Encounters over Garbage: Tourists and Lifestyle Migrants in Mexico

Dürr, Eveline (2012): Encounters over Garbage: Tourists and Lifestyle Migrants in Mexico. In: Tourism Geographies, Vol. 14, No. 2, SI: pp. 339-355

Abstract

This article explores a tour to the garbage dump in the city of Mazatlan, northern Mexico, as an alternative to mass tourism. The tour, conducted by an evangelical North American church, is conceptualized as a non-profit, eye-opening experience for affluent tourists. I frame the tour as a particular kind of slum tourism, which is embedded in Christian values and promises a meaningful tourist experience by helping the poor. Drawing on an ethnographic approach, I argue that the interplay of globalization processes and local conditions in Mazatlan produces a particular framework in which slum tours emerge and work. The analysis reveals that this tour is a consequence of revised forms of tourism, transnational lifestyles and global forces at work in the North American-Mexican relationships. I stress that research needs to draw further attention to slum tourism's positioning in wider structural and historical contexts in order to understand its idiosyncratic features.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Keywords: charity;garbage;globalization;lifestyle migration;Mazatlan;Mexico;Slum tourism;urban poverty
• Faculties: Cultural Studies > Department of Ancient and Modern Cultures > Ethnology
• Subjects: 300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
• ISSN: 1461-6688
• Language: English