Main question:

What prevents young-adults from full-time travel and how can these barriers be
overcome? How does long-term travel affect lifestyle stability and someone’s sense
of belonging? In what ways is travel developmental?

Contextual "sub-questions":

● What factors, in the context of travel, contribute to someone's sense of belonging?

How does this affect them?
● How are peoples' views towards full-time travel perpetuated? How are they
changing?
● What effects are created by the instability of long-term travel, and how do they
affect one's ability to rejoin a "stable" lifestyle?
● In what ways is travel developmental?

Disciplines (as of current): economics, sociology, philosophy, psychology

Key words: Travel, belonging, self-sufficiency, misconceptions, youth, instability

Potential sources:
● Whatever Emily Kearns was writing the review paper for
● James Thurber’s The Secret Life of Walter Mitty
● Vietnam paper that Dr. Holt has (ask about the thing Reese and I were going to get)

Prevalent academic “voices”

● Luke Desforges - the intersection tourism consumption and self
● Vered Amit - youth travel and self-formation

● There is little research specifically about travel as a means of self-exploration simply

because the topic is very inherently unscientific
○ Further research for this project must be done very intentionally
● An analysis of Carl Jung’s work in the context of travel suggests that travel can
function as an ego-constructive process similar to the development of the self in a
child from a psychoanalytical perspective
○ TRAVEL, SELF, AND OTHER: EXPLORING TRAVEL AS RITUAL, EGO LOSS,
AND RECONSTRUCTION
○ My topic has a lot to unpack from a psychological perspective, and it is up to
me how much focus I want to allocate toward this discipline compared to
others
 ● Travel writing is a popular medium for self-discovery that is documented, such as
Edith Wharton’s travel writing career offering a sort of step-by-step evidence of her
journey of self-discovery
○ Edith Wharton and Travel Writing as Self-Discovery
● Historically, travel and pilgrimage have long been very spiritual conventions, but
researchers are now attempting to gain an understanding of how the spirituality of
pilgrimage could have been separate from religious spirituality in a time where the
two were largely considered the same
○ Pilgrimage in Literature of the Americas: Spiritualized Travel and Sacred
Place
○ As traditions and conventions such as religion change, how does our
connection with the spiritual aspect of travel change? How is it the same?
How are perspectives skewed by such norms and can such information even
be recovered?
● (potential use of evidence or some kind of historical contrast): The Scientific
American discussed the benefits of travel in a November 24, 1849 issue where it
was written that travel helps to broaden the intellect because we are perpetually
meeting men of great abilities, original minds, and rare acquirements
○ The Scientific American - Benefits of Travel
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● Mobility as Resistance: A Geographical Reading of Kerouac's 'On the Road'
○ Geographical relocation as a means of protests/resistance - another potential
spectacle to look at travel
○ How Kerouac’s “On the Road” discusses the addressing of social issues via
relocation or even the act of relocation (travel)
● Travel is often a vehicle for young adults to seek an escape from the conformity of
adulthood, but within that action, our definition of youth is expanded and our
definition of adulthood is further bound in conformity to certain expectations and
“roles and statuses”
○ “The more that the definition of youth is reworked to accommodate changing
roles and transitions, the less pressure there is to redefine the nature of
adulthood”
○ "Before I Settle Down": Youth Travel and Enduring Life Course Paradigms
○ Redefining youth in more adjusted, contemporary terms limits the need to
redefine adulthood - long-term travel is not something that must be lost with
the stability of “adulthood”
● Youth travel movements helped significantly in the post-war era to develop the
culture of internationalism in Europe
○ Youth Movements: Travel, Protest, and Europe in 1968
● How does tourism consumption affect someone’s sense of personhood?
 ○ Traveling the world: Identity and Travel Biography
● How vacation creates “temporary identities”
○ Getting Away from It All: The Construction and Management of Temporary
Identities on Vacation
● How youth and travel intersect in self-formation
○ Chapter 2: The Limits of Liminality: CAPACITIES FOR CHANGE AND
TRANSITION AMONG STUDENT TRAVELERS .
● “Lifestyle migration” - migration as means of seeking a more fulfilling way of life
○ Migration and the Search for a Better Way of Life: A Critical Exploration of
Lifestyle Migration .
○ Defining the limits of the term “lifestyle migration”
○ Attempted explanation of growing trends in this phenomenon
○ Causes and effects
● In the new technological age, should there be a new classification for the stage of
development between adulthood and youth?
○ Rethinking the Youth Phase of the Life-course: The Case for Emerging
Adulthood?
● How the experience of a pre-university gap year can be more valuable than starting
college right away
○ Widening the Gap: Pre-University Gap Years and the 'Economy of Experience'
● What factors contribute to how emerging adults define themselves?
○ This article specifically focuses on the lens of how biographers could use this
information to widen the breadth of their research, but the themes and data
apply
○ Do Transitions and Social Structures Matter? How ‘Emerging Adults’ Define
Themselves as Adults