Human Mobilities and Community Development

The purpose of this course is to look into how important human mobility is for community development. Most of our attention will be on tourism and migration (currently the two most influential human mobilities globally), but we will also look at other mobilities, e.g., nomadism and the study of people's relationships with trails (called "trailology"). We regard tourism as an ideology that serves as a mechanism for the social, political, and economic development of communities. Even though development and tourism have long existed separately, it has only been since the 1970s that tourism has emerged as a key tool for achieving development, and since the 1990s, it has been progressively incorporated into community development in general to address socioeconomic inequality and environmental sustainability. Community-based tourism, ecotourism, sustainable tourism, and philanthrotourism are just a few of the various forms of tourism that have emerged as a result of this relationship. This course talks about the history of the connection between tourism and community development and looks at how it has changed over time. Tourism is also closely connected to migration, which is the other major form of mobility. We look at how the two are related in places like the Mediterranean, where voluntee tourism is popular, and through the Migrantour in Utrecht. Along with this, we look at how migration affects community development in a broader sense. The main topics we cover in this context are capitalism, colonialism, authenticity, violence and militarization, and livelihood diversification. We look at the connection between tourism, community development, and migration from different theoretical points of view, such as developmental, postcolonial, and feminist ones. The course includes two significant outings: first, we will travel together on the Migrantour (Utrecht), and second, we will perform longitudinal (i.e., multiple visits over a few weeks) volunteer work at one of the Wageningen refugee centers. We use the method of "autoethnography" in the assignment that goes with this.

• Identify key contemporary issues in the fields of migration and local development

• Demonstrate understanding of theories on the relationship between international development and mobilities (i.e. tourism and migration)

• Apply critical development theory to tourism development and migration

• Analyse and evaluate socio-cultural and ecological processes of migration and tourism development and the potential of tourism to function as an effective sustainable development strategy

• Design new pathways for migration and/or for tourism as a sustainable development instrument

• ? (50%) Write an autoethnographic account of your experiences in both group excursions
• ? (50%) Individual presentation of a new pathway for migration or tourism

• To be decided.