Mobilities after Covid 19 – Social and Wellbeing Perspectives on Tourism in Unsettling Times

Tourism is understood as a social institution that contributes to social cohesion and wellbeing of societies both for hosts and guests. Tourism´s experiential nature has been sensitive to global threats and impacts felt on local communities. The Covid-19 pandemic and the subsequent socio-economic global upheavals, the conflict in Europe, rising inflation, and the ever-worsening climate change dilemma, have put tourism social praxis under siege. In the restarting of tourism, we need to question whose freedom, power and wellbeing are of interest? The way social institutions exert power in tourism (Ahmad, 2013; Albright et al., 2018; Bourdieu, 2018) while framing social practices and influencing environmental social agencies, provokes new entanglements in tourism consumption and the politics of host-guest relations and cultural exchange. Because of this, issues of freedom and mobilities, safety and security, and the nature and politics of entanglements between hosts and guests, calling into question wellbeing outcomes are at the heart of tourism debates.

This session welcomes original sociological contributions to tourism studies inquiry. Papers may focus on:

- State-of-the-art research on sociology and tourism mobilities

- Social structure and agency in contemporary tourism, including resident/employee perspectives

- The wellbeing of employees and residents living in tourism destination areas.

- Tourism constraints, inequality, injustices in contemporary tourism – how can local voices be incorporated?

- The nature and politics of entanglements between hosts and guests since the recommencement of international tourism.

- Sustainable tourism practices, novel approaches to re-launching tourism, new tourist behaviours and values in Post-Covid 19 scenarios