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  1. 1 International Review of Social Research

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  1. 1 Norum R. E.

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  1. 1 2013

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The Unbearable Likeness of Being a Tourist: Expats, Travel and Imaginaries in the Neo-colonial Orient

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Norum R. E.
International Review of Social Research
|
2013
|
vol. 3
|
issue 1
27-47
EN
This paper considers the impact of shared imaginaries of mobility among so-called elite, mobile professionals - early-career expatriates living in Nepal for a period of one to three years. Based on 18 months of fieldwork among expatriates in Kathmandu, I explore the ways in which these actors construct, navigate and narrativise the boundaries between themselves and the many tourists who visit Nepal each year. While in some transnational contexts, these guests may seek to align themselves with other guests such as tourists and foreign residents as a means of asserting and expressing shared commonalities of transnationality and mobility, expatriates in Kathmandu are keen to highlight perceived distance between themselves and other guests as much as they are the perceived proximities between themselves and native Nepalis. In focusing on this former interaction, I show that tourist imaginaries become important means for expatriates to negotiate difference as they learn their new local identities in a context of spatial and temporal transience. Though the academic literatures of migration and tourism have developed more or less in isolation from one another, these two spheres of mobility are in fact very much interrelated. I suggest that anthropological research into the self-conceptions of mobile professionals take into consideration other non-local groups with whom they share local spaces, since these actors can be used instrumentally as a means of strengthening both group and individual identities. If anthropology engages effectively with the interactions between hosts and guests in colonial spaces, I argue that just as much can be gleaned by looking at engagements between guests and other guests. Through a consideration of these border zones of encounter, anthropologists can illustrate ethnographically how individual expatriate identities are negotiated within communities of elite, mobile professionals.
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