From Peace to Harmony: Islamophobia, Securitized Mobility, and the Limits of Peace Tourism

What the paper says

Tourism is frequently promoted as a “force for peace,” grounded in the assumption that cross-cultural contact and mobility foster mutual understanding and reduce prejudice. Yet this idealism becomes increasingly unstable when examined through the lens of Islamophobia and the securitization of Arab and Muslim mobility, particularly in the post-9/11 era and more sharply following October 7, 2023. This article critically reexamines the tourism–peace nexus by demonstrating how contemporary travel regimes simultaneously position Arab and Muslim travelers as desirable consumers and suspect subjects. As a result, tourism encounters are often structured by surveillance, profiling, moral boundary making, and conditional forms of hospitality rather than egalitarian contact. Drawing on securitization theory, critical mobility studies, and critical tourism scholarship, the article argues that peace-through-tourism narratives are conceptually overextended in contexts where mobility is asymmetrical, governed by security logics, and embedded within service hierarchies. In such settings, “contact” does not operate as a neutral or equalizing mechanism but is mediated by power, risk management, and affective regulation. Rather than framing tourism as a pathway to peace, the article advances a conceptual reorientation toward harmony: understood as the managed production of civility, affective smoothness, and nondisruption that allows tourism to function without addressing structural inequality, political antagonism, or injustice. The article makes three contributions. First, it specifies Islamophobia and securitization as critical boundary conditions that destabilize peace tourism claims. Second, it maps how Arab and Muslim travelers navigate conditional hospitality through adaptive strategies of visibility management, self-regulation, and destination choice. Third, it reframes tourism’s social significance away from peace outcomes toward harmonizing practices that may stabilize coexistence while simultaneously silencing conflict. In doing so, the article offers a more analytically precise and ethically attentive framework for understanding tourism’s role in an era of politicized mobility and unequal belonging.