these discourses can strengthen Western feelings of superiority, encourage the demeaning and/or violent treatment of Others, and help ‘justify’ continual Western intervention in domestic politics.¹³⁸ Often highly gendered, critical scholars connect these discourses to demand for touristic encounters with women and children, exposing them to dubious (volunteer tourism), exploitative (child labour), and/or violent (child sexual exploitation and prostitution) practices.¹³⁹ This is often combined with a certain level of tacit permissiveness that allows international tourists to engage in illegal and/or violent practices,¹⁴⁰ which, for some, becomes a key reason to travel to the Global South. Alternatively, censoring tactics can reduce the accuracy of security information and hinder efforts to protect local people from threats/risks, as seen in the case of HIV in the Dominican Republic.¹⁴¹ In regards to touristic disciplining, pedagogical tactics have been so successful in some places that local people monitor one another for whether they are engaging with international tourists in the ‘right’ way, chastising and excluding those who do not.¹⁴² Conversely, anyone deemed to make international tourists feel uncomfortable or threatened face coercive tactics from both public and private security actors. Coercive tactics often make the everyday lives of citizens less secure, as they are exposed to greater criminalisation, penalisation, militarisation, and, in some cases, even termination.¹⁴³

Touristic bubbling strategies not only (re)produce insecurities, but also (im)mobilities. Critical studies show how the construction of different kinds of tourism bubbles (often violently) appropriates and privatises once public spaces/places in the Global South; alienates, expels, and/or excludes local people, unless employed within them as (often underpaid and highly disciplined) service workers; destroys nature and contaminates the environment; creates distance between tourists and locals, effectively silencing locals’ perspectives and experiences; (re)produces an affective touristic geography of safe/unsafe places; and, following, encourages international tourists (and their dollars/Euros) to cluster in exclusive ‘white spaces’ in the Global South.¹⁴⁴ As a result, not only do many locals scarcely benefit from tourism-led economic development, they are also dispossessed of their rights to occupy and use their lands, resources, and cities. This can encourage migration to urban centres or abroad.¹⁴⁵ Indeed, increasingly denied rights and security in their own countries, marginalised citizens of the Global South may seek to become residents of the Global North, often through perilous migration routes or stigmatised marriage markets,¹⁴⁶ the latter of which is facilitated by Western international tourism to the Global South.¹⁴⁷

While touristic security may encourage migration from the Global South to the Global North, it also works to hinder it. Touristic and border security are simultaneously enacted through the discriminatory social sorting of ‘desirable/safe’ and ‘un-desirable/risky’international human spatial mobilities.¹⁴⁸ As those deemed ‘genuine’ international tourists exercise their ‘right’ to move freely, they give up a lot of data¹⁴⁹; this data helps create ‘normal’ travel profiles and rhythms, which feed into screening tactics and technologies.¹⁵⁰ International tourists who travel often are also asked to ‘invest’ in fast-track schemes that render them ‘safe travellers’¹⁵¹; this allows increased suspicion to be turned to those who abstain from and/or are refused entrance into such schemes. Likewise, securing and facilitating the speedy mobility of the privileged few, has been accompanied with increased suspicion, interrogation, and deceleration of ‘Others’, who are, in turn, increasingly immobilised and/or forced into highly dangerous forms of travel.¹⁵² Finally, through the use of new mobile technologies, touristic webbing strategies are feeding into a wider ‘surveillant assemblage’, which as Haggerty and Ericson argue, observes, tracks, records, monitors, and commodifies all human spatial mobilities.¹⁵³ Consequently, tourists are highly known, commodified, and governed subjects.¹⁵⁴ The inner functioning of these assemblages remains opaque and beyond public scrutiny, and, as some scholars argue, they facilitate ever greater discriminatory social sorting, affecting peoples’ life chances,¹⁵⁵ as well as undermine privacy, which is essential for ‘the exercise of individual freedom’, ‘democracy and good governance’.¹⁵⁶

