3rd ATLAS International Workshop
SIG Space, Place and Mobilities in Tourism

Social Mobility Goes on Holiday
Tourist Im|mobilities, Conflicts and Empowerment

We attended the online ATLAS International Workshop “Social Mobility Goes on Holiday: Tourist Im|mobilities, Conflicts and Empowerment” presenting our study “The case of tourists’ hubris to rethink the space of tourism and citizenship” in the Session #1 of the workshop, collecting contributions to the theme of ‘Tourism and Citizenship’. The ATLAS workshop revolved around contributions offering conceptual, methodological, and empirical advances on how tourist spaces are (in the present) and were (in the past) entangled with both exclusionary and inclusionary dynamics, resulting in both social conflicts and empowerment.

Our study “The case of tourists’ hubris to rethink the space of tourism and citizenship” encouraged a reflection on the gap between the space of tourism and of citizenship and the implications in terms of mobility justice. It did so by focusing on the perception of tourists as actors driven by their own needs and personal fulfillment and, as such, disconnected from citizens’ needs, safety, and wellbeing. The study was conceptually driven by the ancient Greek notion of hubris, a dangerous pride and broad unawareness of limits. Hubris was used here to interpret the gap between the tourist space and the citizen space by framing tourists as hubristic human beings transcending the sociological space of their fellow citizens and as subjects ontologically belonging to a neoliberal leisure space disentangled from the citizenship space. The research was grounded in an exploratory thematic narrative analysis of the debate that emerged on the online Italian news media immediately after the Italian government adoption of the mobility restrictions due to COVID-19. The findings revealed how tourists were largely understood and presented according to two emerging themes, respectively as subjects taking over the space of residents disregarding their safety and wellbeing, and breaking the rules set by national and local authorities.

Our research represented a novel line of research and an innovative theoretical lens to look at the relationship between tourism and citizenship and tourists’ behaviours. We received interesting, critical, and constructive comments from the panel and from the audience, both questioning the concept of hubris and suggesting investigating it further within the tourism and hospitality sector through a sociological lens.

Dr. Lucia Tomassini (leading author)
Research Lecturer in Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism
HMS NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences

Prof. Elena Cavagnaro
Professor of Sustainability in Hospitality and Tourism
HMS NHL Stenden University of Applied Sciences