Conceptualizing resilience in sanctions-affected destinations

This chapter reinterprets resilience for destinations living with sanctions by shifting attention from short-term recovery to the politics of adaptation under long-lasting external constraints. It reviews classic framings, bouncing back, bouncing forward, and evolutionary change, and shows why these are often ill-suited when payment systems, aviation links, and visa regimes are restricted for years. The chapter develops an alternative view of resilience as hybrid endurance: a mix of coping and incremental reconfiguration across national, community, and firm levels. It synthesizes strategies such as market reorientation toward proximate or aligned sources, cultivation of domestic and pilgrimage travel, parallel or alternative payment arrangements, symbolic risk-management, and small-business improvisation. Throughout, the chapter treats resilience as contested: a label that can legitimize hardship, be mobilized by states for political messaging, and distribute benefits unevenly. It concludes with a critical agenda for research and policy, urging metrics that look beyond arrivals and revenues to equity, agency, and well-being; support for micro- and women-led enterprises; and governance approaches that connect firm-level ingenuity to destination-wide systems without normalizing prolonged exclusion.