Understanding the place-making practices of backpackers

Abstract

The place-making practices of tourists have long captured the attention of tourism researchers. This article examines how the everyday practices of backpackers contribute to place-making in the enclave and the hostel – two places common to backpacker destinations. Using participant observation supplemented by interviews, the research revealed these places to be characterised by a range of extraordinary and mundane backpacker practices and mobility rhythms. Places inhabited by backpackers were in constant flux and ‘co-created’ via practices in conjunction with an array of other phenomena. As backpackers interacted with one another, other people and the various materials, temporalities and environments that were present, they inadvertently contributed to place-making processes. The research shows how mobile people make place and extends understandings of how backpacker lives are lived. It demonstrates the centrality of practices to both place and mobility, highlighting the importance of tourist actions – rather than industry directives – to place-making in tourism.

Revisiting walking as mobile place-making practice: a discursive perspective

“…However, place is always sensed, negotiated, and embodied (Baugh, 2010;Middleton, 2010). Thus, Iaquinto (2020) argued that it is also important to attend to tourists' practices when attempting to understand how tourism places are constituted. With this mind, touristic walking as an intrinsically spatial practice not only reproduces, but also creates and contests place (Hall, 2009).…”

“…Place-making practices in tourism have been a frequent topic of inquiry (Iaquinto, 2020;Lew, 2017;Mason, 2020). While the perspective of tourists has been less frequently taken, tourists' practices are acknowledged to be important factors in the cocreation of place in tourism (Iaquinto, 2020;Lew, 2017). Particularly, mobile practices have increasingly received attention in tourism studies, including studies on cycling (e.g.…”

From paradise to prison: The disrupted spatial imaginaries of victimised female British migrants in Australia

“…Sydney specifically acts as drawcard by way of its “reputed and promoted beach culture and night life” (Allon, Anderson, & Bushell, 2008, p. 82) with particular beaches, such as Bondi and Coogee, acting as iconic landmarks with particularly strong imaginative power (Allon, 2004). These areas are also backpacker enclaves that create, for those within them, a suspended state of reality in which positive spatial imaginaries of host societies can be more easily upheld (Wilson et al, 2008; see also Iaquinto, 2020).…”

Migrants encounters of a lifestyle destination: From coastal idyll to activated city

“…These aspects provide a three‐dimensional lens to analyse lifestyle destinations as more than aesthetically pleasing landscapes, and as places of everyday activities, interactions, and lived experiences. In combination, these aspects have been used to understand encounters with journalism and news (Peters, 2015), place attachment for labour migrants (Lynnebakke, 2020), place‐making practices of backpackers (Iaquinto, 2020), and applied to architecture (Ivanova, 2018). However, they have yet to be applied to lifestyle destinations.…”