Background: The Housing Crises, Global Recessions and #Vanlife

Arguably, the 2008 financial crisis was the catalyst for #vanlife. At the same time the Occupy Wall Street protests were gaining momentum, the launch of the #vanlife started what many have called a social media movement (Monroe 2017). While millions of homes were being repossessed in the United States and a global recession would soon after heavily impact the financial well-being of everyday people, van sales in the US went up by 24 percent (Spitznagel 2012). Across the Atlantic Ocean, people in the United Kingdom were left unemployed, with precarious hours, with limited contracts or unable to find work when graduating from secondary and tertiary schools; close to 200,000 out of 573,000 people who lost their jobs were between the ages of eighteen and twenty-four (Cohen 2009). In a desperate bid to gain employment, one university graduate stood on top of a four-story platform at Trafalgar Square and shared his CV on a giant tarp. It was a rare opportunity given by lottery for people to do nearly whatever they wanted for one hour in the heart of one of the busiest plazas in the world. The gamble paid off; after standing above the scramble of tourist and business folks alike, the young man was hired for a job. When asked his thoughts afterwards, he replied, ‘I know I'm really lucky. Lots of young people who are just out of university are totally stuck, there just aren't any jobs out there’ (Cohen 2009). His feat was not shared by a large majority of his age group as the rise of the gig economy for the next decade left many millennials in despair financially. By the time some were able to say they were finally bouncing back from the Great Recession economy that left them with few opportunities to make the same gains as their parents, the Covid-19 pandemic struck and a great too many were left once again in a place more like the Great Depression (Collins 2020).

One example of a working youth who tried to make financial ends meet prior to the 2020 pandemic can be found in Alex Hill, a then twenty-four-year-old man who chose to live out of a commuter van in London. Originally hoping to couch surf amongst friends until he could find an affordable apartment, the young man eventually decided to try living out of his vehicle while working at his IT firm. It is not a glamorous set-up as he only has a bed, solar-powered generator, and one-person heater. At the time he believed ‘there were no laws against sleeping in your vehicle’. The IT worker also noted that ‘he's never had a problem parking in Clapham, Brixton or anywhere in Islington where he can visit friends and camp outside after’ (Matthews 2016). However, the numbers kept growing in other parts of the country.

Feuds between residential homeowners and vanlife survivalists have been ongoing in Bristol, England, where ‘a rising number of people have turned to living in their vans because they've been priced out of the city's rental market’ (BBC 2017), with such prices being estimated as the highest outside of London in 2017 (Partington 2017). Conor D'Arcy (2017) details the struggle in Bristol: ‘Housing costs place a sizeable drain on incomes. Typical house prices are now nearly 10 times higher than the typical salary, while typical rents are equal to 41 per cent of typical wages’. When interviewed about conditions, a twenty-three-year-old man took the stance felt by many individuals in Bristol and beyond: ‘The idea that you would own a home in a few years is ridiculous . . . For our parents it was possible. Now people buying houses are only able to do so with the help of their parents, which is select few relying on the bank of mum and dad’ (Partington 2017).

One might ponder where the line begins and ends to distinguish those who are living the vanlife dream and those who are surviving a nightmare of mobile homeless via vandwelling. Like many stories of those who found the vanlife calling, Michael Hudson (2017: 6), a former electronic systems engineer who worked for ‘global company’ in Sheffield, England, had an existential crisis of his own at an early age:

Three years ago, I would sit at my desk every day and think ‘this can't be it’. Nothing seemed to make sense. I felt like I was missing out, like there was so much more to life than going back and forth to an office building every day, feeling tired and unfulfilled. I needed to escape. I wanted to explore the world, live in different places, meet different people and let every day be an adventure.

How does one explore the world yet maintain a sense of personal autonomy and ‘home’ in the process? One answer is of course the #vanlife. Such being the case for Hudson, as he concluded from his existential breakdown, ‘The only thing I could think to do was get a van, make it into my full-time traveling home and break away. Off into the sunset. To be free, with the whole of Europe (and possibly beyond) as my garden’ (2017: 7). Yet is such a choice of mobility the standard for all vanlifers?

