Abstract

The authors analyze borders and tourism in the context of globalization. They critically assess the progress and status of borders and border studies in various narratives related to globalization. In so doing, they start with an understanding that both “borders” and “globalization” are contested and historically contingent categories. The focus of the chapter is threefold. The authors first scrutinize how globalization became topical in research since the 1990s in relation to tourism. Tourism has been recognized as an important force in the process of globalization, owing principally to its contribution to creating modern transportation systems and infrastructure that support traveling, such as airports, hotels, and resorts. Expanding tourism has also forced governments to simplify formal procedures related to travel and adopt innovative technologies, such as self-check-in kiosks, which enable the processing of an escalating number of tourists. Second, the authors examine how borders became a keyword in the age of globalization, and how the meaning of borders has been gradually shifting. Tourism, along with other forms of mobilities, both physical and imsaginative travel, has contributed to the touristic visions of the world as borderless or “un-bounded”, often drawing on the metaphors of “networks” and “fluids”. Finally, they problematize the relation between territories, borders, and (tourism) mobilities. In so doing, the authors contend that borders and mobilities are becoming increasingly two sides of the same coin though mobility itself remains divided.