Negotiating family-free travel: A post-Structural feminist and intersectional perspective

Family-free travel (FFT), defined as travel undertaken without spouses, children, or immediate family members, remains underexplored in tourism research, particularly in relation to migrant women. This study examines how migrant women negotiate FFT following migration and explores the social processes through which travelling without family becomes imaginable, legitimate, and achievable. Drawing on post-structural feminist and intersectional perspectives, qualitative semi-structured interviews were conducted with 34 married first-generation Iranian migrant women living in Australia, including women who had engaged in FFT and those who had not. Reflexive thematic analysis revealed that participation in FFT was shaped not simply by individual choice but through the interaction of gendered discourses, migration experiences, family relationships, and women’s intersecting social positions. For some participants, migration created opportunities to renegotiate caregiving responsibilities and acceptable femininity, while for others, FFT remained unfamiliar or socially illegitimate despite living in the same post-migration context. The study reconceptualises FFT as a relationally negotiated mobility practice rather than an individual travel behaviour, demonstrating that participation depends not only on opportunities but also on the social production of legitimacy and possibility. The findings extend tourism scholarship by advancing understanding of women’s mobility, migration, and family-free travel beyond individualistic explanations of travel behaviour.