With so much security focused on them, international – often white Western – tourists may come to feel, and indeed be, relatively immune to many threats/risks in the Global South.¹⁵⁷ While the globally privileged minority may enjoy their expanding worlds of security, touristic security also (re)produces many of the conditions that give rise to their risk imaginaries and, thus, fears. Furthermore, despite all efforts, ‘bad things’ can and still do happen to international tourists.¹⁵⁸ Such fears and experiences of vulnerability/harm provide continual ‘justification’ to deepen and strengthen touristic security, with little reflection on how this security practice is itself generative of fears, vulnerabilities, and harms. As such, touristic security is feeding into an endless process of ‘(in)securitisation’¹⁵⁹ and, thus, helping to produce a self-sustaining global system of neocolonial (in)security antithetical to ‘global sustainable development’.¹⁶⁰ The unjustness of this is, of course, not lost on citizens of the Global South.¹⁶¹ In demanding that their security be taken into consideration, locals engage in protests against tourism and, sometimes, tourists.¹⁶² Yet, with many economies and livelihoods dependent on international tourism, local people may also welcome touristic security; indeed, for some, providing international tourists with personal security is seen as an indirect way of assuring their economic security. But not everyone benefits from tourism and certainly not to the same degree, while touristic security is producing nefarious consequences for many of the places and peoples being made ‘touristically safe’.

Conclusion

To date, studies of touristic security have tended to be done by tourism policymakers and tourism studies scholars, many of whom (re)produce and/or endorse the dominant ‘win-win’ logic. In an effort to systematically interrogate this logic, this paper has developed a theoretical framework to conceptualise how global security practices are shaped by and shaping of the continued coloniality of power and used this framework to select, connect, and analyse fragmented critical insights into touristic security’s emergence, enactment, and consequences in the Global South. While the paper’s findings are based on a non-exhaustive analysis of critical studies of tourism, they point towards numerous highly problematic tendencies that cast major doubt on the ‘win-win’ logic. Indeed, according to the analysis provided here, touristic security is (re)producing the coloniality of inequalities, insecurities, and immobilities. Seen alongside critical studies of border security in the Global North, touristic security appears to be its largely overlooked ‘sister’ security practice. In other words, these two practices are arguably working together to govern, protect, and extend (white) Western spaces of security around the world.

In bringing fragmented critical insights on touristic security together, this paper has identified at least five areas in need for further research. First, as much of the critical literature focuses on white Western international tourists, more research is needed into how touristic security is being enacted to protect other categories of tourists and with what experiences and consequences. Indeed, as noted above, not all international tourists are white or Western, and tourism stakeholders also aim to protect middle-class and elite citizens of the Global South.¹⁶³ Second, following the insights of Bigo,¹⁶⁴ more research is needed into how touristic security is being enacted by different actors in different locations, including in the Global North, and how it is being negotiated and resisted by citizens. Third, the numerous concepts identified and/or developed in this paper, including touristic security projects, global touristic security assemblages, and touristic assuring, bubbling, disciplining, and webbing, would all benefit from further theorisation and empirical investigation. Fourth, greater understanding is required into the entanglement of touristic security and border security as everyday practices and global assemblages. And, finally, fifth, research is needed into how the COVID-19 global pandemic has affected touristic security.

Up until the COVID-19 global pandemic, touristic security was highly successful in its own terms. Indeed, despite ‘touristic threats’, the number of international tourist arrivals around the world showed continual growth.¹⁶⁵ The global pandemic increased debate surrounding tourism’s relationship to development and security, giving new credence to the argument that tourism (and tourists) can also be threats, while many of the measures used to stem the spread of the virus also undermined the conditions needed for tourism’s function. While this context inspired some to think outside of the ‘touristic development box’, for many others it only served to emphasise the economic importance of tourism, leading to new efforts to restart tourism as quickly and safely as possible.¹⁶⁶ Accordingly, this gave rise to renewed efforts to secure tourism-driven global sustainable development, as seen via calls for political and economic support for the tourism industry and the integration of bio-security measures into touristic security strategies. As this suggests, the global pandemic has raised touristic security’s policy importance, while simultaneously transforming it. While only time will tell what these transformations mean in full, given the pandemic’s already known detrimental effects on inequalities, insecurities, and immobilities,¹⁶⁷ there is good reason to believe that this paper’s critique of touristic security will only become more acute in the future. Now, then, is the time for more critical research into touristic security, its emerging forms and ramifications, and what could (and undoubtedly should) replace it.

