Prácticas de exclusión e inserción laboral en actividades productivas de turismo rural en dos comunidades transfronterizas de México y Guatemala

Abstract

The paper analyzes the practices of exclusion and labor insertion of the youth of two rural communities with tourist activity. The field work was carried out in 2018 in the cross-border region included in the Cristobal Colon county, in Chiapas, Mexico, and the Chacaj community, in Nenton, Huehuetenango, Guatemala. From a constructionist approach and a qualitative methodology, 19 semi-structured interviews were conducted by people working in productive activities related to rural tourism. Through the multilevel analysis of Geels and Schot (2007), the narratives produced are analyzed to understand how from the rural tourism the practices of exclusion are updated from the social, relational and labor insertion perspectives. The classic markers of gender, age, and origin are documented, to which the digital divide is added, which opens or closes, new job opportunities for some less privileged sectors of the population. It concludes how rural communities have placed the responsibility for the care, administration and management of new ecotourism projects in youth, and in some cases marginalizing them from land tenure and better living conditions. The research offers a current and necessary contribution to the debate of studies about the competitiveness and sustainability of rural tourism, the generational change at work, the efficiency in tourism activity and the use of the Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs).