HAVE FRIENDS, WILL TRAVEL? EXPLORING YOUTH IDENTITY, PRIVILEGE & WORK-LIFE THROUGH THE GRAD TRIP

Abstract

The grad trip marks the milestone of graduating from university, celebrated as the fruits of hard work in school. At the heart of it, it is about spending quality time with friends through exploring a new space together, and perceived as a well-deserved break prior to the start of formal employment. The grad trip norm has become ubiquitous in the minds of Singaporean youths, and this invites geographical possibilities for understanding the trip not merely as an episodic holiday, but as an extension of everyday social life through travel. It is a lens through which we can understand the interplay of the social and the spatial in the maintenance of friendship through travel; it presents an empirical site where the experience of class privilege through unequal access to mobility can be tangibly observed; lastly, it demonstrates how time for leisure is conditioned by the work ethic grounded in cultural context.