Tourism and social mobility in the municipality of Ziguinchor (Senegal): between profiles and trajectories of young workers in the tourist industry

Abstract

In Ziguinchor, tourism is presented as a lever for professional integration for young people in a context marked by structural unemployment and a gradual recovery of tourism activity. The objective of this study is to analyse the role of the sector in the social mobility of young workers. The study is based on a concomitant mixed approach combining a quantitative survey conducted with 40 young people involved in tourism and a qualitative survey (16 semi-structured interviews) conducted with institutional and professional actors. The data was collected using KoboCollect and analyzed by descriptive statistics and thematic analysis. The results indicate that the tourism sector offers employment opportunities, particularly in the hotel and restaurant sectors. Nevertheless, most of them are informal, poorly paid and characterized by seasonality (unstable incomes). Social mobility remains limited and varies according to the social and cultural capital of young people. Tourism presents itself as an ambivalent tool for integration, contributing more to the perpetuation of social inequalities than to sustainable social mobility without appropriate training and regulation policies.

Classification JEL : Z32

Paper type: Empirical Research