Tourism, Migrations and co-development

Abstract

Tourism is one of the first economic activities in the world generating directly and indirectly between the 10 and 12% of world wealth. Its successes have hidden during a long time its social impacts and negative effects on environment, also hiding the narrow and intense relations that occur between tourism and migrations. Be enough with indicating that emigrants coming from the South or the European East usually use a tourist visa to reach their “promised land”. Immigrants coming from the North -more and more numerous- are, often, tourists who decide to remain in the place where they have chosen to visit. In the global context it is necessary to analyse the relations between tourism and migration, and the way as tourism could integrate the migratory phenomenon in its sociopolitical dimension from the principles of codevelopment. The author suggests leaning more in the eyes of the sociologist and the political analyst to evaluate the new subjects that affect tourism, such as the implications of social mobility/migration, the free circulation of people and their impact on both developing and developed societies.