A decade has passed since lifestyle mobilities entered the academic literature as a conceptual framework to address the grey zone between tourism, work and migration. Lifestyle mobilities emerged from the broader theoretical ideas offered by the mobilities turn in the social sciences, which itself was inspired by post-structural thinking. Post-structural perspectives shun binaries, such as home/away or work/leisure. The rejection of such binaries upends many comfortable divisions in tourism knowledge.

A number of social phenomena reflecting the collapse of these binaries found theoretical traction in lifestyle mobilities, such as long-term backpacking, Vanlife, and more recently, the meteoric rise of digital nomadism. These travel lifestyles are bound together by ongoing and (largely) voluntary corporeal mobility. Ways of life oriented around corporeal mobility have important implications for adherents’ senses of identity, belonging and home.

This presentation charts the development of lifestyle mobilities, addressing key advances over the last decade. But more importantly, it discusses what we do not yet know and the implications of those gaps. To that end, a research agenda is offered that would help close some of the remaining knowledge gaps in lifestyle mobilities research.