Itinerant

An itinerant is a person who travels from place to place with no fixed home. The term comes from late 16th century: from late Latin itinerant (travelling), from the verb itinerari, from Latin iter, itiner (journey, road).

Types of itinerants

• Drifters (rogues, rovers, vagabonds, vagrants)
• Perpetual travelers, including illegal aliens (migrants)
• Nomads, including hunter-gatherers and gypsies
• Hobos, including tramps, bums, derelicts
• Refugees and displaced persons
• Street people (street children, paupers, squatters, waifs, schnorrers)
• World citizens

Itinerants throughout history and today

• Freight Train Riders of America (freighthoppers in United States)
• Romani people
• Various indigenous peoples (indigenous peoples, including uncontacted peoples)

"The Blind Girl" (1856), depicting two vagrants.

• Afar people in Horn of Africa
• Bajau of Philippines
• Banjara of India
• Bedouin (nomadic Arab people of the desert)
• Beja people in North Africa
• Bushmen of Southern Africa
• Dom people in North Africa and Southwest Asia
• Eurasian nomads of Eurasian Steppe
• Ghilzai in South-Central Asia
• Indigenous Australians
• Indigenous Norwegian Travellers
• Indigenous peoples of the Americas
• Irish Travellers
• Kuchi people of Afghanistan
• Nomads of India
• Pygmy peoples in Equatorial Africa and parts of Southeast Asia
• Quinqui in northeren half of Spain)
• Scottish Travellers
• Yeniche people in Europe

• Carnies (travelling show-people)
• Hippies, including New Age travellers and Rainbow Travellers
• Jossers (circus artists)
• Kobzari (musicians of Ukraine)
• Lightermen (bargees in England)
• Peredvizhniki (realist artists of Russia)
• Swagmen (homeless transients in Australia and New Zealand)
• Circuit riders and Gyrovagues (Christian ministers and monks)
• Bhikkhus (Buddhist monks)
• Mendicants (beggars of Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Jainism and Buddhism)
• Pilgrims (religious travellers)
• Sadhus (Jain monks)

Notable itinerants

Alexander Supertramp at his bus camp in Stampede Trail, Alaska, 1992.

• Alexander Supertramp
• Kinga Freespirit
• Albert Einstein
• Zadeus Kim Huxford
• Democritus
• Diogenes of Sinope
• Friedrich Nietzsche
• Jean-Jacques Rousseau
• Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi
• Paul Erdős
• Gautama Buddha
• Historical Jesus

See also

• Anarcho-primitivism
• Human migration
• Illegal immigration
• Multiculturalism
• Simple living
• Travel

Further reading

• George Orwell (1933). Down and Out in Paris and London. London: Victor Gollancz. ISBN 0-15-626224-X.
• Jack Kerouac (1957). On the Road. Viking Press. ISBN 0-14-118267-9.
• Rolf Potts (2002). Vagabonding: An Uncommon Guide to the Art of Long-Term World Travel. Villard Books. ISBN 0-81-299218-0.
• Sean A. Mulvihill, Larry Kurnarsky (2007). "Living Luminaries – The Serious Business of Happiness" (documentary). Life is a journey.