On Thursday March 30th DocuDoka organizes a film and discussion night in Amsterdam on the encounters between tourists and refugees. The night in creative bar Doka will start with the screening of Holiday for Everyone (2017, Vakantie voor iedereen), a new documentary by Dutch film trio Annelies Wezenberg, Mark Koster and Rik Lauwen about a temporary center for asylum seekers on a Dutch holiday park and their contact with the local vacationers there. After the screening, which also includes short film and PowNed news report on similar encounters in the Mediterranean region, there will be an interactive discussion with the filmmakers as well as two experts, former refugee worker Rebecca Streng and critical tourism philosopher Ruud Welten.
Since the European refugee crisis, places where migrants appear seem to have become ‘infected zones’ for tourists. Particularly the once-so-beloved Greek islands of Lesbos and Kos are nowadays largely shunned by European holidaymakers because of the large numbers of refugees arriving and staying there. At the same time, the contact between refugees and tourists has also significantly increased. Encounters between these two different groups of ‘travelers’ are often unavoidable and unexpected, such as when their paths cross when that exhausted refugees arrive on a beach where tourists are unknowingly sunbathing. Increasingly, however, these interactions are put in motion by European travel and aid companies in the form of refugee assistance. How do these encounters between tourists and refugees look like? How does their contact play out and what does it create, more understanding or more distance? And, on a more abstract level, how could we better understand the different freedoms and rights to travel, reside en be? These questions form the basis of DocuDoka #5: Are Tourists and Refugees Getting Along?