‘Although some people live in a van for the freedom and cost effectiveness, the majority of vandwellers will tell you the lifestyle is not a choice, they simply cannot afford to rent or buy in Bristol in the current climate’ (Davis 2017). In contrast to examples such as Hudson's, the number of people living in vehicles has grown over the years in the UK due to unaffordable homes of conventional means (Hattenstone and Lavelle 2021). One man discusses how he must live in a caravan because his low-wage full-time job is not enough money for him to pay rent amongst overly expensive rental prices. His caravan is in a ‘ramshackle line of 16 caravans and vans. There are at least seven other vehicle encampments in the city, including wealthy neighbourhoods such as Clifton Down’ (Wall 2018).

Michelle Wakin (2015) studied similar mobile homelessness in the seaside town of Santa Barbara, California. In her book Otherwise Homeless: Vehicle Living and the Culture of Homelessness, she paints a reality that is starkly opposite to the dream of #vanlife. Wakin affirms that ‘vehicle living is one of many makeshift housing solutions used by homeless people to avoid the shelters and the streets’ (4). She emphasises, ‘First and foremost, vehicles allow for more safety, privacy, and autonomy than the shelters or the streets can provide’ (3). Such a perspective could very well explain the increasing presence of vans on the streets of Bristol and the inevitable attention more visible numbers of vandwellers might receive from neighborhood homeowners and renters alike.

Angry Bristol residents and homeowners have squared off over encroachment with vandwellers in years past. Accusations of disturbing the peace and ‘urinating and defecating in homeowner's yards after the cemetery toilet was locked at night’ led to many heated discussions amongst the townsfolk. In response to this the vandwellers of Bristol demanded that the government provide land so they can park permanently. ‘A rising number of people have turned to living in their vans because they've been priced out of the city's rental market’ (BBC 2017), what Rhiannon Craft (2020: S327) might refer to as evidence of ontological insecurity:

It is suggested that bringing one's immediate surroundings under control facilitates autonomy and identity construction, which can bring about a greater sense of well-being. In an increasingly ‘out-of-control’ world, this represents a (much-needed) source of relief. These spaces also grant individuals freedom from intense surveillance, and therefore some privacy and refuge from a panoptic outside world.

Such ontological insecurity is apparent in the culture(s) of vanlife, where individuals and groups are entering such a lifestyle with the intent of surviving and gaining more control of their lives. Whether they are on a seemingly dichotomic spectrum between mobile homeless and vanlife, of surviving versus thriving, it would seem the following excerpt would apply to all in the presence of mainstream society:

For vehicle owners, acquiring and maintaining a vehicle to use as housing and avoiding police attention are tedious, time consuming activities but ones that allow them to preserve a sense of safety and autonomy and combat social stigma. This is a primary feature of what distinguishes vehicle living from other forms of homelessness. (Wakin 2015: 11)

A positive example of gaining such ontological security in Bristol comes from vandweller Michael Gape, as he said to the local town cabinet:

We were constantly worried for our physical health and struggled with severe depression and anxiety. However, after converting a vehicle to live in, our mental and physical health have improved dramatically. We are both no longer having to work 50 to 60 hours a week to cover the cost of renting and have time for ourselves. I've never been happier or healthier in my life. (BBC 2019)

Still, the adversity faced by those like Gape surviving through the vanlife compared with those who are thriving by owning or renting a home while maintaining positive physical and mental health is a perfect example of ‘mobility as progress, as freedom, as opportunity, and as modernity, sit side by side with mobility as shiftlessness, as deviance and as resistance’ (Cresswell 2006: 14).

Bristol is just one site of the years-long struggle of people trying to survive the nightmare by living the so-called dream. Today, across the United Kingdom and European Union, it seems as though many are embarking on the journey of vanlife. This uptick in vanlife members is due to the increasing uncertainties in relation to rising interest rates, inflation, another housing crisis and pandemic restrictions fallout. Yet, from the direct perspective of full-time European vanlife nomads with many years of experience, would their anecdotes contribute to answering the question of whether living the dream is surviving or thriving?

