Derek Bryce offers a personal account of the human impact of travel restrictions, and cautions against restrictions on both our right to travel to be with loved ones and on our leisure mobility.
Editor's comment: This is an important article. The response to Covid-19 in the academic journals and many commentaries in the media has focused on the ‘lessons of Covid’. These lessons are often that we should stay closer to home, learn to appreciate local sites more and even guard against the role of mobility in spreading disease. Mobility is presented as a problem. Some good points come out of this, no doubt. But relatively little has been written about what we lost – the friendships, relationships, shared memories, conviviality and wonder associated with travel, tourism and hospitality. Leisure travel is at the centre of social and cultural life in a very positive way. It would be great to see more pieces like this that do not treat mobility in a technical or misanthropic way, that recognise travel and tourism as part of a live lived to the full and linked to positive human freedoms.
Editor's comment: This is an important article. The response to Covid-19 in the academic journals and many commentaries in the media has focused on the ‘lessons of Covid’. These lessons are often that we should stay closer to home, learn to appreciate local sites more and even guard against the role of mobility in spreading disease. Mobility is presented as a problem. Some good points come out of this, no doubt. But relatively little has been written about what we lost – the friendships, relationships, shared memories, conviviality and wonder associated with travel, tourism and hospitality. Leisure travel is at the centre of social and cultural life in a very positive way. It would be great to see more pieces like this that do not treat mobility in a technical or misanthropic way, that recognise travel and tourism as part of a live lived to the full and linked to positive human freedoms.