The Third World tourist: Why does traveling become an obstacle race?

Flights booked. Housing arranged. Insurance ready. Thirty-year-old Joel could already picture himself strolling in the elegant and opulent Milano streets or eating a flavourful stracciatella ice-cream at the strident Genoa harbour, while flipping through the pages of his Italy travel guide. Would be the Mediterranean sea as blue as it looks in the pictures?, he wondered and imagined the sound of the waves and the smell of the ocean. “I could stop by a souvenir shop and bring some local specialities to my friends”, he wished.

Joel Nsubuga at his shop's door in Kampala,Uganda

Ciao, Grazie mille, Per favore. He had even learnt some words in Italian and repeated them thoroughly, eager to interact with the local people.

But Joel was not traveling to Italy.

“Not this time”, he told his friends, while spilling furiously spicy all over his chicken dish in a Ugandan restaurant of Kampala, where he had grown up and spent his whole life so far.

He was not going to explore new places, neither tasting unique Italian flavours nor dipping his hands in the Mediterranean waters for the first time. All plans had been cancelled. Instead, the same humdrum chicken awaited him today as tomorrow and days to come. His delusions of being a tourist in Italy had fallen apart.

The legitimacy of being a tourist

Mass tourism experienced an incredible expansion in the latter half of the 20th century, due to the economic globalization. According to the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), a tourist is a particular type of traveller whose trip includes an overnight stay or same-day visit.

As such, tourism is considered a universal right. The UNWTO Global Code of Ethics for Tourism, adopted in 1999, acknowledges in its Article 7 the equal and legitimate access for all world’s inhabitants to discover and enjoy the planet’s resources.

In addition, its Article 8 declares the freedom to cross borders, within a state or from one to another, that tourists and visitors should benefit “without being subjected to excessive formalities or discrimination”. However, these basic rights cannot being always taken for granted, specially if you are a Third World citizen.

It was a warm day of July in Kampala, like most of the days in the ‘Pearl of Africa’, when Joel realized this fact.

He was walking back to his clothes shop from the Italian embassy with his passport in one hand and a document that legally unable him to travel to Europe in the other. He kept rereading the paper sitting at the door of his small business, while waiting for clients to interrupt his frustration.

Why can a visa be refused?

The European Parliament states that the reasons for a denial of a Schengen Visa, that allows to travel within the borders of the EU, can be several: inter alia, having a false or invalid visa, residence permit or travel document; purpose and conditions of stay not justified, among others.

In the case of Joel’s refusal there were two ticks: one marking the box that states his return to Uganda could not been guaranteed and other on the one that says that tourism was not a strong motivation to allow him to travel.

Joel’s friend Mawejje had already warned him that applying for this kind of visa was not only an expensive and time-consuming process -flights, travel insurance and hotels need to be paid beforehand-, but most of the times it ended up with an unpleasant reply.

Two times this young Ugandan attempted to explore the world outside Africa, one for the United States and other for the United Kingdom, and both occasions he came back home carrying a rejection letter, similar to the one Joel showed him with grievance.

Passports, powerful tools of discrimination

There are not public statistics of how many tourist visas are denied every year by embassies of Western countries located in the Third World. A total of 260,375 people were refused to entry at the EU’s external borders in 2014, but it is not said how many of them had tourist motivations.

What it is easy to find are rankings that categorize the world countries regarding the convenience of their passports to obtain a visa.

Uganda’s passport, together with Sierra Leone and Zimbabwe’s ones, scores 71 out of 92 positions in the Global Passport Power Rank 2016. Germany and Sweden lead this classification, followed by European states and the United States, while Pakistan and Afghanistan, preceded by African and other Asian countries, are placed at the very bottom of the index.

Darren O’Byrne, researcher in Tourism from the University of Surrey Roehampton, defines the passport not just as legal paper, but both as a symbolic document that “uphold a cultural definition of national identity” and a political one “which may serve to legitimate processes of exclusion”.

The origins of passports date back to the 11th century, when the Spanish authorities issued the first safe-conduct (“guidaticum”) to ease exchanges between Christians and Muslims at the time. In the 16th century this practice broadened during wartime and many states conceded “passport letters” to grant safe trips. Three centuries later, most European countries issued travel documents for all citizens.

Pablo’s passport is at the second position of the 2016 ranking. He has never thought of this truth, but being a citizen of Spain means 156 free borders and facilities to cross the rest of them.

Twenty-five-year-old and passionate about Africa, he saved money over a year to explore the ‘Dark Continent’. Starting in Livingston, Zambia, he crossed the borders of Botswana, Malawi and Tanzania during three months.

Tourist visas’ costs oscillated between 50 dollars (Zambia) and 75 dollars (Malawi). The exception was Botswana, since entering as a tourist from the EU is free. “It is a strategy to attract Western visitors, South Africa is doing the same”, Pablo explains.

The hardest question to answer at the custom houses of these countries was whether he supported Futbol Club Barcelona or Real Madrid.

“Neither of them, I don’t like football”, he confessed and step in. Meanwhile Joel needed to reply many questions way before landing in Italy.

Citizens of two worlds

The day Joel handed out his tourist visa application at the Italian embassy in Kampala, -which included a personal letter of motivation, a letter from his employer, his bank statement, a booking of the plane tickets, a travel insurance receipt, an invitation letter from an Italian, a bank statement of the inviting person and an identification of that person- he was also thoroughly interviewed.

“It was not so hard”, he claims, “they asked me what I was going to do in Europe, if I was related to the inviting person, how I got to know her, how long we have known each other, if I have ever traveled abroad and many more”, he recalls.