Methods: Digital Ethnography as a Strength amidst Covid Disruption

A digital ethnographic approach was embraced to engage in meaningful interactions with potential volunteers in Europe because my movements were restricted to Australia and the United States due to Covid-19 pandemic disruptions. Such disruptions severely impacted travel funding and travel pricing due to airline industry systemic issues, astronomical petrol costs, ethics application approvals and time for field data collection due to residency requirements. To collect meaningful data and raise awareness to the voices of real vanlife members – sharing their tales of perseverance and glory – it would require me to embrace twenty-first century technology such as Zoom video teleconferencing and social media networking.

Globalisation is all around me as a twenty-first century ethnographer. The five globalised flows presented by anthropologist Arjun Appadurai (1990) include people across boundaries, technology, ideas, money across political borders and media, all of which seem like inescapable facets in conducting research into cultures that have emerged since 2010 in a growing tradition of ‘netnography’ (Kozinets 1998). The need to use the digital in face of such globalised challenges faced by graduate researchers during the pandemic are affirmed by Marnie Howlett: ‘Digital communication platforms like Zoom, Skype, and Facebook have allowed many of us to continue our studies from a distance – in some cases, significant temporal and spatial distances away from our research sites’ (2022: 387). If we hold true that ‘ethnography is about telling social stories’ (Murthy 2008: 838), yet ethnography is now more than ever ‘situated within a world saturated by multimedia technologies’ (Dicks et al 2006: 77), then ethnographers ‘cannot continue this overall trend of sidestepping digital methods’ (Murthy 2008: 838) should we genuinely desire to understand culture in a globalised social network society (Castells 2010) at a time of unprecedented worldwide disruption. As Roderick Coover (2004: 7) says, ‘Ethnographers working in the traditions of cultural and interpretive anthropology use disciplinary methods, media tools and individual skills of communication to make sense of cultural practice’. The methods used for this research are no exception in practice.

My first introduction into the European vanlife community was through traditional snowball sampling via English expat full-time vanlife members I knew were ‘living the dream’ in Australia. They connected me through email to potential participants back in the United Kingdom. I also began reaching out to various public Instagram profiles of active postings using the hashtags #vanlifeuk (400,000-plus) and #vanlifeeurope (695,000-plus). Through this combination I was able to identify four key volunteers in Europe to learn their vanlife journeys with the goal of better understanding the subcultures and lived experiences of full-time vanlife nomads in Europe with particular attention to the United Kingdom. The questions raised during our deep discussions are reflective of the background context of vanlife development and challenges in the past decade in such regional context.

Through in-depth semi-structured formal interviews spanning hours via video conferencing, stories were shared from the perspectives of full-time vanlifers themselves as to whether they are living the so-called dream or surviving a modern-day nightmare. Tom Boellstroff writes from his experience conducting ethnographic research in a virtual online gaming world: ‘Culture can be implicit and even subconscious, but much of it is part of everyday awareness; members of a culture can sometimes be its most eloquent interpreters’ and reflect such through the process of formal interviews (2015: 76). Thus, through the voices of European vanlife members themselves, this research seeks to be a launching-off point to more representation in academic literature of the varied underground vanlife nomadic individuals and their communities.

Discussion: Contemporary European Vanlife Voices and Their Journeys

Three separate discussions with four full-time vanlifers intertwine for this section. The first discussion includes Tania (age thirty-three), who is from Ireland, and her partner, Adam (age thirty-five), from England. He inherited his mother's rusty camper-van, Jits, in 2019, and they have lived the full-time vanlife for three straight years. Inspired by the plethora of vanlife videos online, they set out on their European travels while also sustaining their journey as social media content creators with nearly fifty thousand Instagram followers and seventy thousand YouTube followers.