Acknowledgement

This paper has taken years to come to fruition. In that time, previous draft iterations have been presented at numerous conferences and benefited from many scholars’ critical constructive readings, including the anonymous reviewers for this journal. I would especially like to acknowledge Elisa Wynne-Hughes for her invaluable support with this project, as well as Debbie Lisle, Mathias Bös, Deborah Sielert, and Xaroula Kerasidou for reading and/or commenting on past drafts and/or presentations of this paper. All errors are, of course, mine alone.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This paper stems from a one year Economic and Social Research Council Global Challenges Research Fund Post-Doctoral Fellowship [ES/P009840/1]. The ESRC did not inform the contents of the paper in any way.

Notes on contributors

Sarah Becklake

Sarah Becklake is a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Institute for Sociology at Leibniz University Hannover. Her research interests include human spatial (im)mobilities, (in)security, global political economy, and coloniality. She received her PhD in Sociology from the University of Lancaster.

Notes

1. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security, 207

2. UN World Tourism Organization, Tourism for Development, 15, 92, 97.

3. Following Cox, ‘critical’ is understood to mean questioning the taken for granted; paying attention to relations of power and inequality; and, exploring possibilities for positive transformative change.

4. See this paper’s extensive bibliography.

5. Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’.

6. Guillaume and Bilgin, Introduction.

7. See, e.g.: Bigo, ‘The (In)Securitization Practices of the Three Universes of EU Border Control’; Duffield, ‘The Liberal Way of Development and the Development-Security Impasse’; Huysmans, ‘The European Union and the Securitization of Migration’; and Vaughan-Williams, ‘The UK Border Security Continuum’.

8. Exceptions include, for example: Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security.

9. This includes studies from within the disciplines of anthropology, human geography, international relations, sociology, and tourism studies.

10. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security.

11. Bigo, International Political Sociology.

12. UN, Transforming Our World.

13. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security.

14. As found in the OECD’s online glossary of statistical terms: https://stats.oecd.org/glossary/detail.asp?ID=2725 [Accessed 1 February 2021].

15. The other 45 per cent were categorised as: visiting friends and relatives, health, religion, and other (28 per cent); business and professional (11 per cent); and, not specified (6 per cent). United Nations World Tourism Organization, International Tourism Highlights, 9.

16. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security, 209

17. Ibid.

18. See, for example: Crotti and Misrahi, The Travel & Tourism Competitiveness Report 2017. World Bank, Tourism for Development.

19. UN World Tourism Organization, Tourism for Development.

20. See, for example: D’Amore, ‘Peace through Tourism: The Birthing of a New Socio-Economic Order’. World Travel & Tourism Council, Tourism as a Driver of Peace.

21. UN, Transforming Our World, 13.

22. UN World Tourism Organization, Tourism for Development.

23. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security.

24. Bianchi, ‘Tourism and the Globalisation of Fear’, 69.

25. Association of British Travel Agents, ABTA Volunteer Tourism Guidelines.

26. Fletcher, ‘The Emperor’s New Adventure’; Fletcher, ‘The Only Risk is Wanting to Stay’; Freire-Medeiros, Touring Poverty, Lisle, ‘Consuming Danger’; The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing, Holidays in the Danger Zone; and Marijnen, ‘Eco-war Tourism’.

27. UN World Tourism Organization, Tourism for Development, 97.

28. See, e.g.: Tarlow, Tourism Security.

29. Luckham and Kirk, ‘Understanding Security in the Vernacular in Hybrid Political’.

30. Beck, World Risk Society; and Lupton, Risk.

31. Buzan et al., Security. A New Framework for Analysis.

32. Lupton, Risk.

33. Bigo, International Political Sociology, 124.

34. Beck, World Risk Society.

35. See, e.g.: Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State; and Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (expanded edition).

36. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State; and Fierke, Critical Approaches to International Security.

37. Beck, World Risk Society; Goldstein, ‘Toward a Critical Anthropology of Security’; Lupton, Risk; Pain and Smith, Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life; and Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (expanded edition).

