On tourism, geography and the biopolitical

Biopolitics concerns all manifestations of politicisation of life. The academic literature accordingly views the biopolitical as both an analytical framework and a governmental tool in modern societies. It is thus widely accepted in the tourism literature that biopolitics plays a significant role in shaping contemporary mass experiences of leisure travel and consumption. This article critically reflects on how the geographical literature in Tourism Studies has considered biopolitics both as a set of practices associated with tourism and as an analytical approach to understand the management of bodies and the politics of life in tourism. Initially focused on segregated tourism spaces and the associated power relations, geographical work on tourism engaged with questions of biopolitics has since expanded to include the examination of other spaces and other forms of social interaction related to the politicization of life. In the future, this debate may face increasing challenges in teasing out the ways in which the biopolitical governance of mobility manifests itself in highly differentiated practices of sovereign power over the bodies of tourists, tourism workers and the associated spatialities. Such analysis will require taking into consideration not only how bodies are represented but also how their representation affects the mobility of different subjectivities as a function of biopolitical dispositives based on class, race, sexuality, gender, age, nationality and other categories that incorporate groups and individuals within specific power rationalities.