TY - JOUR

T1 - Touristic security

T2 - not a ‘win-win’ global security practice

AU - Becklake, Sarah

N1 - Funding Information: 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. 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.

PY - 2023

Y1 - 2023

N2 - 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.

AB - 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.

KW - coloniality

KW - development

KW - mobilities

KW - security

KW - Tourism

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85175420352&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/14678802.2023.2268560

DO - 10.1080/14678802.2023.2268560

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85175420352

VL - 23

SP - 289

EP - 316

JO - Conflict, Security and Development

JF - Conflict, Security and Development

SN - 1467-8802

IS - 4

ER -