Tourism and the Globalisation of Fear: Analysing the Politics of Risk and (in)Security in Global Travel

Abstract

International tourism represents the apotheosis of consumer capitalism and Western modernity, based on an apparently seamless harmony between the free movement of people, merchandise and capital. However, as the growing insecurities engendered by the globalisation of terrorism and military interventionism, as well as targeted attacks on foreign tourists in certain parts of the world illustrate, the liberal calculus of unhindered mobility, political stability and the unfettered expansion of the market, which underpins the ‘right’ to travel, is, however, increasingly mediated by heightened concerns of risk and security. This paper will examine how the geopolitics of security and the neo-liberal expansion of the global market have begun to radically reshape the parameters of mobility and the environments in which tourism operates. In doing so, it analyses the manner in which international tourism has become intertwined with restricted notions of freedom associated with the intensification of market relations and consumerism upon which the expansion of contemporary tourist mobilities often depends.