Can Anybody Hear Me? a Critical Analysis of Young Residents' Voices in Tourism Studies

Abstract

In this review article, tourism is recognized as a powerful force of change for host communities. The authors maintain that many empirical studies of residents' perceptions of tourism have argued that tourism has the ability to transform the lives of locals who inhabit a given destination region, generating both positive and negative economic, environmental, and sociocultural impacts there. However, the authors suggest that the focus of these received studies has been placed on the perceptions and experiences of adult residents, resulting in an absence of research that examines how young residents view, perceive, and adapt to tourism in their communities. To address this gap, this review article critically analyzes the role of young residents in Tourism Studies to date. An inventory of 30 previous studies that focused on young residents in tourism research was compiled and analyzed. Adapting a framework of the presence and role of Indigenous people in tourism research, the authors classified these articles into three categories—namely, the silent, the acknowledged, and the youth-focused. In this inspection, key findings identified the lack of children's and young people's agency and voice, providing a theoretically driven undercurrent guiding future inquiry and developing a pathway toward new “voice-generative” methods. The authors recommend that the specific approaches that they identify for deployment in the field should be ethically sensitive to the needs of children and young people and thereby be more accommodating in their capacity to develop and enhance discourse on youth in tourism.