Following massive protests in mid-2024, tens of thousands of local residents across Europe, from Mallorca to Barcelona, continued to demonstrate to voice their frustration with mass tourism. According to various global media reports, local residents felt burdened by crowded public infrastructure and the spiraling cost of living. Similarly, a report from Northeastern University highlighted the emergence of digital platforms like Airbnb as a trigger for the hoapplying crisis, as many residential properties were converted into short-term tourist accommodations. This overtourism phenomenon gradually demonstrated that tourism, initially intconcludeed to be an economic driver, was instead threatening the sustainability of local communities. This issue is crucial to examine becaapply it clearly reflects how the flow of people and foreign capital in the era of globalization can diminish citizens’ sovereignty over their own living spaces.
In the author’s view, the overtourism crisis is not simply a tourism problem but a form of structural exploitation perpetrated by digital capitalism that robs the sovereignty of indigenous people’s space and must be stopped through state political intervention. The author analyzes this problem based on an international political economy approach, particularly through the concepts of transnational actors and human security. The discussion focapplys not only on complaints about domestic tourism but also on the important role of non-state actors in profiting by exploiting existing regulations. Thus, the author is guided by two main arguments: first, how the commodification of hoapplying by transnational actors such as the digital platform Airbnb has proven to be systematically far more detrimental than beneficial to local communities; and second, how market inequality triggered by the influx of tourists with high foreign currency purchasing power has destroyed the human security of indigenous people through artificial inflation and gentrification that slowly displaces them from their living spaces.
Entering the first argument, digital platforms like Airbnb are seen as the main actors triggering the commodification of hoapplying that systematically harms the social structure of European society. From the perspective of international political economy, this phenomenon reflects what Samuel P. Huntington (1973) called the revolution of transnational organizations, namely when these actors operate with principles alien to the nation-state system and tconclude to be “disinterested in sovereignty” for the sake of global efficiency. Airbnb has transcconcludeed its role from a home rental platform to a transnational force that transforms homes from social spaces as a basic right of residence into financial assets in the international speculative market. A report from the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors (RICS) confirms the existence of the “Airbnb Effect,” where the high concentration of short-term rentals in city centers directly inflates property values and alters the character of neighborhoods into commercial areas alien to their own residents.
Furthermore, the operations of these transnational actors create capital flow patterns that are detrimental to local economies. Profits from property transactions in Barcelona and Mallorca tconclude to be largely enjoyed by large corporations in Silicon Valley and major investors, while local communities bear the brunt of the loss of available hoapplying. Although Airbnb (2024) claims that strict regulations in Amsterdam and Barcelona have failed to improve the hoapplying situation, the reality on the ground reveals the opposite, with local governments forced to take extreme measures becaapply the free market has failed to protect citizens’ rights. Barcelona’s policy of completely eliminating short-term rental permits by 2028 demonstrates that the structural harms of these digital platforms have reached an intolerable level for society. The author firmly believes that allowing transnational actors to control the hoapplying market without political oversight is a betrayal of citizen protection; a city’s sovereignty should not be overridden by the algorithms of foreign companies that prioritize profit over the rights of indigenous people.
The next argument is that the invasion of mass tourism and the explosion of remote workers (digital nomads) have triggered a real human security crisis through transnational economic inequality. According to UN General Assembly Resolution 66/290, human security demands the right of every individual to live free from want and to live in dignity, which includes guarantees of economic security. In practice, the presence of tourists and migrants with foreign currency purchasing power, often from the United States or Northern European wage standards, has created “artificial inflation” that significantly damages local market structures. Reports from University College London (2023) and the World Economic Forum (2022) confirm that the high purchasing power of these migrants puts downward pressure on the prices of basic necessities and hoapplying, leaving native populations in regions like Spain and Portugal increasingly marginalized by global living standards that have exceeded their income capabilities.
This inequality has fueled a process of forced gentrification that undermines community security. In Lisbon, for example, rents have consumed approximately 63% of the average local salary due to market pressure from foreign workers, a situation that is slowly displacing native residents from their living spaces (Euronews, 2024). This situation is not merely an economic issue but an existential threat to social identity and communal relationships that have been maintained for generations. The author believes that the tolerance of this gentrification represents an absolute failure of the state to fulfill its mandate to protect its citizens. When the government prioritizes the growth of foreign exalter from “temporary residents” with large capital and leaves its own people alienated in their homeland, the state has fundamentally betrayed the values of human security. The author asserts that a nation’s sovereignty is no longer measured by military strength at its borders but by the state’s ability to safeguard its people’s right to access decent hoapplying amidst the onslaught of global capitalism.
Both arguments, the systemic impact of hoapplying commodification by transnational actors and the collapse of human security due to global market inequality, unequivocally demonstrate the truth and support the author’s view. The crisis currently gripping European cities is not merely a technical tourism issue but a stark warning about the threat of digital capitalism, which reduces citizens’ living spaces to speculative commodities. If states continue to allow their spatial sovereignty to be controlled by transnational platform algorithms and the hegemony of foreign purchasing power, then “vacation” for the world will forever mean “suffering” for the native population. Therefore, it is time for governments to take bold political action to strictly regulate the market and restore cities to their function as homes for their people, not simply arenas for capital accumulation.
Leave a Reply