Tourism in slums
Tourism in slums: how it started and why it became common.
Tourism in slums; when looking for something different from the usual dose of museums, beach resorts and restaurants, many foreign tourists now go to places that at first glance might seem to be the opposite of the typical holiday destination: Slums. What’s this about? We’ll get to know all the details together.
Popular neighborhood tourism, poor and cheap places
Far from being considered no – go areas and no – go areas that outsiders must avoid, some slum – like areas in cities like Mumbai, Johannesburg and Rio de Janeiro have now become wonderful tourist attractions and brought in dozens and even hundreds of thousands of curious visitors every year.
Why do tourists travel to slums?
Whether it’s called a town or a poor neighborhood, tourists and travel lovers who usually visit these poor places entertaining is nothing new. There are records of middle and upper-class London people heading to the East End to talk about the poor in the 19th century, which grew so widely that the generic term for this endeavor – “selumings” – was included in a 1884 edition of the Oxford English Dictionary. Over time slum tourism has become an official commercial show.
Today, slum tourism has grown into a legitimate global industry, attracting more than a million tourists a year. Tour operators now visit places like Cape Town, Johannesburg, Rio slums, Mumbai, New Delhi, or even ski classes in Los Angeles, Detroit, Copenhagen and Berlin.
Hundreds of thousands of Afro-Brazilian people live in Flavilla on the edge of Salvador
Why to visit the slums?
David Weise, a travel fan at TLWH who often visits deprived urban areas around the world, said, “For me, there were many factors that initially attracted me to visit what locals were judging as” random areas. ” Official tour. “I enjoy urban exploration and I’ve been looking at homeless people in developing countries, and I’ve found the contradictions among wealthy urban dwellers living next to the slums curious.” However, Ways was quick to describe what he meant by curiosity: “This curiosity is not about” how they live, “but more about their life stories and often the discrimination they face from local governments and from those with permanent housing.”
This concern for social issues and concern for the general humanitarian situation was one of the main drivers of slum visits identified by Fabian Frenzel, professor at the University of Leicester and author of the final book on the subject, Slumming It: The Tourist values urban poverty.
Frenzel said: Tourism in slums, what I’ve clearly found is that people are interested in this reality of inequality. Whatever can be said otherwise, tourists will have some interest in dealing with inequality in the cities or places they visit.
taking natural images that highlight the simplicity of poor and suffering places
Yet another, perhaps more fundamental, attraction is visiting some slum-like areas. Frenzel noted that the initial rise in interest in local slums in New York and London coincided with the emergence of new technology: Photography. Viewing images of some of these areas evokes the desire of many strangers to go and see them for themselves. This feeling has been amplified constantly over time as more visual images of the human condition around the world have become more readily available.
Frenzel explained: “Instead of just consuming these images in the house and then trying to do something there, people are increasingly trying to follow those images to their source and try to see them for themselves.” “Every image mediated seems to create a greater desire to see for yourself.”
According to the views of tour operators and tourism companies
The impact of Slumdog Millionaire on attracting visitors to the poor Dharavi neighborhood of Mumbai was enormous. Although tours existed well before the film, the film increased in popularity and became a reference point for what people expected to see there.
Seeing the lives of the poor on nature for those who personify these characters in films and series and for writers
Frenzel explained: And then you have people who use the media themselves writing about travel and setting up places and setting up places via electronic oral speech can be simply attracted by people who refer to them on travel sites.
What’s really going on around the slums?
Frenzel said: “What you see is life, urban life.” It is, of course, complex and limited in some respects. There’s often clear evidence of neglect, when sewage or garbage don’t work or all these really essential services for the city. But at the same time, they are often vibrant and vibrant. Most slum tours usually consist of visits to different project sites, where NGOs or similar organizations operate in the community – places such as schools, educational centers, projects such as a shower that is feces to produce gas for cooking and, of course, orphanages. Often, these sites are chosen to show tourists what to do to improve society and sometimes include suggestions on how to provide their support, if they choose to do so. One of the major impacts of slum tourism is changing the perception, which often makes it easier.
Educational aspect of tourism
Frenzel said: “You may have some ideas about Dharavi, maybe from Slumdog Millionaire, but we show you a completely different side.” “We show you how this is a place to work, how people work, how people create small but very successful businesses, and how there are a variety of aspects here. Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, wh It’s the classic educational aspect of tourism. “
Local reaction? Visiting rich people in squatter areas and unorthodox trips
What about what locals in squatter areas think about groups of relatively wealthy tourists from distant countries suddenly showing up and moving?
Frenzel said: My sense was that there was some kind of curiosity and surprise and maybe a sense of bewilderment. This is not the Gate of India. Sometimes you find hostility. I think it’s special when people feel you’ve stepped on their legs of congestion. This is like a phenomenon you find with tourism everywhere, though. “A University of Pennsylvania study found that “duality” was the most common interaction in Daravi. David Ways found that even people living in slums often repeated the same common warnings:
A boring young man who’s around the world and warnings about getting close during tourism and travel.
Apart from the “slums” I visited, there were always worried citizens warning me about that area for real fear of my wallet or my life. It’s weird that this is happening in the slums. In Sabah, Malaysia, for example, a nice Indonesian man warned me not to stay away from the Filipino community here, the Pakistani shopkeeper told me to avoid Indonesian areas and the Filipinos asked me to avoid everyone. In all cases, I’ve faced no criminal cases but a few bored young people I try to avoid anywhere in the world.
Argument With the growing popularity of slum tourism, it has become an increasingly polarized and controversial topic.
What’s the real impact of Tourism in slums?
As to who earns money from these tours, Wayes claims that “tour operators promise to give money to people there, but compared to what they earn themselves, it’s a small wage.” Frenzel agreed that direct economic stimulus in communities from these tours is negligible.
Tourism for the poor
“What adds to this is that these tours are often integrated with some charitable concepts. So the tour officer will say that some of the money you’re giving us will flow into a project here in the neighborhood, or we’ll do it, or we’ll do it with some of your money. Or we hire local guides, “Frenzel explained. Very little money spent on these tours actually ends up in the places visited.
Tourists search these slums for things of value that they miss on traditional journeys.
However, there is another, potentially much greater, impact on Tourism in slums: Connection. Tourists who go to urban areas that are often seen as restricted areas, as conceptually isolated from the rest of the city, point to the fact that these areas exist, that they function and that there is something of value there that should not be ignored. In other words, she can put it on the map.
“So I think that when you look at the details, you can tell some of these stories about how tourists entering these spaces are creating some kind of communication and maybe new opportunities to create small businesses or maybe an entirely new level of communication,” Frenzel assumed.
Frenzel explained how this was particularly evident in Rio, where tourists opened fire on tracks to previously restricted areas, opening them up to the diaspora and the local population, which made it easier to meet the classes again.
Frenzel said: “It’s getting out of the strict value system that says the area doesn’t exist, it’s not really part of the city, it doesn’t go there, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s a first step in getting to know these areas and you can try to travel to the slums to find out for yourself the fun and the difference.