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Paper short abstract:

Grey nomads are older Australians travelling full-time or part-time in caravans, motorhomes or other mobile homes. In shedding place-based responsibilities, grey nomads are enacting an Antipodean cosmopolitanism incorporating elements of hedonism and rejecting norms about ageing in place.

Paper long abstract:

This paper describes an Antipodean form of cosmopolitanism in the context of grey nomads, older Australians who travel full-time or part-time in mobile homes. It draws on interviews I conducted in 2008 across Victoria, New South Wales and Queensland’s caravan parks and camping areas. Beyond understanding mobile homes as socio-technical apparatus, I identified themes which led me to posit that grey nomads represent a new form of Antipodean cosmopolitanism.

Scholars of global mobilities have drawn on theories of cosmopolitanism which describe the transnational movement of people, ideas, and culture. This scholarship is physically and culturally rooted in European understandings of mobility, where transnational movement signifies movement across relatively small geographic distances albeit representing significant cultural and social distinctions.

While some scholars have attempted to apply these theories in the context of the global south, it is unclear how cosmopolitanism arising from mobilities might be understood in a geographically vast context like Australia. How can we apply a scholarly concept built around the idea of transnational mobility in the context of an Antipodean mobility which does not trespass national boundaries?

I argue that grey nomads, through the technology of mobile homes, are rejecting ageing in place, resisting pressure to sublimate themselves to the needs of their children and grandchildren, investing resources of money and time in themselves, participating in novel cultural and social exchange across a vast geographic area, and travelling purposefully as part of a shared experience with like-minded compatriots, thus enacting a new form of Antipodean cosmopolitanism.