Of Tourists and Vagabonds in the Global South

Since the publication of Bauman's seminal book Tourists and Vagabonds: Heroes and Victims of Postmodernity, sociologists and particularly social scientists have further interrogated the influence of globalization, and mobility culture in tourism consumption. Bauman offers a fertile ground to discuss the production of material asymmetries among classes. The present book continues this discussion with a special focus on Buenos Aires City, Argentina. Chapters integrating this book give a snapshot revolving around the convergence of social marginality, and the tourist experience. In this introductory section, I introduce readers to the complexity of the colonial period as well as the role played by slavery as a cheap manpower. Here I posed not only the main questions that guided the present book but also the intersection between slavery and poverty in global capitalism. At the same time, I place the question of homeless tours into the critical lens of scrutiny.

Over decades, tourism has been over-valorized as a mechanism that leaves developing economies from poverty and pauperism. In fact, development theory has enthusiastically emphasized the nature of tourism as a sustainable activity that boosts local economies. Quite aside from this, some critical voices not only have questioned to what extent tourism alleviates local poverty but also the connection between tourism and poverty. An emerging field within tourism studies has plausibly discussed the conditions laying for poverty to become a commodity or a tourist attraction. In this context, the classic paradigm of tourism development has been radically shifted. There is a type of emerging morbid consumption (morbid taste) that makes the Other's pain a question of attraction. This chapter not only ignites a hot debate revolving around the nature of poverty tourism but also its main contradictions. These contradictions can be very well begged in a question: if we start from the premise poverty seems to be the main commodity to exchange for local culture, how can the industry of tourism eradicate poverty?

Specialists of all pundits and ideologies held the thesis that tourism safety and security is a cornerstone for the evolution and development of tourism. Tourists very well occupy a central position in the engineering of the tourist system. For decades, the discipline was influenced by what experts dubbed as the bubble model which means that tourists should be physically isolated from the interaction with local people. This happens because local people tend to attack or harm high-purchasing power tourists. Some studies have overtly alerted on the risks of enclave tourism for the local economy and society. At the end of the 20th century, this paradigm set the pace for other theories that focused mainly on terrorism, political violence, and local crime. Even Embassies report to their citizens alerting them on what are the safe and unsafe zones to be visited or avoided. Having said this, the literature is not contemplating a new global phenomenon mainly marked by homeless people and their contact with tourist zones. Some works allude to the term homeless tours to denote the complex relationships between foreign tourists, the local government, and homeless young people. This chapter fills the gap while discussing in depth this slippery matter.

Zygmunt Bauman was a Senior philosopher who did not need a previous presentation. His theses have shed light on modern philosophy and sociology globally. For Bauman, the liquid modernity should be understood through the lens of a binomial model, grounded on two main figures: vagabonds and tourists. The postmodern society is structured on an extreme social inequality expressed in the bipolar division between two classes: tourists and vagabonds. Each one is determined by a different degree of freedom of choice, which seems to be the cornerstone of postmodern life. The more freedom of choice each class showed the higher its rank in the postmodern social hierarchy. The chapter discusses the weaknesses and strengths in Bauman's reasoning.

The term non-place was originally coined by French ethnographer Marc Augé to refer to all spaces of anonymity where tradition and history are eradicated. A non-place not only seems to be the result of hyper-mobility but also the opposite of what Augé called “an anthropological place.” The non-place is also a place of no heritage, no history, and disengagement. These spaces of depersonalization and anonymity include bus stations, airports, hotel rooms, and even shopping malls. Going beyond any controversy, he argues convincingly that non-places radically alter the essence of belonging distorting the borders between here-and-there, or us and them. The expansion of globalization has changed not only the epistemological basis of anthropology but also the host–guest encounters. Given the problem in this term, Augé leaves the construction of a place to individual perception, but what is more important the opposite is equally true, since places engender individual rights, non-places assume non-rights. In developing countries and Latin America, non-places are dwelled by persons or citizens who have been debarred from the economic prosperity or the labor marketplace. If this is correct, all these hapless homeless are subject to non-rights. Today, non-place theory bodes well to offer a diagnosis of how these spaces are dwelled by homeless young people globally. Hence, we build a conceptual bridge between Marc Augé and Zygmunt Bauman and his notion of vagabonds/tourists.

This section begins with the story of Raul, a young homeless man who dwells in the streets of Buenos Aires city. Raul is 25 years old and has four children who live with his former wife. Divorced because of a problem with drinking, he sleeps here, there, and everywhere but prefers bus stations or tourist destinations. In this way, he not only feels safer but also lives on the charity of foreign tourists. Hotels or bus stations offer safe shelter in case of rain or the ruthless winter. Because of the currency exchange gap between pesos and dollars, tourist destinations are targeted by many homeless men in Buenos Aires City. Having said this, he works as “reciclador urbano – urban recycling” a new nomenclature associated with persons who sort trash to collect recyclables. Known as cartoneros (litter-pickers) as well, these persons started to become a part of Buenos Aires city. At first glimpse, many cartoneros never come back to their homes, located in Provincia de Buenos Aires they sleep and live roaming Buenos Aires traversing from one to another point of the city. The opposite is equally true, like Raul, Buenos Aires airport has turned into an unofficial homeless shelter receiving more than 50 persons each night.

A scan of the literature suggests that social sciences have discussed the host–guest relation from many theoretical lenses and perspectives. Violence as well as local crime has been studied as one of the major risks concerning tourism security. Anyway, less attention was given to homeless people and their interaction with foreign or local tourists. Globalization has winners and losers, in which case, as noted, thousands of persons are excluded from the formal labor marketplace or the economic system year by year. There is an urban underclass formed by those who have been excluded from the economic system. What is more important, such an underclass situates nearby luxury hotels and tourist destinations creating serious contradictions or zones of disputes. These contradictions have been approached by different sociologists since the turn of the 20th century. In this chapter, I found four categories that explain very well the dialog between locals, vagabonds, and strangers as city-dwellers and tourists. I conclude though Augé and Bauman have notably contributed to the current understanding of urban postmodern space and marginality, their categories (as pure ideals) are marginally applied to an empirical background. I stated here Vagabonds can be divided into two niches, dreamers who are entrepreneur agents and tourism-friendly and zombies who are subject to the scourge of drug addiction and alcoholism (living only the day and the present). At the same time, there are two niches of tourists, those interested or disinterested to gaze at the “Other's pain.”

This concluding chapter contains a deep reflection on the ebbs and flows of colonial power, slavery, and modern capitalism. The expansion of global capitalism has eroded social identity as well as national borders. As a result of this, the non-western “Other” has accepted and transformed into a citizen (civilized), while the native who failed to be inserted in the economic system has passed to take part in an invisible underclass, Bauman named as vagabonds. However, some of them work an active role interacting in a friendly with tourists. Unfortunately, the official authorities probably supported by the Tourism Ministry vie for homeless communities. For them, homeless communities are real dangers that affect not only the destination's organic image but also the integrity of vulnerable tourists who daily visit Buenos Aires city. For that reason, there are programs oriented to organizing homeless or poverty tours – like in other urban areas in the world. The book ends with the title of the concluding chapter: the encounter between dark visitors and dreamers opens the doors to new solutions for an old problem or the perpetuation of poverty, as some critical voices lament.