Blue Horizons: Anthropological Reflections on Maritime Lifestyle Migrations in the Mediterranean

As a result of opening of internal borders within the EU and rapid development of affordable navigation technology, there is a constantly increasing number of people in the Mediterranean who have adopted a lifestyle that revolves around living working and traveling on sailing boats. On the ground of ethnography among liveaboards in Greece the book discusses the following questions: How can we conceptualise these novel forms of movements that seem to sit uncomfortably in between the standard dichotomized division of work within migration studies and wider social sciences: internal/international migration, temporary/permanent, migration/tourism? How do we theoretically and methodologically situate these individuals that are statistically often invisible and seem to evade the common categories of describing a mobile person, such as migrant or tourist? In order to answer these questions, the author explores ethnographically the connection between the maritime environment, sea imaginaries and lifestyle migration. It puts forward six crew portraits in order to highlight details from individuals’ lives on a longer time perspective but also to place the individual stories, sea imaginaries and people’s experiences with the maritime environment in dialogue with each other. This makes it possible to better understand the expectations, aspirations and experiences of maritime lifestyle migrants and to discuss further the idea of temporarily unbelonging in practice.

_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Z odprtjem internih mej v EU in zavoljo hitrega razvoja lahko dostopne navigacijske tehnologije je v okviru Mediterana opaziti naraščanje števila ljudi iz zahodne Evrope, ki so razvili poseben življenjski stil – združevanje dela, potovanja in vsakdanjega življenja na jadrnicah. V knjigi so etnografsko osvetljena sledeča vprašanja: Kako konceptualizirati te nove oblike gibanj, ki zavzemajo neudobno, vmesno pozicijo med standardnimi dihotomijami znotraj migracijskih študij kot tudi širše družbenih ved: notranje / mednarodne migracije; začasne / trajne migracije; migracije / turizem? Kako teoretično in metodološko umestiti tovrstne posameznike, ki so statistično pogosto nevidni in za katere se zdi, da se uspejo izognejo standardnim kategorizacijam mobilnih oseb (migrant, turist)? V iskanju odgovorov na zgoraj zastavljena vprašanja avtorica s pomočjo etnografske metode raziskuje povezavo med morjem, imaginariji morja in življenjsko-stilskimi migracijami. V ospredje postavlja šest etnografskih portretov, skozi katere osvetljuje podrobnosti iz življenj posameznikov v daljšem časovnem obdobju, imaginarije morja in fizične izkušnje z morskim okoljem.

Na ta način lahko bolje razumem pričakovanja, aspiracije in izkušnje pomorskih življenjsko-stilskih migrantov in poglobimo razprave o začasnem nepripadanju v praksi.