Slum tourism

Slum tourism—which may also be known as poorism, misery tourism, poverty tourism, reality tourism, or adventure tourism—is a controversial practice in which tourists deliberately visit poor neighborhoods, often known as slums. Tourists may have many underlying reasons for electing to make such trips; curiosity or self-reflection are most often cited as motivating factors for taking slum tours. By visiting these areas, it allows tourists to be exposed to places off the beaten path while allowing them to contrast the lives of the underprivileged with their own lives. While positive outcomes, including job growth and economic assistance, may arise from slum tourism, some critics argue such practices are voyeuristic and exploitive in nature and promote negative images of the poor.

The practice is most prevalent in third world nations such as South Africa, Brazil, and India, where organized tour groups travel into poverty-stricken communities within large cities. However, such activities occur in first world nations as well, as travelers actively tour depressed areas of American cities such as Philadelphia and New York. In New Orleans, slum tourism saw a spike of interest in the wake of the devastation of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Travelers toured the depressed Lower Ninth Ward to see firsthand the damage and its impact on local residents.

Brief History

The practice of seeking out lower socio-economic areas as a recreational activity began in the wake of the Industrial Revolution. In the 1840s, wealthy Londoners would travel into struggling neighborhoods of the city such as the East End, Jacob's Island, and the Devil's Acre. Guised as a charitable act, these early tourist trips provided a glimpse into the heart of London's most dangerous slums. Over time, these ventures became more common. This growth in slumming, as it was called, may have coincided with the rise of personal photography in the Victorian Era. Newspapers would print images from areas of the city rarely seen by certain segments of society, triggering their curiosity. The practice spread to New York City by the end of the nineteenth century as British tourists began to take their interest to other slums to compare them to the depressed neighborhoods of London.

Travel companies specifically oriented toward appealing to these tourists were established. Travel guides and tour operators began to lose the previous façade that such visits were couched in charitable concern. Instead, this new breed of slummers was unabashed in its open interest in gawking at the residents of ghettos and slums. Tourists were particularly interested in immigrant neighborhoods, as their residents were perceived as strangely exotic. As a result, cities with large immigrant populations saw the most incidences of slum tourism.

Over time, this form of slum tourism was viewed with increasing distaste. By World War II, slum tourism had fallen out of flavor. However, it began to re-emerge as a cultural practice in the 1990s in South Africa. Apartheid—a form of institutionalized racial segregation—resulted in the creation of racial ghettos. In the 1980s, White leaders began to take civil workers to Black townships to familiarize them with these areas. This was later matched by Black community leaders who hoped to highlight the disparities and injustice created by apartheid. Ghetto residents began offering tours of their neighborhood to social advocates. This form of township tourism eventually expanded across South Africa to all major urban centers in the country and became an entrenched commercial part of the country's tourist industry even after the fall of apartheid.

Based upon the South African example, this form of slum tourism as exposé of social ills spread to the huge slums of Brazil called favelas. In 1992, attendees of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development sought to enter the favelas to see the conditions there firsthand, but were barred from doing so by the country's leadership. Instead, activists approached tour operators to provide firsthand guided tours. As in South Africa, these initial politically motivated tours evolved into a form of commercial enterprise.

Although slum tourism in India predates the 2008 movie Slumdog Millionaire, the enormous success of the film and the empathetic portrayal of its primary protagonist Jamal—a resident of the massive Mumbai slum Dharavi—led to an upsurge in its popularity as a tourist site. Slum tours have subsequently become a revenue-generating form of tourism for many inner city neighborhoods in both first and third world nations.

Overview

Slum tours are a controversial form of urban tourism, but by the 2010s they were a growing part of the overall tourist sector. According to some estimates, more than eight hundred thousand tourists visited South Africa's economically depressed townships in 2014 as part of the country's tourist industry—a figure that accounted for nearly one fourth of all tourist visits. Experts estimated that more than one million people worldwide visited a slum as part of an organized tourist expedition in 2014. In 2017, it was estimated that the favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, alone were visited by fifty thousand tourists annually.

Some professional tourist operations seek to promote the positive aspects of economically deprived communities. Guides take tourists to schools, hospitals, after-school programs, and local economic projects to demonstrate how the community is actively working to improve residents' lives. Such tours are often held in conjunction with nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that are sponsoring or operating programs within the slums. Tours arranged in this manner seek to promote a more positive presentation of the lives of the local residents while balancing these perceptions with an understanding of how the tourists might lend assistance. For instance, tours of the Dharavi neighborhood highlight the area's economic production worth hundreds of millions of dollars each year and its thousands of small businesses.

