Mobility in the Flemish imaginary: tourism to and immigration from "the South".

The proposed study addresses the following main hypothesis: currently prevailing images and discourses in Flanders represent travel to (tourism) and travel from (immigration) "the South" in ways that seem at the same time unconsciously disconnected from the lived present but connected with the imagined past. While people hava always been on the move, processes of globalization have led to an enormous increase in travel across the planet. International migration and tourism are among the most significant socio-economic realities of our time. There are well-established distinct traditions of tourism and migration studies, but scholars have barely begun to address the intricate interconnections between the two phenomena. This theoretical overture goes hand in hand with the blurring of the political categories that regulate and define the movement of people: labour migrants crossing borders with tourist visas and residential tourists turning into migrants. Studies of mobility and circulation provide an innovative way to understand better the multiple transformations that accompany globalization, but also imply profound methodological and conceptual challenges for anthropology as a discipline. However, it is in acknowledging the role of the imagination in mobility that possibly one of the most exciting opportunities for anthropology of global and transnational processes is located.

Keywords:Mobility, Flemish imaginary