Growing up in a tourist destination: negotiating space, identity and belonging

ABSTRACT

There is little research on children’s experiences of growing up in a popular tourist destination, where place and space are contested with visitors, migrants and temporary residents. Existing literature on young people’s experiences of their socio-spatial surroundings has focused predominantly on the rural/urban dichotomy, often neglecting to explore how identity and belonging are negotiated in complex community contexts such as tourist destinations. This paper reports on recent research that suggests that young people’s experiences of growing up in such an environment are nuanced and diverse, with their rich narratives disrupting socially constructed distinctions between the rural and the urban, merging experiences from both worlds.

KEYWORDS:

• Identity
• belonging
• agency
• tourist destination
• childhood experiences
• Byron Bay

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the Byron Youth Council, Byron Youth Services and Byron Youth Theatre for facilitating the participation of young people in the study. We would also like to thank all the young people involved in the study for their time, openness and engagement. Our gratitude also goes to the two anonymous reviewers who helped to improve an earlier version of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

ORCID

Antonia Canosa http://orcid.org/0000-0002-3422-9095

Notes

1 The terms ‘children’ and ‘young people’ are used interchangeably in this paper and refer to participants between the ages of 10 and 24 years.

2 Schoolies is a popular event in the Byron Shire, and specifically in Byron Bay, where school leavers flock to party and celebrate the end of their schooling and the beginning of their independent adult life.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Australian Government Research Training Program Scholarship.