Tourist industries and the “right to the city”: Constructing local identity in post-Soviet Sortavala through the access to tourism resources

Abstract

The article considers grassroots economic practices in the tourism sector of Sortavala, a town in northwestern Russia, which has undergone significant transformation following the COVID-19 pandemic and the closure of international borders in the 2020s. In the absence of large industrial enterprizes, domestic tourism has become a primary economic activity for local residents. The authors focus on tourism crafts - f lexible, small-scale, and often informal practices that aim at self-sufficiency - to show how they adapt to the region’s unstable social-economic conditions. These practices differ from both precarious wage labor and formal entrepreneurship, representing a distinct mode of engagement with the tourist economy, which is widely perceived as the only viable and strategically promising development path. Based on the qualitative study conducted in 2023-2024, the authors argue that access to tourism resources (places, infrastructure, narratives, and natural environments), which can be monetized through tourist interactions, serves as the central factor of participation in this economy. This access is unevenly distributed, has become a key site of social conflicts, and serves as not only an economic opportunity but also a mechanism for expressing and enacting a sense of belonging. Through tourism crafts, local actors assert a form of the “right to the city” - the right not only to inhabit but also to actively shape urban and natural spaces. Thus, grassroots involvement in tourism functions as a medium for articulating and renegotiating local identity.