An International Research Project
of the International Geographical Union Study Group on the Geography of Sustainable Tourism

A number of changes have occurred in recent years in the forms of production and consumption, which have resulted in changes in migration and consumption and in the relationship between these.  The main changes can be expressed in terms of global-local relationships in production, shifts to various forms of more flexible production (requiring changes in both capital accumulation and the labour process), and the development of more flexible and internationalised forms of consumption, resulting in both the intensification of, and the emergence of new forms of, tourism and migration flows.  While to some extent a response to changes in the nature of capital accumulation processes these new forms of mobility are also the outcome of changes in the cultural construction of leisure time and spaces. Moreover, the demographic and social changes brought about by these population flows contribute to reshaping the conditions for both production and consumption.

The growth of tourism has, of course, long been interdependent with that of particular forms of migration.  Quite apart from the fact that tourism itself constitutes a form of migration, of varying duration, it has
generated two distinctive flows of migration.

First, there is labour migration to provide the services demanded by tourists, particularly in areas of mass tourism where rapid and substantial growth in tourist numbers may have outstripped the capacities of local
labour markets.  The resultant labour migration generally assumes one of three forms:

* Unskilled labour to provide consumer and collective services at relatively low costs, which are essential for the competitiveness of resorts operating in highly competitive cost-led markets.
* Skilled managerial workers providing specialist skills that may not be available in the local labour market; intra-company labour transfers often structure their mobility.
* Migration to establish small-scale businesses, often serving niche markets (typically expatriate ones), and or being motivated by life style considerations.

These migration flows are integral to the restructuring of labour markets in the recipient areas as they try to maintain competitiveness in the increasingly competitive international market for tourism services.  It is
not simply a matter of absolute labour supply, or of the role of migration in mediating labour costs, but also of particular types of skilled labour, in response to technology- and demand-led changes in production.

Secondly, consumption-led migration systems may develop symbiotic relationships with tourism flows, as part of the re-definition of the practices of consumption.  This may assume several forms, depending on the duration of the migration, motivations and property relationships.  The two migration streams are linked by the concepts of search spaces, informing decision-making.  Some of the main components of consumption-led migration are:

* Investment in second homes, which implies a degree of commitment to the destination area (both for vacations and, possibly, for more permanent migration in the longer term).  This also implies particularly property relationships with the civil authorities and the private sector in the destination area, which differentiate this from long-stay tourism.
* The growth of seasonal migration, for which there is a continuum stretching from long-stay tourism to genuine dual residence between the destination area and the area of origin.
* Permanent migration which typically occurs at the retirement or early retirement stage of the life course.
* Non-tourism led migration where the migrants are attracted by the quality of life in the destination area but are economically engaged in metropolitan economies to which they are linked by tele-working arrangements or some form of long distance commuting. They may have links to tourism through both the informing of search spaces and reliance on some of the services (such as air transport) developed for the latter.

While some of these migration streams and their relationships to tourism have long historical roots, that can be traced back to at least the Grand Tour, others are of more recent genesis.  They have all, however, been subject to significant changes in recent decades which have transformed their scale, geographical scan and their inter-relationships with tourism.  The salient changes are inherently related to the emergence of new forms of production and consumption:

* growth in and globalisation of tourism markets;
* the internationalisation of tourism capital;
* changes in leisure time and post-working lives, which are related
- to the reorganisation of the labour process;
- the demographic ageing of populations;
- changes to family structures;
- revolutionary changes in transport and communications systems;
- territorial and social changes in the distribution of work- and non-work related income; and
- the social reconstruction of valued living and working environments, which is informed by deeper cultural changes and facilitated by new forms of communications.

Because of the above changes, there has been an increase in the scale of tourism-related migration, and an internationalisation of the patterns of mobility.  This has yielded a series of social, cultural, economic and
political issues for the individual migrants, for the host communities and for local, national and supra-national states, which hitherto have been little researched. Amongst these are:

* the economic impacts of the redistribution of consumer expenditure, incomes and remittances;
* the reorganisation of labour markets;
* new social and spatial divisions of labour;
* the recasting of host-guest relationships, along new lines of gendered, racialised and class cleavages;
* nationality and citizenship rights;
* the demands on the collective services provided by local, sub-national and national states;
* the implications of tourism-related migration on the physical environment;
* the role of tourism-related migration in regional development, particularly with respect to innovation and entrepreneurship practices in rural regions; and
* issues of tourism-related migration within the context of sustainable development.

