Organizational Psychology

This article describes labor activity and communities among people, leading a nonprofessional way of life. We have conducted this qualitative research on the sample of Russian lifestyle travelers, for whom the main life activity is not a work, but a journey. The sample included Russianspeaking lifestyle travelers — one woman and seven men aged from 25 to 41 years with experience of lifestyle travel in different countries from 1.5 to 21 years long and with homes in the territory ofthe Russian Federation or Ukraine. We interviewed each respondent, and then used theory-based thematic analysis with pre-specified categories based on the parameters of the professional way of life. In addition, we analyzed several books written by lifestyle travelers, and their collective and personal Internet resources. Finally, we have made participant observation on several gatherings of the lifestyle travelers’ community in the Moscow region. We have found that labor activity in the non-professional way of life of free travelers is episodic and serves only to ensure their existence during journey. They take local jobs and work intensively for a limited period of time, or earn money online permanently and not actively. While working locally lifestyle travelers are limited by local laws, so they often get jobs unofficially, and their pay is usually lower than for locals. However, online jobs among lifestyle travelers have no specific legal restrictions or lower payment rates. In addition, we have found out that communities of lifestyle travelers are similar to professional and amateur communities - they also have a culture of special knowledge sharing. They share it on live collective gatherings or through creating information sources — books, videos, travel reports, etc. Such communities, in mostly, are formed around Internet sites or social media group. Further, lifestyle traveler have specific communities - temporary communes (enclaves) and permanent communes. These findings are giving ground for creating new models describing non-professional way of life.