Pablo could not have replied any of these questions at the borders of the African countries he visited, he knew none there before traveling.

Tanja Mihalič and David Fennell say in the “Journal of Sustainable Tourism” (2015) that the world is split in two parts: excess and deprived tourism citizens and their nation-states. What part of them you belong is only a matter of the lottery of birth.

According with the UNWTO, the top 10 international outgoing tourism countries only represents one third of the world population.

“Most of the developed countries say that we all live in a global world that we are entitled to free movement in whatever country, but it's not the case on the ground”, Joel regrets.

From paper to practice: lacking concrete guidelines

The arbitrary nature of passport distribution and border control exposes an anarchic system without explicit definition of its scope. Victor Satzewich, researcher in Sociology at McMaster University, states that visa officers in their duty of gatekeepers have to face the application of abstract rules and procedures to ‘real world’ cases.

In practical terms, age, finance status and social network would be strong assets for getting a Western visa. Sharon Nabada knows it, because she works as secretary for the Austrian embassy in Kampala, but also for her own personal experience, since she has travelled with a Ugandan passport to Switzerland, Germany and Italy.

“One thing for sure you should have is a juicy financial statement”, she reckons. For example, her uncle’s bank statement eased her way to Geneva.

Besides, the age of the applicant could be another factor to acknowledge. Young applicants would have less chances, since embassies would think they are more inclined to trespass the tourist visa conditions.

Sharon has seen many young African women’ applications being denied, specially if their contact at the Western country is an old man. “Most times they disappear to other cities and disguise themselves”, she claims.

This irregular immigration would worry Western countries, specially during periods of strong migration fluxes. A European Parliament’s briefing from April 2015 outlines an increase of almost three fold of people illegal crossing the borders in 2014, comparing with 2013, due to a large rise in border crossings by citizens of Syria, Afghanistan and Eritrea.

Moreover, it indicates that the African continent houses three important routes of illegal immigration. For Sharon, “there are some people who believe Europe is far much better place to live, so they will find greener pastures over there”.

Populations from Third World regions are expected to be constantly running away from wars or famines, not taking holidays. “It is just a matter of racism”, Pablo thinks.

One of the problems with studying these regions is that most people only hear about them “when they are facing unsurmountable troubles”, regretted profesor Aksawi Assensoh in the ‘Journal of Thirld World Studies 2005’. “Many people either pity and know nothing about or, at worst, do not respect at all”, he criticised.

Preconceptions may carry significant weight with visa officer’s decisions, because they don’t want to be the ultimate responsible for swelling the irregular immigration figures.

Whoever finds a friend has found a treasure

Joel has the youth and the lack of wife and children as drawbacks. Less bounds there are, the easier it is expected to break the tourist visa agreement, stay and try. However, he has something very important in his favor: the right social contacts.

As Sharon confirms, social network could be very helpful to success a visa application. Joel was not aware the first time he applied but it worked the following try. The Italian friend who has invited him to come to Europe had worked for the embassy in Kampala and pulled the strings the second time.

Therefore, Joel decided to endure again the process: letters, flights, insurance, interviews…

Finally, he took pictures of the Genoa Aquarium and the Milano Cathedral, since he spent ten days in Italy -a significant shorter period of time than the two months he had previously applied for, but he felt happy anyway. He has achieved to break the chains.

Travel history, understood as a sort of curriculum that proves that the Third World tourist comes back to his country of origin after a trip, would be the last non-written resource to get a visa.

Joel explained this assumption to one of his customers at the shop, while she was looking for a dress. The visa officers have just denied her application for the United States, because she has never travelled outside Uganda.

Instead, for Joel reapplying for a visa at the Italian embassy after his travel, even if it was always a long and expensive process, was a safer bet. In fact, a year after his first visit in Europe, he got again a two-week Schengen visa and divided them between Spain and Italy.

The universal right to be lazy

Bianchi and Stephenson state that traveling is into the DNA of the industrialized capitalist society and the globalized market is fueling it even more as a social need. After the Second World War, vacations have become almost a matter of citizenship, "a right to pleasure”, according to sociologist John Urry.

However, Greg Richards, coordinator of the European Association for Tourism and Leisure Education, says that despite the growing spread of tourism consumption, holidays are still a contested element of social rights in many parts of the world.

Marxist Paul Lafargue published a controversial essay, “The Right to be lazy”, in 1880 that criticized the primacy of work and exalted the importance of spare time combined with creativity for the progress of humanity.

Many times Joel wished he could stay in Europe for a period longer than a vacation. He thinks his living conditions would improve there, even though his Spanish and Italian friends keep telling him how hard life has become in Europe in terms of employment.

Joel Nsubuga in Barcelona, Spain

However, this is difficult to believe for a person that has learned the concept of “holidays” through them: Facebook pictures in Rome or Paris, WhatsApp messages about one-day trips, Sundays by the seaside…

But for Joel, no matter weekends, Christmas or any other festivity, he is always standing at the door of his shop. He has no right to be lazy.

“It’s also a shame that most of the governments in many African countries have not made Africa a better place for Africans”, he griefs.

Every time he eats at the restaurants around his business, he thinks of restarting the application process for traveling to Spain. He has many friends there, like Pablo, willing to host him and many places he would like to visit.

Then he remembers that the Spanish authorities has already denied his visa application twice. In 2014, Spain was the country from the EU with the highest number of entry refusals, according to Eurostat.

Maybe it is a better option to apply again for a Schengen visa at the Italian embassy. Maybe it would be easier if he was the son of a politician, but in Uganda it is hard to be an average citizen dreaming of traveling. Meanwhile, he adds more spice to his dish in an attempt to rend more vivid his routine.