Dark tourism or ‘poorism’ is on the rise, giving curious tourists the opportunity to see poverty up close in person. Tours of Rio’s favelas or South Africa’s townships have long been established as popular day trips. Slum tourism however has been widely criticized for exploiting some of the poorest people in the world and is often described as voyeurism rather than tourism.
A Typical Slum Tour
Slum tours bring tourists from the protected environment of the touristic district to some of the most dangerous places on earth. However, the risk for visitors is minimal since they are accompanied by a local guide, someone who knows the slum inside out and is widely accepted by the locals.
Meandering the tiny alleys, ducking to avoid exposed electrical wires and jumping over open sewers, visitors can witness daily life in the slum. Many are surprised to see that these slums are a town in itself offering most essential services.
The tour typically visits the local artisan shops, the community center, the daycare center, or galleries featuring local artists’ work. Children enthusiastically circle around their visitors, practicing the English words they learned in school and offering to pose for the camera.
Slum Tourism to Raise Awareness on Poverty
Proponents claim that a visit to a slum can raise awareness about poverty and the conditions in which some people are living. “Tourism is one of the few ways that you or I are ever going to understand what poverty means,” said Harold Goodwin, director of the International Center for Responsible Tourism to the New York Times.
The tour operators believe that these tours can change the negative view of slums as places of pure misery and crime and show that people who live there are eager to better themselves and improve their situation. When Christopher Way came up with the idea of organizing a Dharavi slum tour in Mumbai, his intention was to challenge the stereotype of the poor. "We're trying to dispel the myth that people there sit around doing nothing, that they're criminals," he said to the Smithsonian Magazine. "We show it for what it is—a place where people are working hard, struggling to make a living and doing it in an honest way."
Economic Opportunities for Slum Dwellers
Proponents such as Goodwin and Way argue that the presence of tourists in the slum also provides economic opportunities to the local entrepreneurs. When locals realize that they will not get anything through begging, many start making something they can sell.
In addition, the majority of these tours operators are cooperating with charities or NGO's active in the slums and are donating part of their profit to social or cultural projects in the slum.
Slum Tourism is Voyeurism
Critics consider slum tourism as straightforward exploitation and voyeurism. “Would you want people stopping outside of your front door every day, or maybe twice a day, snapping a few pictures of you and making some observations about your lifestyle?” asked David Fennell, a professor of tourism and environment at Brock University, Ontario in the New York Times article. According to Fennell, the real purpose of these tours is for Westerners to remind themselves how lucky they are.
A tourism official described the organizers of the Dharavi slum tours in Mumbai as “parasites who need to be investigated and put behind bars” on the Indian television channel Times Now.
Responsible Slum Tours
Goodwin understands the reservation or objections some people might have but claims that the main issue is not whether these tours should exist but rather how they are conducted. There is a world of difference between tours that drive tourists around in jeeps as if they were on safari and excursions in small groups that interact respectfully with locals. One thing is certain; this discussion will not end any day soon.
Slum tours are now part of a stay in Rio, Johannesburg, Nairobi and Mumbai and are quickly spreading to other third world cities.
Natalie Lefevre - Natalie Lefevre has lived in several places around the world but now lives and writes from her home country, Belgium. Her expertise is in ...
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