Alexander Trupp

Rural - urban migration and ethnic minority enterprise

Over the last years, an increasing number of Thailand’s ethnic highland minorities has moved to urban and tourist areas to enter self-employment. While most urban-based minorities remain invisible for visitors and other outsiders, eye-catching female Akha handicraft and souvenir sellers became part of an informal sector that is linked to the global tourism economy. This chapter illustrates the evolvement of urban Akha souvenir businesses over time and space and explores the embeddedness of female Akha entrepreneurs in social networks and in wider economic and political-institutional structures as well as the resulting chances and challenges. This chapter also explores the strategies Akha migrants employ to become successful entrepreneurs by showing how they transform cultural and social resources into economic capital.

Exhibiting the ‘Other’ then and Now: ‘Human Zoos’ in Southern China and Thailand

From the eighteenth to the early-twentieth century, a form of public exhibition in which the objects of display were ‘real people’ gained worldwide popularity. These colonial expositions, taking place all around the world, from New York to London, Vienna, Moscow, or Tokyo, were exhibiting ‘otherness’ by emphasizing physical and later politico-economic and socio-cultural differences of the displayed persons who were often ‘imported’ from overseas colonies. These forms of unequal representation are commonly referred to as ‘human zoos’ and are “exceptional in combining the functions of exhibition, performance, education and domination”. Even though the era of colonial human zoos ended in the 1940s, one can still observe similar developments and power relations in the context of modern ‘ethnic tourism’. In South-East Asia and China, several ‘ethnic villages’ and ‘ethnic theme parks’ exist that put on show exotic appearing ethnic minorities to paying domestic and international tourists. While some observers deplore these tourist attractions as modern human zoos, others argue that they may help preserving a rare culture and provide a source of income for the displayed ethnic groups. This article gives a short overview of the development of these questionable attractions that were transformed from cabinets of curiosities to colonial exhibitions and ethnic theme parks/villages, and discusses present examples from Thailand and Southern China.

The Development and Diversity of Asian Tourism in Europe: The case of Vienna

Abstract Tourists from Asia offer a promising alternative target for some of the traditional European tourist markets that have stagnated owing to the economic crisis. The number of Asian tourist arrivals in Austria’s capital city Vienna has increased dramatically, as double-digit growth rates of recent years demonstrate. A remarkable recovery of the Japanese market as well as an exponential growth of the Chinese and South Korean markets, in addition to the high spending power of Thai tourists, have created a highly positive scenario for the tourism industry in Austria. This paper uses Vienna as a case study to exemplify the rise of Asian tourism in Europe. Tourism statistics, media reports, and materials of destination marketing organizations were analyzed to provide an evaluation of trends and growth of Asian outbound tourism to Vienna. The authors argue that the sophistication of tourist consumption of European cultural attractions is in line with stages of socio-economic and political development of Asian countries, and that travel patterns significantly differ within the Asian market.

Thai communities in Vienna

This article provides a short overview on Thais in Vienna, offering some selected impressions of the second largest South-East Asian community in Austria. For a long time immigrants have mainly been portrayed as cheap labour force and low-skilled workers who were recruited in order to counter the problem of labour shortage in Austria (Castles & Miller, 2003; Mayer, 2010). Indeed, immigrants from all over the world have shaped the appearance and development of Vienna for centuries. In this context, not much is known about South-East Asian communities in Vienna. Official data of Statistik Austria (2010a) registered 22,551 South-East Asians in Austria, with more than half of them living in Vienna. This number includes persons who hold a South-East Asian citizenship (whether they were born in Austria or abroad) as well as persons who were born in South-East Asia but now hold Austrian citizenship.

Analyzing International Migrant Responses to Crisis Situations in the Context of Floods in Thailand

The 2011 floods in Thailand were one of the most devastating disasters in the history of the country and affected migrants in several regions. The purpose of this paper is to analyze migrant responses in crisis situations and to assess the impact of the 2011 floods on migrants from Myanmar, Lao PDR, Cambodia, and Vietnam. The authors argue that such migrant groups have a weaker social, economic, and political position when compared with local (non-migrant) groups and are thus facing particular vulnerabilities in crisis situations. This paper is based on desk research and empirical data collection consisting of 55 semi-structured interviews.