Mireia Munoz Page 1

Slum Tourism: Is it Responsible?

Introduction

After conscious research about the slumming, favela, pro-poor tourism, I believe it is important

to know and understand the concepts of what is a slum or favela (as are known in Brazil), and

what is the Slumming movement that is creating an international debate in Responsible

tourism. In this essay I will argue that in its current state slum tourism is not being regulated

enough for it to be considered a responsible form of tourism.

“Slum:

- A squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people:

‘inner-city slums´

- A house or building unfit for human habitation.

Synonyms: ghetto, shanty town, favela in Brazil”

(TY - ELECT1 - "slum". Oxford Dictionaries.A1)

“Slumming:

Verb (slummed, slumming) (often slum it) informal voluntarily spend time in uncomfortable

conditions or at a lower social level than one’s own”. (Slumtourism.net)

The issues currently in international discussions within the travel industry about Slum tourism

or “Poverty tourism” (Outterson et la , 2011-12), are mainly focused on determining whether

this type of tourism is Responsible or not. Although, there is no further closure on this point as

yet, academic research, debates, and articles are still ongoing to arrive at a conclusion. I think

it´s important to remember what Responsible tourism is and the aspects or conditions, the

tourism industry should comply in order to be considered as such, as by the guidelines from

the Cape Town Declaration of Responsible Tourism in Destinations (2002), or from the

Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism´s National Responsible Tourism Guidelines

(Booyens, 2010). Responsible tourism should as Harold Goodwin said be “ making better

places for people to live in and better places for people to visit”

(http://www.haroldgoodwin.info/rt.html)

History of Slum tourism

The phenomenon of Slum tourism dates back to Victorian England, in the nineteenth-century,

where some middle-upper class citizens from the UK wanted to explore “underprivileged

districts, which were perceived as dangerous and morally dubious” (Eveline Durr et la, 2012).

Soon this phenomenon extended to other cities in the USA, where the trend started to

develop as ´ethnic ´tourism, with the inclusion of tours through neighbourhoods mainly

formed by migrant communities from the same geographical area such as; China Town,

African-American districts, among others (Eveline Durr et la, 2012).

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New names re-naming this concept of tourism have arisen since then, such as “social tours”

,“reality tours” even some more specific as the “dark tours”(Bianca Freire-Medeiros 2008) ,all

of them operate, on the same original trend or bottom line, tours around impoverished areas

and on many occasions with high levels of violence and social conflicts. Also, there has been an

important increase of locations over the decades, specially growing with globalization and the

increase of international tourism as a global phenomenon, those tours have been made easily

available for tourist to visit; Township tours (South Africa) (Fabian Frenzel,2014), Favela tours

in Rochina (Brazil) and “The victims of Nazi holocaust” ( Bianca Freire-Madeiros, 2009), Tepito

tours (Mexico) and Trench town tours (Jamaica) (Eveline Durr et la, 2012), Gang tours (Los

Angeles) (Kevin Outterson et la, 2011-12), and many others locations around the globe.

Characteristics

About a billion people now live in ´informal´ settlements or ´slums´ (UN Habitat,2006). An

informal settlement normally lacking formal codes, urban planning, designs or structure in

their construction (Kim Dovey,2015). They are usually built by the local population living in the

settlement, and very often using recycled materials to build their own structures. Usually those

areas use leftovers of the terrain from the cities. However, they aren´t marginal to the cities in

economic terms as they are part of the city itself and therefore frequently have accesses to

transportations networks.

There are certain specific characteristics of the origins of each ´informal ´settlement. As an

example the origins of the favela in many cities in Brazil, were at the end of the nineteenth

century, when the abolition of slavery took place and, many people had to migrate to the

urban areas seeking work (Michael Barke et la, 2001). Low income rented properties and

buildings appeared in the cities, making the poorest migrant families unable to afford those

rentals. These families were forced to move illegally occupy any available land within the city

(Michael Barke et la, 2001). There are many common social aspects in all of them, such as the

low income family units, high rates of drug smuggling and violence, and the absence of

regulatory and efficient political policies to alleviate poverty (Kim Dovey, 2015).

