Backpackers have shifted from the margins of the travel industry into the spotlight. This book explores the international backpacker phenomenon and includes different disciplinary perspectives on its meaning, impact and significance. Links are made between theory and practice, setting backpacking in its wider social, cultural and economic context.

Greg Richards is lecturer in leisure studies at Tilburg University in the Netherlands, and currently a research fellow at the Interarts Observatory for Culture and Tourism in Barcelona. Julie Wilson is Research Fellow with the Centre for Environment and Planning, University of the West of England, Bristol (UK) although currently a Batista i Roca Fellow with the Department of Geography, Universitat Rovira i Virgil, Tarragona and Visiting Fellow, Universitat de Barcelona (Catalonia, Spain).