Chronicle Editor
Simbarashe Murima, Correspondent
IN this modern age, education, medical, sports, and employment reasons have been added to the purposes of tourism and migration.
Although such reasons for travel purposes are often temporary, some people will transform them into permanent settlements.
The mobility of people across international borders has significantly grown, and immigration laws around the world are becoming stiffer.
It is inundating to realise that it is becoming difficult to enter many developed as well as some African countries.
Some of these countries are making their immigration laws stricter, as a mitigating approach to curb terrorism or to discourage the influx of asylum seekers, and other migrants. Conversely, there is a continuum between tourism and migration, since these two appear to be the most substantial forms of human mobility.
Nonetheless, in this article context, immigration is defined as the process whereby an individual intends to travel to a foreign country to live there permanently. Tourism is described as when an individual visits a foreign country to stay there temporarily and returns to his permanent residence. Tourism repeatedly drives different forms of mobility and is a sector that relies on the efficient movement and interaction of people. Moreover, it is an industry that facilitates the growth of other verticals, such as leisure, hospitality, business, conferences, and entertainment.
Lately, there have been disturbing news and events that have occurred around the world and have caused “distress” to the tourism sector. In the UK, the fatal stabbing of three young girls at a dance class in the seaside town of Southport, in the north of England, was exacerbated by the worst unrest the country has seen in more than a decade.
The suspect was a teenage boy born in Wales to Rwandan parents. However, violence broke out near a local mosque fuelled by racial tensions and anti-immigration sentiment.
Another incident took place in South Africa, Miss South Africa entrant Chidimma Adetshina quit the beauty contest over queries of her nationality. Her participation in the pageant sparked outrage from South African citizens which led her to withdraw from the contest.
In another incident, the Namibian Government refused a request to extend the visa of a Ugandan king who had been getting medical treatment since April, and commotion and incense among his followers led to a diplomatic travesty in Namibia.
Australia began enforcing tough visa policies for foreign students, despite its government recently proposing a “soft cap” on the number of international students higher institutions can accept. The argument by the Australian government is that there is a sudden influx of foreign workforce, and students have worsened pressure on the present tight rental market. Nonetheless, such a policy will have a widened negative impact on educational tourism which enables students to travel and study abroad.
Edu-tourism is a form of tourism that goes beyond the other forms of tourism that offer business or pleasure travel packages. This type of tourism will help governments add to global collaboration, workshop or conference travels, and unconventional international scientific research.
These are isolated incidents, but the impacts of these actions are immediate and may be severe, particularly for the tourism industry.
The severity of these brief incidents will affect religious, sports, cultural, medical, and educational tourism. In my view, these are political reactions to immigration and have led to Afrophobia or Afroscepticism.
Afrophobia also known as Anti-African sentiment is discrimination, any act of violence, resentment, discernment, or racism towards people and cultures of African descent and of the African diaspora. It is imperative to note that immigration affects political outcomes and vice versa.
Historically, politics and immigration law are intertwined by religious, ethnic, and racial influence. Thus, immigration has become a progressively salient political issue in many prevailing democracies and political forces. Although immigration can influence tourism flow, it can be detrimental to tourism if negatively-politically motivated.
Any sovereign country’s immigration laws exist to fortify security and keep away terrorists or militants from entering its country. Conversely, some of these disturbances have not only caught global attention but have led to travel warnings from several countries. For example, the tourism industry in the UK is facing growing challenges. The UK’s hotel industry has been under immense pressure, because of cancellations or hesitancy from potential guests.
This necessitates responding efficiently and restoring confidence in guests about their safety and well-being. The unrest has had adverse effects on the airline sector as there was an opportunity for market growth in the airline and tourism sectors but this may not be because of its political implications and downstream effects on the industry. The reality is that these politically motivated immigration policies will make it far more difficult for potential tourists and professionals to travel, live, work, and spend their money in some of these countries.
Simbarashe Murima (PhDc) writes in his own capacity as an education, tourism and hospitality expert in Namibia, Zimbabwe, and South Africa Feedback: [email protected] /0781480742.
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