Bianchi & Stephenson 1 Not for citation: Published in: Paasi, A., E. Prokkola, J. Saarinen & K. Zimmerbauer (eds.) Borderless Worlds - For Whom? Ethics, moralities and (in)justices in mobilities. Routledge (2018). Tourism, Border Politics and the Fault Lines of Mobility Raoul V. Bianchi and Marcus L. Stephenson Abstract This chapter examines the contradictions that mark the intersections between the right to the freedom of movement and travel, and the right to tourism. While tourism is celebrated as an instrument of economic development, force for peace and a marker of global citizenship, the intensification of securitized bordering practices has accentuated severe inequalities between those deemed to lack the right credentials for travel and those whose mobility is defined as legitimate. The argument presented in this chapter repudiates the normative view of tourism as an apolitical phenomenon removed from the broader realm of mobility politics and structural determinants of immobility. In doing so it highlights a central paradox of international tourism, whereby growing institutional support for the right to tourism coincides with and potentially reinforces calls for the securitization of borders to be strongly enforced - at home and at the destination itself. Introduction International tourism has increasingly come to be regarded as a predominantly positive social and economic force that few states attempt to restrict and many have sought to embrace. Meanwhile, the right to travel within and across international borders which constitutes the prerequisite for enjoying the pleasures of being a tourist, has increasingly become the focus of academic debate (Breakey and Breakey, 2013; Higgins-Desbiolles, 2007). Following the collapse of the Soviet Union and centralized state-planned economies throughout East Europe in conjunction with market reforms in China, the embrace of liberal capitalism and democracy was supposed to herald the dissolution of national borders as markets became increasingly integrated and citizens (re)claimed their right to the freedom of movement (see Fukuyama, 1989; Ohmae, 1990). However, recent events associated with the upsurge of global migration and the securitization of borders (see Jones, 2016), bear witness to the profound asymmetries that mark the mobility rights and empowerments of tourists and those deemed to lack the “right credentials for travel” (Kaur and Hutnyk, 1999, p.3). As unprecedented numbers of people seek