38. Bigo, ‘The (In)Securitization Practices of the Three Universes of EU Border Control’.

39. Adey, ‘Vertical Security in the Megacity’; Cornelissen, ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting’; Kloppenburg, ‘Mapping the Contours of Mobilities Regimes: Air Travel and Drug Smuggling Between the Caribbean and the Netherlands’; Müller, ‘Punitive Entanglements’; and Wacquant, ‘The Penalisation of Poverty and the Rise of Neo-Liberalism’.

40. Beck, World Risk Society; and Pain and Smith, Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life.

41. See, for example: Adey, ‘If Mobility is Everything Then it is Nothing’; Cresswell, ‘Towards a Politics of Mobility’; and Kloppenburg, ‘Mapping the Contours of Mobilities Regimes’.

42. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State.

43. Booth, ‘Security and Emancipation’; and Nunes, ‘Reclaiming the Political’.

44. Balzacq et al., Security Practices; Bigo, International Political Sociology; and Buzan et al., Security. A New Framework for Analysis.

45. Bigo, International Political Sociology, 124–126.

46. Luckham and Kirk, ‘Understanding Security in the Vernacular in Hybrid Political Contexts’.

47. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State.

48. Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’.

49. Grosfoguel, ‘A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy’, 19.

50. Mignolo and Tlostanova, The Logic of Coloniality and the Limits of Postcoloniality.

51. Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’.

52. Grosfoguel, ‘A Decolonial Approach to Political-Economy’; Hall, The West and the Rest; Mignolo and Tlostanova, The Logic of Coloniality and the Limits of Postcoloniality; Teo and Wynne-Hughes, Postcolonial Governmentalities; and Quijano, ‘Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America’.

53. See, for example: Pain and Smith, Fear; and Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (expanded edition).

54. See, for example: Hall, The West and the Rest; Nicholson, ‘Don’t Shoot! Black Mobilities in American Gunscapes’; Said, Orientalism; Stephenson, ‘Travel and the “Freedom of Movement”’; and Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (expanded edition).

55. Pain and Smith, Fear: Critical Geopolitics and Everyday Life, 1.

56. Ibid.

57. Sheller, ‘Uneven Mobility Future’.

58. See, for example: Bigo, ‘The (In)Securitization Practices of the Three Universes of EU Border Control’; Duffield, ‘The Liberal Way of Development and the Development-Security Impasse’; Huysmans, ‘The European Union and the Securitization of Migration’; and Vaughan-Williams, ‘The UK Border Security Continuum’.

59. Duffield, ‘The Liberal Way of Development and the Development-Security Impasse’.

60. Baranowski et al., ‘Tourism and Empire’; and Lisle, Holidays in the Danger Zone.

61. Lisle, ‘Frontline Leisure’; and Wynne-Hughes, ‘Who would go to Egypt?’.

62. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism.

63. McMichael, Development and Social Change, 155, 165.

64. Robinson, Latin America and Global Capitalism.

65. Smith and Duffy, The Ethics of Tourism Development, 4.

66. Telfer and Sharpley, Tourism and Development in the Developing World, 17.

67. Duffy, ‘The International Political Economy of Tourism and the Neoliberalisation of Nature’; Ferguson, ‘The UN World Tourism Organisation’; Fletcher, ‘Sustaining Tourism, Sustaining Capitalism?’; Goldstone, Making the World Safe for Tourism; and Hawkins and Mann, ‘The World Bank’s Role in Tourism Development’.

68. World Bank, Tourism for Development.

69. Ibid., World Travel & Tourism Council, Domestic Tourism; and UN World Tourism Organization, Tourism for Development.

70. Büscher and Fletcher, ‘Destructive Creation’; Duffy and Moore, ‘Neoliberalising Nature?’; Duffy, ‘The International Political Economy of Tourism and the Neoliberalisation of Nature’; and Fletcher, ‘Sustaining Tourism, Sustaining Capitalism?’.

71. Adey, ‘Vertical Security in the Megacity’, 53.

72. Fletcher, ‘Sustaining Tourism, Sustaining Capitalism?’.

73. Wood, Tourism and International Policy.

74. Bianchi et al., ‘The Contradictory Politics of the Right to Travel’.

75. Elliott and Urry, Mobile Lives.

76. See, for example: Beck, World Risk Society, Feldman et al., Accumulating Insecurity; Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism; and Wacquant, Prisons of Poverty (expanded ed.).