The second discussion includes Jay (age forty-three), originally from England. After years of chasing the traditional dream of homeownership associated with a middle-class lifestyle, he and his wife decided to rent out their mortgaged house in London while they live and work remotely full-time. They were first introduced to vanlife through social media like so many people and have lived the lifestyle for over four years, starting well before the pandemic began. When the Brexit vote ensured they would face limited mobility across Europe, they purchased a standard used motorhome from a friend's mother and began to explore as much as they could in the European Union. They fell in love with the vanlife more so due to the warm social connections they almost immediately made in Portugal with other vanlifers of various nationalities in contrast to cold interpersonal relations back in London.

Finally, the third discussion involves Richard (age sixty), who is also from England. In 2009 the company he worked for went bust due to the global economic crisis, so he took six months to go travelling. After bicycle camping across Africa and Oceania, he realised how much he valued the joy such mobility allowed. In 2019 he finally sold his house, gave away most of his belongings and bought a motorhome named Riley. He has no plan to ever stop living the vanlife and enjoys the adventure of going wherever the road leads him, spending much of his time in Scotland surrounded by natural beauty and tranquillity.

Cultural Folkways and Values: What It Means to ‘Live the Dream’

I have often wondered if vanlife nomads are regularly being told that they are living the dream. I raise this question to the interviewees up front to better understand their general experience before diving deeper into the particulars. The results make me laugh with joy, as all the volunteers answer in the affirmative. Their immediate responses consist of:

• Tania: Oh, all the time. All the time! Loads of people say that.

• Jay: [with a laugh] Yeah, all the time.

• Richard: Yes, many times!

The follow-up question delivers a deeper reply, asking, ‘What do you think that means when people tell you that?’ Tania goes into excellent detail as she explains:

So basically, the social norm is, you go to school, you go to college, you get a good job – and by college, I mean university. Yeah, you get a good job, you have stability, you buy a house, you know, you have a partner, start a family, and hopefully you live to a good old age. And then after retirement you have that money you've worked so hard for and then you travel. But the reality is that so much of that time is spent stressing, keeping up with the Joneses, always like putting so much pressure on yourself. The more money you earn the higher your cost of living goes because you feel like you need to show something for the time that you're spending all those hours in the office. So, is it a nice car? Is it what you're wearing? Is it the house? Is it all of these things. What are your friends doing? We need to go away. We need to get absolutely battered on a Friday night to just forget about our worries and have something to talk about. And this is how we socialise with others, and this is how we connect. When they're saying it, they're like, ‘Wow, you have this freedom, you don't have these shackles and you don't have these ties; you get to see the world, and it looks amazing, because you get to do with that all of the time’. And I think what people don't realise is that they could do it too if they wanted to, it's just priorities.

This sense of escaping the shackles of mainstream societal norms is also shared by Jay and his wife as he discusses the appeal of ‘perceived freedom that you can go anywhere, do anything you want anytime of the day, which is close, but not quite there. I think it's freedom, the natural environment and yeah, the views’. Richard also shares a similar perspective as he explains:

I think non-vanlifers probably see ‘living the dream’ as the antithesis of the trials and stresses of their own lives, getting the kids ready for school, paying the mortgage, rocketing energy bills, the next sales meeting at work, et cetera. So, I think I'm possibly living their dream! But I also think they maybe see my life as one of always being parked up overlooking a beach, mountains, waterfall or whatever, the coffee is always brewing, warm croissants are being eaten, the sun is shining. Right now, I'm parked in a lay-by, I have a view of a busy road and it's raining. Vanlife isn't all sunshine and roses, is it? It can often be dull and has its frustrations and stresses, just like ‘normal’ life.

Clearly, vanlife is a dream of sorts. It leaves one to wonder if the old dream for many, such as the ‘American dream,’ is home ownership, might vanlife be the new dream for the working and middle classes that have been priced out of the market? Furthermore, if so many people declare vanlifers are living the dream, then are those who are not living the vanlife simply surviving a nightmare? Has the dream they were told to follow truly left the masses discontent?