Visitor’s profile

The media has also been involved in the increasing interest in ´poverty tourism´ with films such

“Slumdog Millionaire (2008)”(Kevin Otterson et la 2012), or the “City of Good (Brazil, 2002)”

(Biana Freire-Madeiros 2009) where Madeiros based on talks with tour operators in her

research, suggest that the film might be ´largely´ responsible for the increased interest in the

favela as a tourist destination. There is not a pre-determined age or social background profile,

for the participants of ´slum tourism´. However, research does suggest the need of tourists

searching for “alternative tourism” or “a real experience “(Bianca Freire-Medeiros 2009),

where interaction and the possibility of living the emotions of the ´other´, could occur.

Without entering in controversial between the need for tourist to experience the ´real ‘or as

“voyeuristic desires” (Fabian Frenzel 2014), I would like to mention the impacts this practise

might have for both, the visitor and the host communities. As the research from (Otterson et

la,2011-12) suggest, when “recognition justice” might not be guaranteed, the consequences

from the affected communities “will see a practise or policy as unfair if it privileges de cultural

terms of others over theirs without any relevant reason being offered or discussed” and social

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tensions might appear within. Also, the doubtful possibility for a visitor to fully understand

poverty in a visit to a home host during a tour (Fabian Frenzel, 2014).

The debate

Booyens declare that “tourism is increasingly being recognized for its economic potential and

its contribution to poverty alleviation” (Booyens, 2010), therefore tourism, and in this case

slum tourism, can play an important role in the alleviation of world´s poverty.

The description of ´slumming ‘made by Eveline Durr and Rivke Jaffe: “we understand

´slumming ‘as a tourist experience that involves visiting urban areas characterized by poverty,

squalor and violence” isn´t the only view of this concept. There is an extensive ethical and

moral debate on how this type of tourism impacts on the receiver communities, and it is not as

easy to quantify what the benefits are, and how those benefits plays a substantial role in the

mitigation of poverty from these ´informal ´settlements. As opposite, we find pro-poor tourism

associations such as (Propoortourism.info) promoting this type of tourism with campaigns

presenting practical advice and examples, trying to demonstrate how it can benefit

economically poor communities, stating the responsible tourism definition that “tourism can

contribute to making better places for people to live in and better places to

visit”(http://www.haroldgoodwin.info/rt.html).

Following the aim from the pro-poor tourism promoters and in certain cases political

promotions, as Frenzel suggest in his article to encourage slum tourism (Frenzel 2014), the aim

being to provide wellbeing to the slum´s citizens by bringing in tourism to alleviate poverty.

However, there are several case studies that show a failure in providing quantitative and or

positive numbers of success. As an example of this, would be the policy created in South Africa

promoting township tourism, aiming to change the mostly white ownership of the tourism

industry in the country, giving business opportunities to the local township residents (Frenzel,

2014). Unfortunately, there is no significant evidence towards a positive economic effect

resulting from these studies. Several problems are highlighted such as that most of the tour

operators providing the township tours are from outside the township, and come from a white

middle-class background, leaving the local business numbers remaining the same (Frenzel,

2014). One successful story from a township black entrepreneurial in Soweto, who became

successful, creating a completely new and different product from the rest of the tour

operators operating in his area. Therefore, It lead to a conclusive thought that in this case

success might be attached to the entrepreneur originality but not as a direct benefit from the

policies promoting slum tourism (Fabian Frenzel,2014).