77. See, e.g.: Goldstone, Making the World Safe for Tourism.

78. Milano et al., ‘Overtourism and Tourismphobia’.

79. Bianchi, ‘Tourism and the Globalisation of Fear’; Hazbun, Beaches, Ruins, Resorts; and Lisle, ‘Consuming Danger’.

80. See: https://www.touristsafety.org/mission [Accessed 20 July 2021].

81. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security, 210.

82. World Travel & Tourism Council, Domestic Tourism.

83. See, e.g.: Córdoba Azcárate, Stuck with Tourism; Cornelissen, ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting’; and Cornelissen, ‘Producing and Imaging “Place” and “People”’.

84. Bauman, Globalization, Bianchi and Stephenson, Tourism and Citizenship; and Boatcă, Exclusion through Citizenship and the Geopolitics of Austerity.

85. Cohen and Cohen, ‘A Mobilities Approach to Tourism from Emerging World Regions’.

86. Ibid.

87. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security. Also see, e.g.: Brunt et al., ‘Tourist Victimisation and the Fear of Crime on Holiday’; Lepp and Gibson, ‘Tourist Roles, Perceived Risk and International Tourism’; and Pizam and Mansfeld, Towards a Theory of Tourism Security.

88. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security.

89. Bianchi, ‘Tourism and the Globalisation of Fear’, 71.

90. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security.

91. Adey, ‘Facing Airport Security’.

92. Boyle and Haggerty, ‘Spectacular Security’.

93. Ibid., Cornelissen, ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting’.

94. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security, 210.

95. This is especially seen in the case of the military. For example, military defence technologies and intelligence, as well as ex-military personnel, are increasingly enrolled in the private provision of touristic security. See, e.g.: Boyle and Haggerty, ‘Spectacular Security’; Cornelissen, ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting’; Mahrouse, ‘War-Zone Tourism’; and Weaver, ‘Tourism and the Military’.

96. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State.

97. Urry and Larsen, The Tourist Gaze 3.0; and Sheller and Urry, Places to Play, Places in Play.

98. Becklake, ‘Making Destino Guatemala’; and Becklake and Wynne-Hughes, ‘The Touristic Transformation of Postcolonial States’.

99. Bianchi et al., ‘The Contradictory Politics of the Right to Travel’; Morgan and Annette, ‘Security and Social “Sorting”’; and Stephenson, ‘Travel and the “Freedom of Movement”’.

100. Hall, The West and the Rest: Discourse and Power; and Said, Orientalism.

101. Lupton, Risk (2nd ed.).

102. Chant and McIlwaine, Geographies of Development in the 21st Century.

103. Fechter, ‘The “Other” Stares Back’; Hayes, ‘It is hard being the different one all the time’; Schneider, ‘Exotic Place, White Space’; and Vrasti, Volunteer Tourism in the Global South.

104. Carter, ‘“Tourists” and Travellers’ Social Construction of Africa and Asia as Risky Locations’.

105. Becklake and Wynne-Hughes, ‘The Touristic Transformation of Postcolonial States’.

106. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security. On gender and race in this context; also see: Enloe, Bananas, Beaches and Bases; and Mahrouse, ‘War-Zone Tourism’.

107. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security: The Case of Guatemala.

108. Boyle and Haggerty, ‘Spectacular Security’, 265.

109. Morgan and Pritchard, Tourism Promotion and Power.

110. Christian, ‘… Latin America without the downside’.

111. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security, 218.

112. See, for example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/jul/21/egypt-relaxes-street-photography-ban-for-tourists-up-to-a-point [Accessed 26 July 2022]. Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism’.

113. Castañeda and Burtner, ‘Tourism as “A Force for World Peace”’; and Marijnen, ‘Eco-war Tourism’.

114. Becklake, ‘Making Destino Guatemala’.

115. Lisle, ‘Consuming Danger’.

116. Fletcher, ‘The Only Risk is Wanting to Stay’; Freire-Medeiros, Touring Poverty; Goldstone, Making the World Safe for Tourism; Lisle, ‘Consuming Danger’; Marijnen, ‘Eco-war Tourism’; and Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism: Exploring Dynamics of tourism, Security and Peace around the Virunga Transboundary Conservation Area’.

