The OE goes ‘home’: Cultural aspects of a working holiday experience

Abstract

In this article we examine cultural aspects of the working holiday experience using the New Zealand Overseas Experience (OE) as a significant and revealing exemplar of this kind of travel. To date, the working holiday experience has been poorly served by tourism and migration literature in general terms, with even less attention paid to cultural aspects of these experiences in relation to both their origin and form. Using archival material and interview data on the OE as an empirical base, we explore in detail the cultural determination of this working holiday experience, the cultural connections that facilitate and reinforce its continuing form, and the hybrid cultural practices of the OE itself. Findings suggest that cultural aspects are central to the working holiday experience. We therefore suggest that the role of culture deserves more explicit attention in both tourism and migration studies that address such working holiday experiences.

HIV risk among Australian men travelling overseas: networks and context matter

“…There was often a sense of transition or 'in-betweeness' in these accounts, for example of being neither a tourist nor a local. This experience of 'in-betweeness' or 'liminality' of expatriates and travellers, and the distancing from the identity of tourist, has been well-identified within the tourism literature (for examples, see McCabe 2005;Munt 1994;Wilson, Fisher and Moore 2009), but little in the context of its implications for health and sexual risk.…”

Temporary Transnational Youth Migration and its Mobility Links

“…Instead, there are many case studies of specific forms of transnational youth migration. These concern student mobility (Findlay et al 2006;Collins 2008), volunteer tourism (Raymond and Hall 2008), lifestyle migration, (Korpela 2009) and the working holiday (Mason 2002;Wilson, Fisher, and Moore 2009). The following review will concentrate on student mobility and the working holiday as these are both comparatively well researched phenomena and highly relevant in relation to temporary migration among Scandinavian youth.…”

“…When it comes to the 'working holiday', particular attention has been paid to the phenomenon known as 'overseas experience' (OE) in New Zealand (Bell 2002;Mason 2002;Inkson and Myers 2003;Conradson and Latham 2005;Wilson, Fisher, and Moore 2009;Haverig 2011;Haverig and Roberts 2011) The OE is often described as an established cultural institution or 'rite of passage' (Bell 2002;Mason 2002 course among middle class New Zealand youth (Haverig and Roberts 2011). Similar descriptions have also been used for young Australians going overseas (Hugo 2006) and according to Simpson (2005), the British 'gap year' has recently developed in a similar direction away from something extraordinary towards incorporation into formal educational and employment structures and institutions.…”

Toward Cultural Policy Studies on Mobility: Reflections on a Study of the Hong Kong Working Holiday Scheme

“…Consequently, it can also be missed by each of these areas of study because it does not fit neatly within existing paradigms. 34 In a study attempting to capture the cultural implications of working holidays, Nick Clarke discusses the autonomy of working holidaymakers and in doing so touches upon a typical topic of cultural studies: the interaction between the structure of working holidays and the agency of working holidaymakers. 35 By regarding working holiday studies as an individual case, Clarke draws on the theoretical basis of James Clifford's inclusion of mobility in anthropological research and Urry's ideas to explore mobility research initiated by Rosa Braidotti, Tim Cresswell's criticism of the political and economic structure of mobility and the political nature of mobility outlined by Natan Crag.…”