Another example is Rochina favela in Rio de Janeiro (Brazil), where the favela was included in

2006 into Rio´s official tourist guide by a government initiative (Freire-Madeiros, 2009). Many

agencies and tour operators do business nowadays in the Favela offering many different tours

and products, with a very high level of competition among them, some of them have now

registered a brand. Tours offer the possibility to the tourist to visit day care centres where they

can directly contribute with donations (Bianca Freire- Madeiros, 2009). However, as Freire-

Madeiros states in her research, “cordiality of the Brazilian people is officially a key factor in

the promotion of Brazil as a tourist destination” and unfortunately violence is one of the

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biggest problems of Rochina favela. Freire-Madeiross also suggest in her research that profits

aren´t shared within the community (Bianca Freire-Madeiros, 2009). This lead to my

understanding, that there isn´t a clear policy to regulate slum tourism, and neither is there

substantial evidence pointing towards the success of poverty alleviation in the areas that slum

tourism occurs.

One of the biggest social issues as a consequence of poverty tourism, mentioned by many

researchers but especially by Frenzel, is the “territorial stigmatization”, and the “stereotyping”

of a community (Fabian Frenzel, 2014). As Frenzel states Symbolic aspects of poverty also

consist of shame and stigma that affects the poor and add to their economic misery” shame

can be transformed into Stereotypes when we talk about a community and also a negative

perception from “outsiders” creating a “territorial stigma” (Fabian Frenzel, 2014).

Conclusion

There are controversial debates within the tourism industry, and within sociology and

Philosophy researchers about moral, ethics and the need of policies to regulate and control

slum tourism as a practice. Earlier I´ve mentioned some cases where political campaigns were

directly involved on the promotion of slum or poverty tourism, without clear data or

conclusion on the success of these campaigns to mitigate poverty and to give growth

opportunities to the local communities. It is certain that the slum tourism as such, has had a

reactive measures for some communities involved, with the creation of local development

associations within the slums, such as The Trench Town Development Association (TTDA) in

Trench Town (Kingston, Jamaica), where locals are playing a much direct role in the promotion

of the community trying to improve the community reputation offering the tourist different

attractions within the community such as visits to the museum, to music studios, interaction

with local artist. Also they are collaborating to the local development from inside, giving job

opportunities as the local guides of those tours, are also local citizens from the community.

Unfortunately, the violence levels are still preventing many tourists to visit Trench Town

(Eveline Durr , Rivke Jaffe, 2012). However, there is still too much slums tourism, which is

being mainly promoted from external companies, as the cases presented earlier from the

Rochina favela or the Townships in South Africa, where the main promoters of slum tourism do

not have a direct collaboration to provide fair compensation or balanced internal

development. There is also not reliable data to confirm that these tourism schemes are

accepted by the visited communities, or aren´t coerced from a unique economical need. They

often created an internal social conflict within the communities that are in many cases created

by the interaction with the visitors, and the need to be adapted to satisfy tourist expectations

(Kevin Outterson et la, 2011).

My conclusion is that there is a real need for policies and regulations for tourism in slums.

There is a need to find a balance between the creation of poverty alleviating tourism policies

that place the emphasis on safeguard vulnerable communities and preventing social conflicts.

Consent needs to be monitored more closely, as Outterson, Selinger and Whyte suggest in

their research, and also to start being able to have measurable data, for development in the

areas where slum tourism is taking place (Kevin Outterson; Evan Selinger, Kyle Whyte, 201).

Long term strategies towards development and poverty alleviation within a more

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comprehensive framework that weighs up the moral and ethical consideration of slum tourism

are vital.

Based on the above points, all the researched sources are suggesting a lack of data to quantify

and assess the goals set by the promoters of slum tourism to alleviate poverty. It is not

possible to have certainty that the guidelines of Responsible tourism are being met, I conclude

by saying that Slum tourism today, can´t be seen as Responsible.

Bibliography

Bianca Freire-Medeiros (2008) The favela and its touristic transits. Geoforum 40, 2009,

pp.580-588.

Eveline Durr and Rivke Jaffe (2012) Theorizing Slum Tourism: Performing, Negotiating and

Transforming Inequality. European Review of Latin American and Caribbean Studies 93,

October 2012, pp 113-123

Fabian Frenzel (2014) Slum Tourism and Urban Regeneration: Touring inner Johannesburg.

Urban Forum 25, 2014, pp. 431-447

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