While geographers are concerned with the underlying processes of economic restructuring and cultural change which inform the redefinition of tourism-migration relationships, they are also interested in the extent and ways in which their impacts are contingent on economic, social, political and environmental conditions in particular localities.  In turn, these local conditions inform the unfolding processes of globalisation.

The proposed project therefore seeks to examine the above relationships between tourism and migration in a comparative international and intranational perspective. The convenors of the project therefore invite
expressions of interest in participating in the project with the contribution of empirical and theoretical papers. Participants in the project will have the opportunity to meet at three forthcoming conferences:

a) at the AAG meeting in Hawaii, 23-27 March 1999 where panel sessions sponsored by the IGU Study Group will be conducted on reviews of production and consumption led migration in an international context - paper abstracts are listed below;

b) at the joint meeting of the IGU Commission on Sustainable Rural Systems and the IGU Study Group on the Geography of Sustainable Tourism at Flagstaff, Arizona, 20-23 October 1999; which will have a number of open sessions dedicated to the research project; and

c) at the IGU meeting in Seoul, Korea, in 26 August - 1 September, 2000 which will also feature a number of open sessions on the project.

It is anticipated that a combination of books and special editions of journals will be developed from this project. For expressions of interest please contact:

Allan Williams at A.M.Williams@exeter.ac.uk
Michael Hall at cmhall@business.otago.ac.nz

SCHOLARS WHO HAVE EXPRESSED INTEREST IN THE PROJECT (as of 2 December 1998)

Konstantinos Andriotis, International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research, School of Services Industries, Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, UK

David Barkin, Dept. of Forest Resources, Utah State University, Logan, Utah, USA

Dick Bedford, Department of Geography, The University of Waikato, Hamilton, NEW ZEALAND

Martin Bell, Department of Geography and Key Centre for Social Applications of GIS, The University of Adelaide, South Australia, AUSTRALIA

Richard Butler, School of Management Studies for the Service Sector, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

Stephen.Creigh-Tyte, Department of Culture, UK

Dimitrios Diamantis, International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research, School of Services Industries, Bournemouth University, Poole, Dorset, UK

David Timothy Duval, Longwoods International & Faculty of Environmental Studies, York University, Toronto, Ontario, CANADA

Graeme Evans, Centre for Leisure & Tourism Studies, University of North London, UK

Donald Getz, University of Calgary, Alberta, CANADA

Anne-Mette Hjalager, Department of Organization and Management, Aarhus School of Business, Aarhus, DENMARK

John Jenkins, Department of Leisure and Tourism Studies, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, AUSTRALIA

Geoff Kearsley, Centre for Tourism, University of Otago, Dunedin, NEW ZEALAND

Shaul Krakover, Dept. of Geography & Environmental Development, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Beer-Sheva, ISRAEL

Joseph Kurtzman, Sports Tourism International Council, CANADA

Alan Lew, Department of Geography, Planning and Recreation, Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, Arizona, USA

Gabi Lipshitz, ISRAEL

Simon Milne, School of Business and Public Management, Victoria University, Wellington, NEW ZEALAND

Michael Riley, School of Management Studies for the Service Sector, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK

Pere Salvà-Tomàs, Tourist Research and Documentation Laboratory of Balearic Islands University, Palma de Mallorca, Balearic Islands, SPAIN

John Selwood, Department of Geography, University of Winnipeg, Manitoba, CANADA

Valene Smith, California State University, Chico, California, USA

Edith Szivas, School of Management Studies for the Service Sector, University of Surrey, Guildford, UK
 

If anyone has been inadvertently left off the list, Allan and myself will be grateful if you could contact us. For expressions of interest please contact:

Allan Williams at A.M.Williams@exeter.ac.uk
Michael Hall at cmhall@business.otago.ac.nz

AAG - March 23-27, 1999 Meeting in Honolulu - PAPER ABSTRACTS

The session at Hawaii will consist of the following papers:

