THE TOURIST AND THE MIGRANT – TWO FACES OF THE 21ST CENTURY COSMOPOLITANISM

Marin Beroš Assistant professor /Institute of Social Sciences "Ivo Pilar"

Abstract: It is no big secret that in our world of great economic inequalities, belonging to some political communities is just more valuable than belonging to others. And this divide is exactly what differentiates contemporary “unwoken” cosmopolitans to two categories – the tourists and the migrants. In a certain way, both of those ideal figures embody cosmopolitan values of earlier times, as they are “transgressing” the political borders of communities. Although both the tourist and the migrant with their transgressions are helping the intercommunal exchange and understanding between the peoples, their societal acceptance is wildly different. While tourists are rarely unwelcomed, mainly because they do not interact profoundly with domestic population as they intend to return to their point of origin, migrants with their wish for “deeper connections” are viewed with suspicion, if not outright hatred. And this difference strongly puts into question the principle of hospitality, which is, following the work of Immanuel Kant, considered a basic building block of modern cosmopolitan theory. Finally, this paper will try to make case that for the true cosmopolitan ideals to take hold, there is a need for a reformulation of the current idea of hospitality, from the one based on the economy towards the one based on humanistic ideals. And this need is especially more pressing considering the turn of events provoked by the global pandemic, which are strengthening and slowly closing the borders between our countries and each other.

Keywords: tourism, migration, cosmopolitanism, hospitality