‘Love is not tourism’: Navigating immobility through (migrant) resistance

Amid the Covid-19 pandemic, border restrictions intensified, profoundly impacting binational couples and leading to the emergence of the ‘Love is not tourism’ movement. This initiative of 2020–2021, mainly mobilized through digital platforms like the Twitter and Facebook, emphasized the universal human right to love and in several European countries succeeded in gaining the right for unmarried third-country nationals to reunite with their European partners. Drawing from academic frameworks on regimes of mobility, imaginaries, and Maurice Stierl’s ‘resistance as a method’ approach, the article argues that the ‘tourism’ label is a tool for exerting control over undefined categories of migrants, like unmarried partners. Initially developed within political sociology, the notion of resistance seems useful for anthropological research, aiding in the unravelling of cultural imaginaries behind border constraints and their navigation. The explored movement, while challenging traditional conceptions of family and relationships, underscored the evolving interplay of migration, personal ties, and state policy. With a combination of online narratives, interviews, and first-hand participation as primary data, the study also reveals how collective activism further brought transformations surrounding intimate mobility in Europe.