Reimagining Transnational Relations: the Embodied Politics of Visiting Friends and Relatives Mobilities

Abstract

Migrant populations are often viewed in terms of alterity despite being settled members of communities. The image of migrants in many western contexts is one of being poor or ethnically and religiously different. This image in turn often frames migrants as being non-local. However, in reality, the local is not perceived and constructed through predetermined or essentialist subjectivity but through processes of constructing and negotiating borders of identity and place that incite people to shift between subject positions of local/visitor, host/guest, or tourist/migrant. This paper problematises the rigidity of social positions that underpin images of migrant populations as the other by examining the visiting friends and relatives (or VFR) practices of migrant residents in Malmö, Sweden. Whereas many studies of VFR build on a tourism-migration dialectic and focus on migrants, this study uses mobility politics as an analytical lens to examine both migrant residents and their friends and family. This focus sheds light on how family and friend's mobility politics are connected to the perception and construction of the local, local selves, and others. The research findings demonstrate that migrant residents are not the other but are an embedded part of the city regularly attracting visitors to the area. Furthermore, during visits, lines between host and guest, migrant and tourist, and visitor and local are blurred. Residents and visitors, guided by the rules of hospitality, attribute new embodied meanings to tourist and migrant mobilities that strengthen and bound the imaginations of residents and visitors to transnational networks. The conclusions from the study also help shed light on migrant integration and potential avenues for working with integration in the future.

Towards a new definition for “visiting friends and relatives”

“…Likewise, instead of referring to a resident, it is more accurate to introduce the term “host,” as this implies receiving, guiding, or helping the visitor at the destination, relating to influencing more clearly. A substantial body of research in VFR has noted that the host plays a crucial part in the VFR experience having a very strong influence in the trip and the visitors' behaviour (Backer , ; Griffin ; Humbracht ; Lehto et al ; McKercher ; Meis et al ; Young et al, ). As a result, it is imperative to include the host in a new definition of VFR travel, and consequently, the first part of the differentiator for a new definition of VFR should be the “influence of a host” in the trip.…”

“…This form of travel is commonly referred to as visiting friends and relatives (VFR) and is receiving growing interest in tourism academe and practice (Backer & King, 2015;Griffin, 2013c;Moscardo G., Pearce P., Morrison A., Green D., & O'Leary J. T., 2000), as well as broader and more critical discussions on human movement (Cohen & Cohen, 2012). The implications of VFR travel are therefore apparent across a range of disciplines and stakeholders as personal connections between disparate people affect ongoing migration flows, trade patterns (Dwyer L., Seetaram N., Forsyth P., & King B., 2014), place image and communication, cultural and economic development (Griffin, 2013b), immigrant integration (Griffin, 2016;Humbracht, 2015), and further business and pleasure tourism (Seetaram, 2012).…”

Identifying active resident hosts of VFR visitors

“…Many scholars have argued, however, that VFR travel is vastly underestimated, in terms of its volume as well as its economic and socio‐cultural impacts on participants, communities, and businesses (e.g., Backer, 2012; Jackson, 1990). The study of VFR is relatively nascent, yet gaining momentum as researchers seek to measure its magnitude and impacts, examining its potential for marketing and economic development (e.g., Backer, Leisch, & Dolnicar, 2017), as well as its role in facilitating community integration and cultural development (e.g., Humbracht, 2015). However, VFR research has predominantly focused on the demand side and looked to measure and understand visitor experiences and the impacts they bring.…”

Solidarity in spaces of ‘care and custody’: The hospitality politics of immigration detention visiting

“…While acts of hospitality are concerned with opening up to outsiders and enabling border crossings, they are simultaneously concerned with articulating those borders, defining otherness and establishing rules of acceptable engagement. The assignment of host and guest roles often involves assumptions about who belongs and what they own (Hamington, 2010), their legal status (Stronks, 2012), whether they are new to a place and how mobile they are (Humbracht, 2015). Discourses of hospitality therefore frequently participate in gendered, classed and racialized patterns of difference (Gardey, 2016).…”

“…Firstly, the assumption that demarcations of belonging in a place determines who can take on hospitality roles has led to theorists to view hosts and guests as automatic products of social conditions rather than as objects of strategy. Those interested in thinking through hospitality beyond Derrida's vision have identified situations that do not conform to the dominant migrant-guest, state-host dynamic (Humbracht, 2015;Rozakou, 2012) as well as situations where guests over time become hosts (Bulley, 2015). However, few have explored spaces where there is ambiguity, strategy and play with hospitality roles.…”