117. The Caribbean Tourism Organisation explains Tourism Awareness Programmes’ goals to be: ‘creating a better understanding of tourism and its contribution to the national economy, attracting greater numbers of high achievers into the tourism sector, educating teachers and students about the importance of tourism and creating greater social acceptance of tourism’, Caribbean Tourism Organisation, Competing with the Best: Good Practices in Tourism Awareness Programmes, 1.

118. Ibid.

119. Devine, ‘Counterinsurgency Ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve’; Loperena, ‘Honduras is Open for Business’; and Wynne-Hughes, ‘Who would go to Egypt?’.

120. See, for example: Becker and Müller, ‘The Securitization of Urban Space and the “Rescue” of Downtown Mexico City’; Cornelissen, ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting’; Devine, ‘Counterinsurgency Ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve’; Little, ‘Police and Security in the World Heritage City of Antigua, Guatemala’; Ojeda, ‘War and Tourism’; Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism’; and Wynne-Hughes, ‘Who would go to Egypt?’.

121. Morgan and Pritchard, Tourism Promotion and Power: Creating Images, Creating Identities.

122. See, for example: Becker and Müller, ‘The Securitization of Urban Space and the “Rescue” of Downtown Mexico City’; Córdoba Azcárate, Stuck with Tourism; Devine, ‘Counterinsurgency Ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve’; Fletcher, ‘The Only Risk is Wanting to Stay’; Hyndman, ‘The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace’; Little, ‘Police and Security in the World Heritage City of Antigua, Guatemala’; Marijnen, ‘Eco-war Tourism’; Morgan and Annette, ‘Security and Social “Sorting”’; Ojeda, ‘War and Tourism’; and Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism’.

123. See, for example, the British company CloseCircle.

124. Becklake, ‘NGOs and the Making of “Development Tourism Destinations”’; Becklake, ‘The Role of NGOs in Touristic Securitization’; Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security; Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism’; and Marijnen, ‘Eco-war Tourism: Affective Geographies, Colonial Durabilities and the Militarization of Conservation’.

125. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception.

126. Boatcă, Exclusion through Citizenship and the Geopolitics of Austerity.

127. Ong, Neoliberalism as Exception: Mutations in Citizenship and Sovereignty, 7.

128. See, for example: Little, ‘Police and Security in the World Heritage City of Antigua, Guatemala’; and Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism’.

129. Cohen, ‘Death in Paradise’; and Sheller, ‘The Islanding Effect’.

130. Boatcă, Exclusion through Citizenship and the Geopolitics of Austerity.

131. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State, 53.

132. Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism’.

133. Abrahamsen and Williams, Security Beyond the State; Bianchi, Towards a New Political Economy of Global Tourism; Britton, ‘The Political Economy of Tourism in the Third World’; and Mowforth and Munt, Tourism and Sustainability (3rd. ed.).

134. Britton, ‘The Political Economy of Tourism in the Third World’, Goss, ‘It’s Like Going Back in Time’; Hayes, ‘It is hard being the different one all the time’; Schneider, ‘Exotic Place, White Space’; and Torres and Momsen, ‘Gringolandia’.

135. Loperena, ‘Conservation by Racialized Dispossession’.

136. Becklake and Wynne-Hughes, ‘The Touristic Transformation of Postcolonial States’; and Salazar, ‘Imaged or Imagined?’.

137. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security.

138. Echtner and Prasad, ‘The Context of Third World Tourism Marketing’; and Palmer, ‘Tourism and Colonialism’, Palmer.

139. Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security. Also see: Kempadoo, Sun, Sex, and Gold; and Truong, Sex, Money and Morality.

140. For example, the sexual exploitation of children. Hawke and Raphael, Offenders on the Move: Global Study on Sexual Exploitation of Children in Travel and Tourism. Postcolonial states may even actively facilitate harmful practices to attract and satisfy international tourists (e.g. legalising prostitution) See, e.g.: Goldstone, Making the World Safe for Tourism, Truong, Sex, Money and Morality.