Cultural values are important to identify when learning about communities. A sense of freedom is a key value to the vanlife community in Europe. Be it the freedom to move when desired, financial freedom to choose when to work or not, or freedom to experience different cultures and events. It would seem another value is the concept of respect. For many full-time vanlifers, respect is crucial to not merely surviving but thriving. Respect for other people's spaces and place are particularly important. As Tania explains:

In our experience, we have always tried to be as respectful as possible where we're staying. Not to overstay our welcome, not to leave rubbish behind, not to be obnoxiously parked. For example, if you arrive to a place and there's loads of other campers where clearly locals go to, then you choose another place to park. Not to have your awning and your chairs out and blasting music.

Obnoxious behaviours on the part of vanlifers would most definitely invite unwanted attention and perhaps animosity from locals. This is evident with the conversation of having the infamous knock.

The knock, an infamous act in the vanlife community, is the dreadful moment when trying to find a safe space to sleep at night. It usually comes from law enforcement but can also come from residential neighbours in the late hours or early hours of the day. It seems it is not as much of an occurring thing for European full-time vanlifers in contrast to their counterparts in the North America. As Jay shares his experience:

I don't think we have. I have been asked to move. But I was already out of the van. I don't think we've been in bed and the police's told us to move. I've had a knock on the door during daytime hours of someone asking a question or something like that, but not what I would call the knock of like, ‘you've got to move on’. I've been in bed and that is always in the back of your mind when you're resting.

Similarly, Richard has never had the infamous knock. He attributes this to being respectful and aware of his surroundings. He does not park where signs say not to or in front of any front yards of houses that would attract immediate attention. This respect is also extended to that of nature and could be interpreted as a separate value of stewardship towards the land. Full-time vanlifers such as these interviewees have a great appreciation for the natural environment. As Jay puts it:

Respect where you park up, the nature of the land like that; leave no trace. That's a real big thing. A lot of us full timers get pissed off when someone pulls in that has clearly hired a van for a week. And then they leave rubbish, or they get their table and chairs out in places where you're not allowed to do, or leave a toilet roll in the bushes because they haven't got a toilet on board or something.

A connection with nature is key for many that full-time in vanlife. The freedom of mobility to go to a rural or city landscape when one feels the need is surely an appeal to many. Respecting the land in all ways by not leaving any trace is important so that vanlifers are continued to visit and not become banned.

Beyond a Pandemic Nightmare: Surviving Overregulated Restrictions of Vanlife

When considering the struggles of vanlifers in various parts of the United Kingdom in the years leading up to the Covid-19 pandemic, one wonders how vanlifers get on now in a post-pandemic period. The responses by the participants were not positive, with all using the word ‘unfriendly’ to describe attitudes in England. Tania says, ‘The UK, in our experience, has been the least camper-van friendly country. Particularly, England and Wales are the least friendly countries because there are lots of no overnight parking signs. There are little to no facilities like you do get in the rest of Europe’. She elaborates on the facilities experience of vanlife in continental Europe further with the concept of the aire:

In Portugal, Spain, France and in Italy, there are these things called aires. They are places that are free. Most of the time they're free. Sometimes the facilities are paid, but it's basically free or very little paid designated parking for camper-vans. There's a place where you can enter and clean your chemical waste. You can empty out your grey waste as well. And there are bins. There is free electricity for you to hook up. It does say the maximum stay is three days, so 72 hours. And there is also water, there is waste disposal, there's plenty of recycling here, and at the back of each of the bays that we have there's also an open bin in case you don't want to walk that thirty seconds to put your stuff in bin elsewhere.

Richard, having spent a great amount of time in both the UK and greater Europe, shares Tania's sentiments and experience:

When I'm in the UK I spend most of my time in Scotland, where it's much easier to find good park-ups than it is in England. England is generally unfriendly to vanlifers, a sad indictment of restrictive laws and England's increasing small-mindedness and introverted outlook. There are virtually no aires in England, unlike in continental Europe, where there are excellent provisions and amenities for camper vans and motorhomes. Too many ‘no overnight parking’ signs in England, as well as height barriers.