Such tours seek to promote social change and offer tourists a form of direct exposure to the experiences of people in less fortunate circumstances. They may also directly channel money into the slums. In some neighborhoods, such tours are locally organized by members of the community who then recycle the earnings into community development projects. In one neighborhood in Bangkok, for example, residents were able to leverage increasing interest in slum tourism in their neighborhood and spare residents from eviction.

Critics argue that slum tourism is an insensitive and exploitative practice that turns poverty into entertainment. Most tourists are wealthy, while the areas they visit are economically depressed. Oftentimes tourists are foreigners. One tour guide in India explained that 96 percent of his customers that take his slum tour are foreigners. When tourists are allowed to take photographs or invade the personal spaces of the residents of these areas, it can be invasive and degrading (some tour companies disallow photography for this reason, although such rules are difficult to enforce). Even when tour programs emphasize the vibrant culture or other positive elements of poor communities, they risk romanticizing or masking the social, economic, and political challenges facing disadvantaged populations. Most experts indicate that the alleged economic benefits of slum tourism have done little to alleviate poverty on a significant scale. Yet despite these negative aspects, most academics studying the practice note that slum tourism is likely going to remain as an entrenched aspect of global tourism. Rather than banning the practice, they suggest creating stronger regulation of the industry that takes into greater account the needs of impacted residents.

Bibliography

Blau, Christine. "Inside the Controversial World of Slum Tourism." National Geographic, 25 Apr. 2018, www.nationalgeographic.com/travel/features/photography/history-controversy-debate-slum-tourism/. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Diniejko, Andrzej. "Slums and Slumming in Late-Victorian London." Victorian Web, www.victorianweb.org/history/slums.html. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Ellwood, Mark. "Inside the Very Real World of 'Slum Tourism.'" Conde Nast Traveler, 15 Mar. 2016, www.cntraveler.com/stories/2016-03-15/inside-the-very-real-world-of-slum-tourism. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Frenzel, Fabian. "'In 2014, Over One Million Tourists Visited a Township, a Favela, a Barrio or a Slum': On the Rise of Slum Tourism." City Metric, 24 June 2016, www.citymetric.com/fabric/2014-over-one-million-tourists-visited-township-favela-barrio-or-slum-rise-slum-tourism-2187. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Frisch, Thomas. "Glimpses of Another World: The Favelaas a Tourist Attraction." Tourism and Geographies of Inequality: The New Global Slumming Phenomenon. Edited by Fabian Frenzel and Ko Koens, Routledge, 2015, pp. 126-43.

Melik, James. "Slum Tourism: Patronising or Social Enlightenment?" BBC News, 24 Sept. 2012, www.bbc.com/news/business-19546792. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Nuwer, Rachel. "Who Does Slum Tourism Benefit?" Nova Next, Public Broadcasting Service, 15 Apr. 2015, www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/next/earth/slum-tourism/. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Sharma, Dristi. “Slum Tourism is a Hit in Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru. But At What Cost?” India Today, 11 Aug. 2024, www.indiatoday.in/lifestyle/travel/story/slum-tourism-is-a-hit-in-delhi-mumbai-bengaluru-but-at-what-cost-2578918-2024-08-11. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Shepard, Wade. "Slum Tourism: How It Began, The Impact It Has, And Why It Became So Popular."Forbes, 16 July 2016, www.forbes.com/sites/wadeshepard/2016/07/16/slum-tourism-how-it-began-the-impact-it-has-and-why-its-become-so-popular/#25816793297d. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

“Slum Tourism in the Americas: Commodifying Urban Poverty and Violence.” UK Research and Innovation, gtr.ukri.org/projects?ref=ES/M001970/1. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.

Steinbrink, Malte. "'We did the Slum!' – Urban Poverty Tourism in Historical Perspective." Tourism Geographies, vol. 14, no. 2, 2012, pp. 213-34.

Steinbrink, Malte, et al. "Development and Globalization of a New Trend in Tourism." Slum Tourism: Poverty, Power and Ethics. Edited by Fabian Frenzel, et al, Routledge, 2012, pp. 1-18.

Woolsey, Barbara. "You'll Feel Guilty Taking Slum Tours. But There's Good with the Bad." Thrillist, 27 July 2017, www.thrillist.com/travel/nation/slum-tourism-poverty-porn-ethics. Accessed 25 Dec. 2024.