Description
Orphanage tourism is where tourist interactions with 'orphaned' children are central to traveller itineraries and experience making in less-developed contexts.
While appealing to the desire of tourists and volunteers to 'do good' while travelling, underlining orphanage tourism is the fact that the vast majority of children (over 80%) in orphanages and allied care institutions are not orphans. Instead, children are often placed in institutions due to poverty and hardship, and as victims of human trafficking.
In some cases, orphanages can be for-profit enterprises, where the commodification of good intentions begins and becomes embedded in the tourism supply chain. Children are becoming tourist attractions and the focus of tourist consumption, leading to orphanages as sites of tourism production and consumption.
The first of its kind, this book highlights exploratory research that examines the links between modern slavery practices and orphanage tourism.
Contributors include academics and practitioners with a long engagement in advocacy for the rights and protection of children and research into sustainable and responsible tourism.
Written in an accessible manner that appeals to a broad audience.
This book will appeal to researchers interested in the areas of tourism, human geography, development studies, childhood studies, law and social justice, as well as those interested in responsible and sustainable travel. Practitioners, policy makers and civil society groups working at the vanguard of tourism expansion and communities in less-developed contexts - particularly where labour rights transgressions, human exploitation and trafficking are prevalent - will also find the book insightful.
Royalties from the sales of this book will be donated to Save the Children Australia and the Forget Me Not Foundation.
Table of contents
- Part I: Orphanage Tourism, Modern Slavery and Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Chapter 1: Orphanage Tourism and the Convention on the Rights of the Child
- Chapter 2: Orphanages as sites of Modern Slavery
- Chapter 3: Historical and socio-political drivers of Australian participation in orphanage tourism in Bali
- Part II: Institutionalisation
- Chapter 4: People, money and resources: The drivers of institutionalisation
- Chapter 5: Promising Practices: Strengthening families and systems to prevent and reduce the institutional care of children
- Chapter 6: What drives voluntourism? Internal Impulses and External Encouragement
- Chapter 7: How filmmaking can support advocacy: The voluntourist and orphanage tourism
- Chapter 8: Consuming poverty: Volunteer tourism in an orphanage in Nepal
- Part IV: A counter narrative
- Chapter 9: A “nice, knock-down argument” about orphanage tourism, modern slavery, and the power and peril of naming
Reviews
This book demonstrates the nuances and complexities of orphanage tourism. While some volunteering may be beneficial when not framed within development aid models. Stephen Ucembe's afterword reinforces to the reader just how dehumanizing these institutions are - not only through the humiliating performances of poverty and despair that children must display for volunteers and visitors to receive funding, but also because too often these children are vulnerable to sexual and emotional abuse. The heart of the issue is the commodification of children for the purpose of tourism. This book paves the way for important dialogue and actions necessary to address this deeply problematic form of tourism. - Phoebe Everingham
Joseph M. Cheer is at the Center for Tourism Research at Wakayama University, Japan. He most recently lectured in the School of Languages, Literatures, Cultures & Linguistics at Monash University and is board member of the International Geography Union (IGU) Commission onTourism and Leisure and Global Change. His research draws from transdisciplinary perspectives, especially human/economic geography, cultural anthropology and political economy. Joseph is focused on research to practice with an emphasis on resilience building, sustainability and social justice in tourism. He recently published ‘Tourism Resilience and Adaptation to EnvironmentalChange’ and ‘Tourism Resilience and Sustainability: Adapting to Social, Political and EconomicChange’ (with Alan Lew).
