Free independent travellers? British working holiday makers in Australia

There is a renewed interest among geographers in tourism and how tourism makes the world and its people modern. In this paper, I engage with this renewed interest by way of a case study: British working holiday makers in Australia. Drawing on two modes of research practice, ethnography and political economy, I argue that, while working holidays may be structured in numerous ways, they also involve challenges, active individuals, heterogeneous spaces, and slow time (for reflection and inscription), which together, in a sense, make their makers modern. I frame this engagement, this argument, with a debate familiar to geographers: the problem of Free Independent Travellers.