This work opens with an account of developments in the economic, political and cultural sociology of international tourism and goes on to analyze the relationships between international tourism and the broad economic determinants of the world system. The aim is to understand leisure migration in two principal contexts: the socio-economic hierarchies of society, and the legacy of the east-west political alliances. This theoretical synthesis combines data at the global, continental, and regional levels of tourism, focusing particularly on Austria and Hungary - one of the most exciting areas of Europe, where the social, political, cultural and economic boundaries of the emerging European integration are being contested and redrawn. In adopting an eclectic research strategy, including historical narrative, content analysis, linguistic history, statistical modelling, and fieldwork observation, the text breaks new ground with regard to the empirical material it covers, and is a timely and relevant contribution to the advancement of this debate.