Slum Tourism: State of the Art

This article provides a view on the state-of-the-art literature on slum tourism. It points to the rapid growth of slum tourism research in recent years and highlights the main avenues that research has thus far explored in areas such as slum tourism history, slum tourist subjectivity, resident perspectives, slum tourism operations, economics, and mobilities. With the advent of slum tourism the relationship of poverty and tourism has changed. Tourism is no longer only a means to fight poverty, but poverty is an attraction of tourism. This has consequences for the relationship of slum tourism to other forms of tourism where poverty functions as an attraction, like volunteer or developmental tourism. The article identifies research gaps as well as avenues for further research.