Poverty tourism (also known as Slum or Favela tourism) is when international travellers opt to visit the poorest areas of a country rather than their more traditional and popular attractions.  Such areas are well described by poverty tourism academic Melissa Nisbett in her definition of a slum, saying they are places “where people have insecure residential status. This means that they do not hold a legal title to their property or any legal right to the land that it sits on.  Slums are characterized by inadequate access to safe water and sanitation, poorly built housing and overcrowding.”  Despite the harsh conditions, Western tourists are still drawn to seeing slum areas, and are thus participating in poverty tourism.

While this concept is not new and can be traced back to Victorian England, social media appears to have further popularized the activity, as people can share their personal images of locals and their living conditions.  Such photographs have been given the label of “poverty porn,” a term that usually targets the stereotypical images used by charities to draw in donations, critiqued for victimizing the poor and only showing poverty through a small lens.  Social media has also been critiqued for giving poverty porn a new purpose: to reflect the good will of western citizens.  The popularity of posting such images has seen a rise in guided tours through slum areas (by locals, private companies and even charities), and has invited more global participants into the moral debate surrounding the issue.

Qatar’s Al Jazeera spoke to people from Kibera, Africa’s largest urban slum, to discover how those feel about the practice of poverty tours. A 67-year-old said it is “morally wrong” and only benefits the people who get the money [from the tours],” adding that locals are “not wildlife.” A 34 year-old Kibera mother agreed, saying she “felt like an object” as the tourists gawked at her. Her reality is ensuring her family is fed more than once a day, an extremely vulnerable place to be in while strangers snap your picture. Many in the online community agree with this perspective, which can be seen in the backlash American tv personality Ellen DeGeneres received from posting a “poverty porn” picture of herself and children in Rwanda on Twitter. The star was accused by social media users for using the local children as “props,” who fed Ellen’s “white saviour complex” while ignoring any real hardships or positives of Rwanda.

A common response to such images is “imagine if people did that in your country.” It makes me recall when my cousins and I were in primary school. We were climbing a tree in small town New Zealand when tourists began taking photos of us.  While we were too young to comprehend what was happening, when we told our parents they were extremely worried, describing what happened as creepy and intrusive.  We can’t say that parents from poor areas do not have the right to feel the same.  The difference is that it is completely out of their power. “”I wanted to yell at them,” the Kibera mother went onto say.  “But I was afraid of the tour guides accompanying them.”

Al Jazeera’s article goes on to show the perspective of these tour guides. Local initiative Kibera Tours receives at least $3,000 a year from guiding people through the slums. The company co-founder, Frederick Otieno, says the business is positive, as it shows the “unique projects around the slums” as well as creating employment, especially for local  youth. Then there are the tourists. A 46 year-old Danish woman told Al Jazeera she visited Kibera at least 30 times, as she is drawn to seeing the happiness of the locals who have nothing. She justified her gazing by supporting local initiatives.

As National Geographic points out, this optimistic view is not the only one. They explored tourist perspectives by reading Trip-Advisor reviews from poverty tour-goers who visited Dharavi in Mumbai, Asia’s second largest slum.  One said the tour was not exploitative because you were not allowed to photograph the locals, making it community focused and “educational.” Another was so overwhelmed by the experience she had to stop 20 minutes into the tour, urging the tour company for better declaimers.

One may think that legitimate money and employment coming into these poor areas would outweigh any moral argument, as it is tackling the larger issue of the global slum population continuing to increase. However, Melissa Nisbett’s study Empowering the empowered? Slum tourism and the Depoliticization of Poverty, points out that the contribution poverty tourism makes to the wider issue is actually menial. She says, “as the continued growth of slums is stimulated and maintained by global factors, even if slum tourism was effective in terms of development, it would be at such a low level that it would have little impact against the march of neoliberalism.” The Conversation discusses this money factor in regards to tourism in general, saying that its effectiveness in improving poor areas relies on planning to ensure that the money generated by tourism makes a difference in the right places. Whether this means ensuring that only locals are employed or implementing contracts or legislation, there must be protections and regulations in place.  They also conclude, however, that tourism cannot solve poverty.

While poverty tourism is not highly beneficial and morally controversial, a Forbes article argues that it may be too valuable to lose, because it connects westerners to the developing world.  Leicester University Professor and slum tourism book author, Fabian Frenzel, told Forbes that poverty tourism “enable[s] getting out of the rigid value regime which says that an area basically doesn’t exist, it’s not really part of the city, don’t go there, it doesn’t matter…that’s where tourism can come in helpful, in making that connection.” The more you unpack this issue, the more varying opinions there are – and the more it seems to go around in circles. However, even if the overall consensus was reached that the practice is immoral, banning the practice would be extremely difficult, given the commonly corrupt nature of impoverished areas.

A logical mid-ground solution could be to find an alternative way that tourists can visit poor areas with a purpose that is more beneficial than accumulating an online following. However, there are already countless organizations where people can volunteer in countries-in need in many ways, including building schools and teaching. People opting for a poverty tour have already chosen not to take this rout when visiting impoverished areas.

If poverty tourism is not going away, what we can change is the conversation around the issues that it highlights. Capturing photos of the slums, including the positive initiatives and the harsh reality, should be seen as an opportunity for constructive discussion when shared online, ensuring the images serve the purpose of educating and spreading awareness.  This can be done without an emphasis on photographing other people’s children, giving the imagery enlightening potential rather than an objectifying fashion statement.  This way, there would be less of an urge to discourage the curiosity of the tourist, because we can be assured they are acting in a socially responsible way.

Just as one may argue that it is the right of slum locals to be treated respectfully, another may also argue that a tourist has a right to interpret and share their experiences as they please. However, they need to be conscious of how dangerous it can be to romanticize poverty online and fueling desensitization by not giving the images the substance they deserve. For this behaviour has the power to destroy connectivity, one of the limited positives poverty tourism has left. In a situation where it is difficult to be ethical, we can at least be conscious.