ABSTRACT
The relationship between tourism and borders, both as barriers to and attractors of tourism, has long been the focus of academic attention. Nevertheless, only limited consideration has been given to borders as dark tourism spaces. In other words, borders demarcate between nations, societies, cultures and political systems and, hence, may be spaces that are potentially difficult or problematic. More precisely, not only may border regions be sites of conflict, whether in the literal sense of physical, armed conflict between groups or nations or where competing political, social, economic, legal or cultural systems meet and conflict, but also their attraction to tourists might lie in the evidence or outcome of that conflict. Borders can possess a “darkness” that is in some way appealing or intriguing to tourists, yet this aspect of border tourism is not well understood. The author, therefore, considers borders as dark tourism attractions and proposes a taxonomy of borders as dark tourism spaces, embracing: (i) impenetrable dark borders; (ii) “dicing with death” border regions; (iii) dark borders of (past) conflict; (iv) dark “us and them” borders; and (v) dark crossing borders.
