When talking about the relationship between tourism and minorities, it is always worth studying whether tourism helps language vitality and not just the income of people – as Michele Gazzola, Lecturer in Public Policy and Administration at Ulster University, Belfast noted in his keynote speech of the second panel at the Forum of European Minority Regions in Galway, Ireland on Friday, 11 November 2022.
He pointed out that the development of the local or regional economic system can be detrimental to the vitality of a language when it disrupts the environment in which the speaking community lives or when it pins it to the nostalgic representation of a lost past. Because there is not necessarily a positive relationship between local economic growth and the protection and promotion of minorities, social policies such as affordable housing, care centers, public transport, access to broadband and quality education can have an important role in reducing the number of people moving out by increasing the quality of living. This way, local and minority communities can be saved, and social policies can become language policies.