Page - 195 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Volume 1/2015

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Nataša Rogelja | The sea: place of ultimate freedom? 195 standing human reactions to liminal experiences or developing more fragmented view on dif- ferent kinds of liminality. (Turner 1982). By using detailed ethnographic case studies, the role of liminality in the context of global modernity can be questioned further, namely how we think and live with liminality today. A contemporary world experienced by my interlocutors is essentially disordered and uncertain, almost as if the liminal conditions have turned into the norm. As diagnosed by Szakolczai and discussed by Thomassen (2012: 30), the modern epi- steme represents a temporal fixingof liminal conditions that at a given moment freeze and turn into structure; in other words, modernity can be interpreted as a peculiar form of “permanent liminality”. can we understand the choices, ideas and acts of my interlocutors as a wish to impose their own order upon permanent liminality? I observed how for my interlocutors the sea and the journey (and its liminal associations) are adopted for a self-project experiment in the context of what if questions: what if this is possible (to live on the boat), what if there is a better port, a better community, a better life… In the experiment of work-leisure-existence on the sea and on the boat, the liveaboards are in a relatively privileged and active position, they temporarily stop (working, going to school or to church, even stop walking as they cross the seas) and critically observe themselves and the dominant structure. Ideas such as »smuggling as a mode of embodded criticality« or »active position of unbelonging« developed by Rogoff can be considered as alternative liminal concepts (Rogoff 2000, 2006) suited for the ethnography presented. In her book Terra Infirma, Rogoff writes about learning and transitional processes and how they are »… not so much the addition of information as they are the active processes of unlearning which need to be carefully plotted out into active theories of unlearning which can be translated into active positions of unbelonging« (2000: 3). her theoretical discussion on unbelonging as an active process does not promote the illusion that the state (or any other structural constrain) is not powerful but rather aims »to examine some of the terms by which it has limited and shut down our capacity to understand and thematize issues of belonging bey- ond those annexed purely to the juridical status of its subjects« (ibid: 5). The movement of my interlocutors has to do with experimentation, curiosity, the constant making of choices but also with a wish of “being-at-home in a meaningful world”, to use Thomassen’s vocabulary (2012). While temporarily unbelonging, my interlocutors acquired skills in adapting to new situati- ons (the marine environment, new economic possibilities of work-leisure-existence on the sea, family relations on the boat…). It can be said that the sea with its liminal associations was an important element in their pre-migration period, while in the post-migration period, the skills and knowledge they acquired can serve to temporarily escape the »permanent liminality« of late modernity and to carve new ways for the future experiements. Undoubtedly, maritime lifestyle migration brings personal transformations in the migrants‘ lives, yet the tension or congruity between reality and imagination in the case of a maritime life- style must also include the understanding of the concrete physical environment and the human experience regarding this environment. The change they achieved was not structural (they still function within the middle class) but it arises and is defined by their intimate experience. It is interesting to note that for almost all my interlocutors a lifestyle migration to the boat was a transitional period of five to ten years followed by the return to their home-country, a wish to do so, or to relocate elsewhere (several cases that I followed sold a boat and bought a house/or dreamed of buying a house in rural areas of france, in french Polynesia, rural Spain or rural