ABSTRACT
Alongside the seismic shock of COVID-19, another catastrophe continues to edge ever closer to an inevitable, far-reaching, attention-grabbing reality – climate change. Air travel, a popular and often necessary transportation mode for short-term holidaying, making accessible ‘exotic’ parts of the world, or upholding the possibility to return ‘home’ and/or see family, may never return to its previous glory. As sociologists, one of our primary concerns was to understand how family travel might be yet another mechanism through which social stratification was made possible as well as extended. However, travel as a practice of cultivation was not only instrumental, which is how it is usually conceived. Family travel was also found to be child-centred, keen to promote intimacy, and to strongly affect the practice of family-making. The chapter also presents some closing thoughts on the key concepts in the preceding chapters of this book.
