90 TOWARDS WELCOME: FOREGROUNDING VOICES AND GIVING VISIBILITY TO THE MARGINALIS
90 TOWARDS WELCOME: FOREGROUNDING VOICES AND GIVING VISIBILITY TO THE MARGINALISED IN TOURISM WORKPLACES AND BEYOND – Contributions by Agnieszka Rydzik
Tourism and Society
My research stems from and is rooted in my worldview and my biography as a migrant woman. From a young age – having been born in late Communist-era Poland, brought up in the post-Communist pre-EU accession period of Poland’s history and then lived my adult life abroad as a citizen of the EU – I have been interested in understanding the workings of society and making sense of the othering processes that minority groups undergo, and how these may relate to social inequalities and (im)mobilities in broader society.
I see tourism as intrinsically connected to everyday social realities and tied up in the complexities of the social world of today. Tourism provides ‘a window through which the real social world of the everyday lives of ordinary members of society can be glimpsed’ (McCabe, 2002, p.72). This also means that tourism can reflect existing societal divisions, reinforce social inequalities and immobilities. This sociological view of tourism has been the focus of my research.
My research is situated at sociological, disciplinary and methodological crossroads, and broadly inscribed within the critical tourism approach that situates tourism within wider socio-political and cultural contexts (Wilson, Harris and Small, 2008), advocates commitment to ‘tourism enquiry which is pro-social justice and equality and anti-oppression’ (Ateljevic, Morgan and Prichard, 2007, p. 3) and ultimately strives to create a better society. I have always strongly believed that tourism research needs to constantly push the boundaries in terms of topics and perspectives as well as who is being researched and who does the research.
The focus of my work is not on tourists and their experiences per se but on 1) mobilities in a broader sense, including of those who are mobile in some ways yet often immobilised, excluded or disadvantaged in other ways, such as migrants (Rydzik et al, 2012; Rydzik, 2017b); 2) and also those who provide for tourists i.e. workers and their realities, in particular precarious workers and marginalised groups who often lack power to challenge inequalities (Rydzik and Anitha, 2020; Rydzik and Kissoon, 2021); as well as 3) tourism discourses and representations that often shape who is included and/or excluded (Rydzik, Agapito and Lenton, 2021).
In writing this piece, I had an opportunity to step back and reflect on the interconnections and linkages between my research projects and contributions; how they speak to each other and the golden thread that conceptually connects them. This piece is a result of these reflections.
Through my research, in one way or another, I have sought to understand how various minority groups – the perceived or constructed Others (e.g. migrant workers, young adult workers, women in male-dominated occupations) – are represented and how they deploy agency