Allan M. Williams, Department of Geography, University of Exeter, Exeter, UK and C. Michael Hall, Centre for Tourism, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand. Tourism and migration: new relationships between production and consumption.
        Changes in production and consumption have resulted in changes in tourism and migration, and in the relationship between these in recent decades. This paper provides an overview of the linkages between migration and  tourism systems, setting these in context of both shifts in capital accumulation and the cultural construction of leisure time and spaces. It makes a distinction between those linkages centred on production and consumption. The former are centred on labour migration: unskilled labour to provide services at points of large volume tourism; skilled managerial workers, whose mobility may be embedded in intra-company transfers, and small-scale entrepreneurial moves to selective niches in expatriate markets. In addition, consumption-led migration systems may develop symbiotic relationships with tourism flows, as part of the re-definition of consumption practices. This may assume one of several forms: second home purchases for a variety of end purposes, seasonal migration as an element in peripatetic lifestyles, retirement migration to amenity areas, and consumption-led migration of footloose teleworkers. The paper seeks to provide an assessment of the overall weight of these different population flows and some of their economic and cultural implications.

Allan M. Williams, University of Exeter, UK. International retirement migration in Europe: from tourism to residence in the Mediterranean regions
        Retirement migration is one of the most rapidly growing demographic features of developed societies, and this is increasingly becoming an international as opposed to an intra-national process. This paper outlines the growth of international retirement migration from northern to southern Europe, and explains its timing and distribution in terms of changing lifetime occupational careers and income flows, travel careers, and the reduction of travel and institutional barriers. After providing an overview using secondary data sources, the paper explores the results of large scale surveys of retired British residents in four southern European countries: Portugal, Spain, Italy and Cyprus. These illustrate considerable diversity in the motivations and strategies of the migrants, indicative not only of differences in their lifetime experiences and resources, but also of the importance of place in structuring international migration flows.

Martin Bell, Department of Geographical and Environmental Studies, The University of Adelaide, Australia and Gary Ward, Queensland Government Statistican's Office, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Comparing permanent migration with temporary mobility: an analysis of Australian data.
       In the nascent field of inquiry concerned with temporary population movements in developed countries, most empirical research to date has focused on particular forms of movement or specific destinations regions. As a result, research to date is best characterised as partial, fragmented and unsystematic. What has been lacking is any sense of the overall structure of temporary mobility within which this richness of case study material can be situated. This paper first proposes a conceptual framework for the analysis of temporary movement and explores the methodological challenges that it poses. Data from the quinquennial Australian Census are then used to compare the incidence of temporary moblity, the characteristics of the movers and their patterns of movement, against those of permanent migrants.

Richard Butler, School of Management Studies, University of Surrey, Guildford, Surrey GU2 5XH, England. Tourism and migration: The changing role of second homes.
        Tourism has often been described as a form of temporary migration, and in that context second homes have been somewhat of an anomaly, since a home away from home is scarcely compatible with the concept of migration. Rather, they may be more appropriately thought of as a form of transhumance accommodation. The paper begins by reviewing the origins of second homes (cottages) and the roles they traditionally filled, with particular focus on Europe and North America. It then discusses the ways in which the form and function of second homes have changed over the past century, and particularly the past two decades. It is argued that the second home has moved from being just that, a home away from home, often kept in the same family for generations with little change in function or pattern of use, to a more typically post-modern function which includes a wider and less predictable set of functions. This changing function  is mirrored in the greatly changing spatial distribution of second homes and the different temporal pattern of use to which the properties are now being exposed. Of most direct implication to patterns of migration is the role of the second home as a stepping stone to permanent residence in that location, often involving restructuring of the building at an individual scale and restructuring of the community at a larger scale. Such a trend has social and political implications as well as economic ones, and these are discussed in the final section of the paper. The paper concludes with a review of likely future trends in second home ownership, location, function and linkages with more general migration patterns.

Carmen Aitken and C. Michael Hall, University of Otago, New Zealand. Migrant and international skills and their relevance to the tourism industry: Fact and Fiction in the New Zealand context.
        In an increasingly globalised economy, international skills have become seized upon by governments and peak industry bodies as a means of achieving competitive advantage in the marketplace through improved human resources. Tourism, as well as other service industries such as finance and telecommunications, has been a focal point for efforts to create greater awareness of the need for international business skills and the recognition of existing international skill bases in migrant skills. The paper discusses the literature relating to international and migrant skills in the tourism industry and then goes on to examine the results of a survey of tourism businesses in Christchurch and Queenstown, New Zealand, with respect to their encouragement of international skills. The results of the survey indicate that while tourism businesses proclaim the need for migrant skills for the tourism industry as a whole, there is less enthusiasm to embrace such skills within their own businesses.

David Truly, Department of Geography, University of South Carolina, USA
- Abstract not curently available.