OzNomads: a case study examining the challenges of COVID-19 for a community of lifestyle travellers

ABSTRACT

OzNomads are lifestyle travellers who practice extreme mobilities and are independent of specific geographic locations. The COVID-19 pandemic, and subsequent measures imposed by federal and state governments to control it, have had adverse effects on the OzNomad community. In stark contrast to the benefits of the lifestyle prior to the pandemic, this paper outlines five emerging challenges facing OzNomads: displacement, marginalization, social isolation, financial impacts and mental health. Such challenges have serious implications for the wellbeing of a community that contributes substantially to regional and rural Australia as workers, consumers and volunteers.

KEYWORDS:

• Lifestyle travellers
• COVID-19 measures
• marginalization
• mobility
• regional Australia
• sedentarization

Acknowledgement

This research was made possible through the contributions of the OzNomad community. We thank individuals who took the time to share their stories with us.

Disclosure statement

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

Ethics approval

This study has been approved by the University of Technology Sydney Human Research Ethics Committee (UTS HREC), ETH20-4986.