Exploring Otherness. Reflections on the Role of Social Innovation in Tourism and Migration

Abstract

Several authors claim that in postmodernity the roles of social actors are multiple and the conceptual boundaries between “tourists” and “migrants” are more and more porous and permeable. Such assumptions are supported by the introduction of paradigms that analyse tourism and migration through an integrated approach. The new mobilities approach, for example, seeks to place tourism and migration within a unified theoretical framework that conceptualises mobility as a cultural practice, where different actors play an active role within the process of symbolic negotiation of the meanings of everyday practices.

On the basis of these reflections, this contribution intends to investigate the ways in which tourism and migration can converge within the same social practices. The theoretical starting point of this paper is the concept of social innovation declined through the approach of arts and creativity, and its possibilities of action on tourism and migration. Social innovation, therefore, redefines the spaces of encounter between tourists and migrants, between different kinds of “otherness”. Through some reflections on specific case studies investigated during different ethnographic fieldworks, this paper will shed lights on how creative social innovation intervenes in tourism and migration, focusing mainly on narrative aspects and participatory practices.