Jay also notes of such restrictions using high barriers in car parks that stop wider vehicles from gaining access. Jay admits he spends very little time in England because of the challenge of finding a space to park in peace. He goes deeper into the concept of ownership and the commons:

I find the UK quite constrictive. It's like, ‘This is my land, this is my plot’. I get a lot of the attitude and even talking to friends they say, ‘Why should you park somewhere for free?’ My argument is, ‘Why should we have to pay to park in the forest?’ Who should own that? As long as we're all respectful, we should all have the right to access land. Why is so much restricted from all of us? That's a bit of a UK mentality I think, the ‘it's my land, get off it,’ or ‘he's paid for that land so you shouldn't have access to it’. I totally disagree.

Such cultural values were also detected by Tania and Adam, as they have travelled around the UK. When asked if they have noticed more signs or postings prohibiting any form of vanlife, Tania comments:

We have absolutely seen more signs pop up over the years saying no parking. Places that we have been to two years before will now have signs, and that is also part of these places being popularised through social media, the word getting out and more people entering in more apps like Park4Night so more local seeing that all of a sudden, we've got a flurry of camper-vans here then they're likely to put up a sign.

She further explains why she calls out Wales and England for their unfriendliness towards vanlife because ‘in Scotland, they are generally more tolerant of camper-vans because a general perspective is that roaming and wild camping in a tent is allowed. So, there's kind of just in general this this feeling of the land belongs to everyone as long as you're respectful, so they're just so much more open than the other two countries’.

Indeed, Scotland is held in high favour by all the vanlife volunteers in this article. Tania goes into more details, finding more favourable comparison of Scotland with that of greater Europe:

Six months ago, when we were in Scotland last, we started to notice that there were three, in the entire country – we saw three designated aires that were free. No free electricity: we've never seen that apart from this place [in Tuscany], but it did have the water and the toilet, emptying facilities, and we were like, ‘Whoa, they're starting to feel like a bit of like Europe’, in a sense, and we hope that it goes that way. We hope that local authorities understand that people want to live like this, and we just need to make sure that if we don't want to see people being disrespected and leaving rubbish or emptying out their grey waste in responsible ways, why don't we just make sure that we have those facilities? Having these dedicated areas that you find around Europe makes vanlife easy, stress free, the feeling of being, like, totally welcomed and not feeling so much like you must be really stealth because of course we're supposed to be there.

So where do vanlifers go in the UK, aside from stealth camping in city streets, to find a place to rest peacefully and access to facilities that help sustain the lifestyle? As Tania continues:

In comparison, in England or Wales, you don't get those facilities. You have to go to a seasonal campsite. So most of them, the majority of them, will be closed for the winter months. There are ones that will be open, but you're not getting that vanlife like what you see online where you're parked up somewhere amazing at the foot of a mountain, or [the] start of [a] hike, or next to a river.

Should the UK invest more into facilities such as aires? Must access to these accommodations be free of charge? Such facilities could take a different form like what Jay points out with some European supermarkets:

It's not an aire, it's a supermarket. You can go to the supermarket, do your laundry. And you can go and drive over to empty your grey waste, empty your toilet and get drinking water. I don't know of anywhere like that in the UK.

All the interviewees agree that it is much easier on mainland Europe to wild camp or camp with aires to save money than it is in the UK. Tania explains:

Apps like Park4Night do help, and it's not to say that in the UK it's impossible because we've travelled a lot across the UK and 95 percent of the time, of the nights we've slept, it's always been wild camping because we have an app like Park4Night so you know to tuck yourself into this place because you know that there's no sign that says you can't camp overnight.

Thus, apps like Park4Night are a double-edged sword. The convenience it provides for vanlifers to find safe spaces to rest is truly a lifesaver for many. However, once the spot is posted on the app for others to find, the risk of overcrowding rises, as does the subsequent reaction from local officials to then put up signs that prohibit various vanlife activities such as sleeping overnight.

