Barry, Kaya,
The tourism-migration nexus : working holiday visa politics and repurposing tourists as labour / Kaya Barry and Rafael Azeredo. - Source: Tourism geographies 21(5) September 2025 pages 881-897. .
CONTACT Kaya Berry 🖂 k.barry@griffith.edu.au 🖃 Griffith Center for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, N16 Macrossin Building, 170 Kessels, Rd. Brisbane, QLD 4111, Australia.
©2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Includes bibliographical references.
"The ‘working holiday’ model of youth mobility has evolved alongside backpacking in recent decades. Increasingly, backpackers on working holidays are seen as a potential labour source in many nations, due to the flexible and highly mobile capacity which suits much agricultural work. We discuss the evolution of Australia’s Working Holiday Maker visa program, which highlights the tensions between tourism, labour, and migration. The term ‘backpacker’ is widely used in Australia interchangeably with the ‘Working Holiday Maker’ visa, identifying both a tourist subculture and what has become an essential migrant worker cohort in horticulture and a staple part of rural tourism and economies. But their presence, and the agricultural industry’s dependence on them, manifests what we identify as a ‘tourism-migration nexus’, that is, where labour chains, tourist flows, and the complexities of bilateral government agreements influence the migration trajectories of these working visitors. We draw on scholarship across backpacking, tourism and migration, in dialogue with recent policy and government inquiries, in order to trace the evolution and changes in the Australian Working Holiday Maker visa and the implications that this has on tourist mobilities as well as longer-term migration journeys." --Abstract
Adult
Text in English
Working holidays.
Backpackers.
Farming.
Horticulture.
Regional.
Labour.
Migration policy.
Australia.
The tourism-migration nexus : working holiday visa politics and repurposing tourists as labour / Kaya Barry and Rafael Azeredo. - Source: Tourism geographies 21(5) September 2025 pages 881-897. .
CONTACT Kaya Berry 🖂 k.barry@griffith.edu.au 🖃 Griffith Center for Social and Cultural Research, Griffith University, N16 Macrossin Building, 170 Kessels, Rd. Brisbane, QLD 4111, Australia.
©2025 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
Includes bibliographical references.
"The ‘working holiday’ model of youth mobility has evolved alongside backpacking in recent decades. Increasingly, backpackers on working holidays are seen as a potential labour source in many nations, due to the flexible and highly mobile capacity which suits much agricultural work. We discuss the evolution of Australia’s Working Holiday Maker visa program, which highlights the tensions between tourism, labour, and migration. The term ‘backpacker’ is widely used in Australia interchangeably with the ‘Working Holiday Maker’ visa, identifying both a tourist subculture and what has become an essential migrant worker cohort in horticulture and a staple part of rural tourism and economies. But their presence, and the agricultural industry’s dependence on them, manifests what we identify as a ‘tourism-migration nexus’, that is, where labour chains, tourist flows, and the complexities of bilateral government agreements influence the migration trajectories of these working visitors. We draw on scholarship across backpacking, tourism and migration, in dialogue with recent policy and government inquiries, in order to trace the evolution and changes in the Australian Working Holiday Maker visa and the implications that this has on tourist mobilities as well as longer-term migration journeys." --Abstract
Adult
Text in English
Working holidays.
Backpackers.
Farming.
Horticulture.
Regional.
Labour.
Migration policy.
Australia.