Local–Migrant Interaction in Everyday Life in an Ancient Tourism Town

Abstract

Daily interaction is a primary means of understanding social change which is of vital importance for community well-being. In tourism host communities, daily interactions among different resident groups reflect tourism’s effects which are directly related to tourists’ experiences and community harmony. In this exploratory article, grounded theory was applied to analyze daily interactions between locals and migrants in Zhouzhuang, the first ancient tourism town in China, based on in-depth interviews. A model framework was also constructed. The results pinpoint subjective interaction intention and objective interaction opportunities as two influencing factors which operate reciprocally and directly influence locals’ and migrants’ daily interactions. The findings suggest that many locals and migrants experience clear communication boundaries in daily interactions. Both groups’ subjective interaction intentions were influenced by their cultural backgrounds, group perceptions, and original social networks, all of which are difficult to modify within a short time. Therefore, increasing objective communication opportunities is a key way to promote intergroup interaction and integration. These findings provide theoretical and practical implications for tourism host communities’ well-being and sustainable development.

The Context: COVID-19, Global Development Agendas and Tourism

“…The use of several methods to generate and analyse data further assisted with both methodological and data triangulation (Taswell et al 2019;Zhang et al 2019) as some sources of data needed double authentication. There was just too much information generated within very short periods.…”

Analysis of spatial perception and the influencing factors of attractions in Southwest China’s ethnic minority areas: The case of Dali Bai Autonomous Prefecture

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Use of Social Networking Services among Slovenes around the World

“…Although SNSs can help in keeping migrants close to their homelands, they can also hinder their motivation to establish new social relationships with local residents in destination countries, which may, in turn, affect their well-being (Zhang et al 2019;Lee et al 2020). A lack of motivation to engage in relationship building with local residents coupled with language and other barriers may result in the social loneliness of migrants despite having a sizeable social network, frequent contacts, and good family relationships (ten Kate et al 2020).…”