Tourism, migration and human capital: knowledge and skills at the intersection of flows

This paper starts from two propositions relating to tourism-migration relationships, and knowledge transfer. First, there has been considerable interest in recent years in ideas relating to ‘tourist-migrant’ workers, that is, in the complex inter-relationships between economic and cultural/tourism motivations, particularly amongst young people. However, this represents only one of the many economic relationships between tourism and migration, two phenomena that often have been studied in isolation (Williams and Hall, 2002). There is a need for a better understanding of how these are entwined in an economy of flows (Hudson 2004), shaping economic outcomes in the tourism sector. Secondly, there has also been a neglect of the role of labour mobility in knowledge transfer, innovation, and competitiveness – and this is particularly notable in an industry such as tourism, where demand and, in part, production, are essentially based on mobility. International tourists seek out experiences and services beyond their usual countries of residence, and the resulting demand for knowledge in the labour force that provides these creates a potentially significant role of migrant workers. This paper brings these themes together, in order to explore the role of migration in the creation and transfer of knowledge and skills in tourism