Draft #1 Cover Letter

To best flow with my writing process, I decided to write the first 750 words of my essay in
here which may not necessarily represent my whole argument. I write best when I can fully
and slowly flesh out ideas and compose finished language to express them, as opposed to
writing out all of my ideas in a sloppy fashion and then revising them until it is better. In
this draft, I included my thesis statement and the main bulk of my argument encompassed
in the “developmental contribution of travel”. I will later follow along my argumentative
structure model and write about the secondary points concerning viability and changing
norms.

Draft #1

Extended travel in youth populations has dramatically gained popularity as new

generations look abroad to gain perspective on their own developing identities. The
unfamiliarity associated with such travel poses philosophical and psychological questions
that help to guide young adults towards new paths of self-discovery without necessarily
creating cause for the commonly perpetuated concerns of lack of stability, viability, or a
sense of belonging.

Long-term travel consists of unique developmental contributions to the growth of young

travelers as they are cast into various situations of wonder and discomfort. According to
academic reviewer Emily Kearns, travel functions as an ego-constructive process that
allows travelers to reestablish the Self by offering a theoretical framework to explore
liminal spaces. The loss of convention provided by such extended excursions prompts the
exploration of completely new settings, both mentally and physically. These mental
frameworks for change are indicative of new “environments” for the mind and it is fitting
that physical relocation in a literal sense can have such a profound ability to assist in the
reorganization of the mindscape as it directly prompts the mind to react in new ways as it
provides unfamiliar stimuli. Kearns emphasizes how it is valuable to examine tourism,
pilgrimages, and “ritual literatures” as mediums of transformation due to their ability to
offer a certain liminal headspace that is stimulative of growth. Analyzing a series of
experiments conducted using in-depth interviews with British tourists before and after
their “long-haul” travel experiences seeking to question the effects of tourism on
conceptions of identity, self, and personhood, Luke Desforges found it commonly
articulated that long-haul travel was closely associated with the questioning of these
tourists’ identities and lifestyles. The mental space provided by a change of pace in
combination with prominent questions that seek to reanalyze one’s lifestyle and ego
provide crucial factors for the reassessment of identity in an individual, and it is because of
this breaking down of convention and mental boundaries that catalyzes the stimulation of
identity development.

Beyond stimulus for the reassessment of what is already there, Vered Amit theorizes that
newfound capacities for change as a whole are initially discovered through the transition
provided to young travelers. Because travelers are constantly challenged to confront and
overcome uncertainties, their capacity for change is enhanced as they explore the
transitional space between brought on by their lifestyle’s unpredictability. She emphasizes
that, historically, the notion of transition has always accompanied any kind of formative life
crisis events such as birth, ‘social puberty,’ marriage, parenthood, death, etc., and that the
passage within a liminal or transitional period between the separation of one state to
another has especially resonated in anthropological literature surrounding tourism.
Stemming from this initial literature, liminality and transition became a sort of identity and
brand for the concept of travel and would continue to affect how it was perceived; Amit
argues that this deeply contributed to the conceptual change toward paradigms of
exploring liminality as a core identifying aspect of tourism. This identity of tourism as a
liminal space has profoundly influenced its function as the industry developed and Amit
argues that the inherently transitional nature of tourism, influenced by the prominence of
liminality in the literature that was foundational to the idea of tourism, can provoke
transitional periods in travelers as they undergo intrinsic and “ongoing oscillation[s]
between structure and anti-structure”. As youth populations find themselves in the
developmental liminal spaces procured by travel, they will not only use the opportunity
brought by the redesigned mental landscape to reorganize what currently exists, but also
expand their capacities for change entirely.

Extended travel as a vehicle for self-discovery through the liminal spaces and transitional
periods that are inherent to such discomfort has been gaining popularity as “lifestyle
migration” (as referred to by lifestyle sociologists Michaela Benson and Karen O'Reilly) as
an evermore prominent option to seek something new. Lifestyle migration describes
migration as a means of seeking a more fulfilling way of life elsewhere, and the
phenomenon is quickly spreading but is inherently disparate, and little can be said with
confidence about the economic, sociological, and cultural impacts that the trend can have
by any end of the migratory chain. The trend has been gaining momentum as modern
globalization continues to provide more flexible opportunities as living standards in
traditional environments are on the rise. Benson & O’Reilly comment that common
motivations for lifestyle migration tie closely to those often discussed with more temporary
travel such as the ideology of escape and the continued development of identity. As
incentives to seek new environments and the lifestyles that accompany them increase,
whether that be by default environments becoming less desirable or opportunities to
relocate becoming more accessible across a broader range of economic privilege, the
phenomenon of lifestyle migration as a means of solving a problem will continue to grow
and diversify.