141. In the Dominican Republic the government refrained from implementing adequate public health measures to stem the spread of HIV because ‘tourists may find such programmes distasteful or avoid vacationing in nations that openly acknowledge a local HIV epidemic’ Padilla et al., ‘Examining the Policy Climate for HIV Prevention in the Caribbean Tourism Sector: A Qualitative Study of Policy Makers in the Dominican Republic’, 246.

142. Becklake, ‘Making Destino Guatemala’.

143. See, for example: Becker and Müller, ‘The Securitization of Urban Space and the “Rescue” of Downtown Mexico City’; Cornelissen, ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting’; Devine, ‘Counterinsurgency Ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve’; Little, ‘Police and Security in the World Heritage City of Antigua, Guatemala’; Loperena, ‘Conservation by Racialized Dispossession’; Ojeda, ‘War and Tourism’; and Wynne-Hughes, ‘Who would go to Egypt?’.

144. See, for example: Becklake, ‘The Role of NGOs in Touristic Securitization’; Becklake, Gendered Touristic Security; Becker and Müller, ‘The Securitization of Urban Space and the “Rescue” of Downtown Mexico City’; Büscher and Fletcher, ‘Destructive Creation’; Cabezas, ‘Tropical Blues’; Córdoba Azcárate, Stuck with Tourism; Cornelissen, ‘Mega Event Securitisation in a Third World Setting’; Devine, ‘Counterinsurgency Ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve’; Dunn, ‘Fear of a Black Planet’; Little, ‘Police and Security in the World Heritage City of Antigua, Guatemala’; Loperena, ‘Conservation by Racialized Dispossession’; Loperena, ‘Honduras is Open for Business’; Marijnen, ‘Eco-war Tourism’; Schneider, ‘Exotic Place, White Space’; and Wynne-Hughes, ‘Who would go to Egypt?’.

145. Devine, ‘Counterinsurgency Ecotourism in Guatemala’s Maya Biosphere Reserve’, Goldstone, Making the World Safe for Tourism; and Loperena, ‘Conservation by Racialized Dispossession’.

146. Boatcă, Exclusion through Citizenship and the Geopolitics of Austerity, Boatcă and Roth, ‘Unequal and Gendered’.

147. Brennan, Love Work in a Tourist Town.

148. Bianchi et al., ‘The Contradictory Politics of the Right to Travel’; Bauman, Globalization; Bigo, ‘Immigration Controls and Free Movement in Europe’; Lisle, The Global Politics of Contemporary Travel Writing; Lyon, ‘Airport Screening, Surveillance, and Social Sorting’; Morgan and Annette, ‘Security and Social “Sorting”’; Sheller, ‘Uneven Mobility Future’; and Stephenson, ‘Travel and the “Freedom of Movement”’.

149. Weaver, ‘When Tourists Become Data’.

150. See, e.g.: Kloppenburg, ‘Mapping the Contours of Mobilities Regimes’.

151. Muller, ‘Unsafe at any Speed?’.

152. Adey, ‘If Mobility is Everything Then it is Nothing’; Cresswell, ‘Towards a Politics of Mobility’; and Sheller, ‘Uneven Mobility Future’.

153. Haggerty and Ericson, ‘The Surveillant Assemblage’.

154. Muller, ‘Unsafe at any Speed?’.

155. Lyon, ‘Airport Screening, Surveillance, and Social Sorting’; and Morgan and Annette, ‘Security and Social “Sorting”’.

156. Wright et al., ‘Sorting out Smart Surveillance’, 345.

157. Becklake, ‘The Role of NGOs in Touristic Securitization’.

158. Marijnen, ‘Eco-war Tourism’.

159. Bigo, International Political Sociology.

160. UN, Transforming Our World.

161. See, e.g.: Trogisch and Fletcher, ‘Fortress Tourism’.

162. Loperena, ‘Honduras is Open for Business’; and Wynne-Hughes, ‘The Battle of the Camel’.

163. Hyndman, ‘The Securitisation of Sri Lankan Tourism in the Absence of Peace’; and Ojeda, ‘War and Tourism’.

164. Bigo, ‘The (In)Securitization Practices of the Three Universes of EU Border Control’.

165. United Nations World Tourism Organization, International Tourism Highlights.

166. UN World Tourism Organization, Supporting Jobs and Economies through Travel & Tourism.

167. UN, UN Research Roadmap for the COVID-19 Recovery.