Might it truly be the case that there are many more people embarking on the vanlife journey over the past few years? Especially after the impact of the coronavirus lockdowns across Europe? Instagram posts and news journals would lead one to think so. Adam thinks ‘more people are but I think before we even got into vanlife, there was still a lot of it going on, it was just like under the radar until you start looking out for it’. Tania adds to Adam's observation: ‘Of course the pandemic was a huge catalyst for the explosion of the interest in vanlife, so the combination of the pandemic plus social media and the popularisation of vanlife on YouTube, Instagram, Pinterest and TikTok’. Jay shares similar insights from his navigation of the pandemic era vanlife experience:

There's a whole wave of people, especially during Covid as well, because of not being able to rent accommodation and stuff. There's a whole wave of people seeing the Instagram of [idealised vanlife]; [vanlife] gives a lot of younger people access to travel to afford to travel and explore. Certainly, in Europe for an extended period of time on a probably incredibly low budget. If you compared it to happen to pay for private or public transport to get somewhere and hotels or even the hostels. So, the access and the experience of travelling . . . but I can't say the bar's low because of the cost of vans now, they've gone up through the roof.

Indeed, the cost of used vehicles around the world went up drastically during the pandemic. Supply chain, particularly that of computer chip shortages, combined with a drastic surge in demand created a car market of inflated prices, raising many used vehicle values to outrageously high levels (Kumelovs 2022).

As Richard claims, ‘One result of travel restrictions during Covid, with all foreign holidays cancelled, was that sales of camper-vans and motorhomes rocketed. So now many people got their first experience/taste of a camper-van/motor-home holiday’. Indeed, the coronavirus lockdowns in the UK led to a tremendous increase in demand for caravans to the point some rental companies had wait times double from weeks to month (Wood 2021). It would seem many had a taste of the vanlife and decided it might be something worth investing more into as an alternative way of living. Richard reflects this:

As people worked from home during the pandemic and realised that going into the office wasn't necessary, it brought to the fore a greater desire in many people to strike a better work/life balance. Why spend time travelling into work and back, plus the time in the workplace, if you can work effectively from home and get the same amount of work done in less time? As well as avoid a stressful commute. And if you can do that using the power of the internet to connect you, why not take it a step further by doing it on the road and going to see some of the world?

It is not that the concept of working from a vehicle was new, but rather so many were put into the position to finally consider doing such. Jay, an online remote worker himself, also observes people are probably interested in ‘the ability to work remotely so people can go, “Wow, I can go and stay in these places, and still work as well?” I think that's really influenced the uptake of it’. From his perspective, a younger generation believes they may be able to become a social media influencer and make money while travelling. This is a view shared with Tania and Adam, as they have learned from others in the community that many new to vanlife just got into the lifestyle for the sole purpose of possible financial gains. In contrast to this purpose, Jay has also observed how others who, in the face of the pandemic revealing how little quest for riches and wealth, reached what they ‘thought was success and said, “Shit, I've just given all my time to this corporation or this job. And I'm not fulfilled and they're taking time away from my family”. We see that a lot’.

In relation to the back story of how so many vanlifers were put into the lifestyle since the start of the 2010 recession, being priced out of a ballooning rental and mortgage market, the interviewees mention the same vicious cycle is repeating itself in the immediate aftermath of the 2020 pandemic. As Jay further reflects:

There are definitely people out of necessity who are doing it going, ‘Well, I'm never going to get the money for a deposit for a house’, or, ‘I spend most of my wages on rent; I can just about pay my bills, and I've got no life, or I can go and buy a van. I can live in there, and then I can potentially work from different places, and I can be in nature more’.

Indeed, like the narratives coming out of places like Bristol, England, younger generations are seemingly taking a pragmatic approach to surviving as the costs of living soar.

