Backpacker mobilities: inadvertent sustainability amidst the fluctuating pace of travel

Efforts to address sustainability at the individual level commonly overlook the actions of tourists. Using qualitative research among backpackers, this paper examines relations between mobility and sustainability-related practices. Backpackers have a reputation for hedonism but they performed sustainable practices inadvertently via their fluctuating pace of travel. Pace is understood here as speed plus rhythm and it is this combination that is expressed in the intermittent mobilities of backpackers. Attending to pace shows how the performance of sustainability depends on the dynamic relations between movement and practice, highlighting the role of mobility in determining the tenuousness and durability of sustainable practices.