End of the Road: The Goal(s) of Vanlifers in Europe

What might the end goal of one's vanlife journey be if a goal does even exist? Is vanlife the means to an end, or an end in and of itself? It would seem for many that after so many years of being nomadic, on the move and overcoming the adversity such a lifestyle brings, the thought of a safe space to call their own resonates well. As Tania and Adam declare:

Full-time vanlife is not forever, but vanlife, we have both agreed, will always be part of our lives. Our immediate plan is after finishing this trip around Italy, we're going to park up the van, and we're going to go backpacking for six months to a year. Then we're going to build out a homestead where we're going to park the van and renovate the homestead whilst we're living out of the van. This van is on its last leg, so we know we're going to be getting another van and we'll convert it ourselves.

Perhaps not quite homesteading but this idea of having a space to call their base is also held by Jay and his wife. Although they still own an apartment in England that they have rented out for several years, they are both very much against living in a colder climate, even going as far as saying they really could not do vanlife in England due to being fair-weather vanlifers. In Jay's own words:

We would love to have a base somewhere, but in the sun, like a house or a tiny home in the in the woods would be amazing thing. And then to be able to go back to base if we have to, and then we go off travelling from there. To have the best of both worlds. And to have again that community of coming back to a place, which I don't know how those fits with a tiny home in the in the woods, but having, you know, that nice place to come back to, stay there and have a bath and just spread out a bit.

In contrast to the two couples, Richard takes much joy in living out his wanderlust with no intention of pumping the brakes. Unlike Jay, who is often told, ‘You can't live in a van forever’, Richard says, ‘Vanlife, for me, did start as a means to an end; the end being to travel as much as possible and work as least as possible. Now it's just my life. I cannot imagine ever going back’.

Conclusion

All the vanlife members interviewed for this article began their journey in 2019. Their departure into this lifestyle predates the calamity and disruption of the Covid pandemic era, yet they have had to live through the dire conditions of the pandemic. Through the medium of #vanlife they attempted to escape nightmarish societal conditions brought on by over a decade of economic insecurities and social alienation. They made the conscious decision of ‘living the dream’ of vandwelling, whereby they gained the fulfilments of personal autonomy, ontological security and an overall happier quality of life that were previously absent in their pursuits of what society had told them was the normal way of doing for a happy and healthy life. Unfortunately, the adverse effects of the pandemic, particularly with the uptick in new vanlife nomads trying to survive in the wake of housing evictions, financial insecurity and illness, led to a drastic increase in overregulation of safe spaces and places for vanlifers to roam and park with security in England and beyond – meaning this cohort of 2019 full-time vanlifers thought they were escaping a nightmare by ‘living the dream’ yet escaped into a different nightmare connected to this dream.

Although this research is but a small glimpse of a potentially much larger comparative study on #vanlife cultures, we see from the shared perspectives of the unrelated full-time vanlifers interviewed, there is indeed a growing presence of vanlife nomads across continental Europe because of economic uncertainty brought on by global financial crises, the Covid pandemic, the war in Ukraine and a growing disdain by alienated individuals with a society that continues to make them question how healthy and happy they might be continuing to live the ideological norms of prior generations. The #vanlife movement may have started out as a counterculture over a decade ago in the midst of the Great Recession, but time has led it to grow beyond that of a niche trend to become more of an acceptable norm more so now than home ownership itself. The prevalence across Europe of both signage prohibiting the act of vanlife nomadism and facilities accommodating the lifestyle (such as aires) are indicative of the abundance of people taking to the journey be it for the weekend, a long holiday or full-time endeavour.

The journey of vanlife seems to be that of one described by many as both living the dream while also surviving a nightmare. The lifestyle can certainly be a means to an end, and for those who thrive in the lifestyle, perhaps an end in itself. Though reactionary measures may be enforced by those with authoritative power to prohibit the free movements of vanlife nomads, the exponential growth of #vanlife and its subsequent communities will not cease until the stings of wealth inequality abate to the point the everyday person is able to sustainably afford the ontological security of a safe space to thrive and not merely survive the miserable ambience of a broken society.