Seite - 183 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 1/2015

Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Nataša Rogelja | The sea: place of ultimate freedom? 183 direct visits. My interlocutors constitute a highly heterogeneous group - touching on several migration forms such as IRM (International Retirement Migration), long term (sabbatical) travel, contemporary peripatetic migration (Rogelja 2013), new European nomads (Kalčić 2013), and marginal mobilities (Juntunen, Kalčić, Rogelja 2014), yet their common denominators are the sea and the quest for a better life. The use of longitudinal qualitative approach is of special importance for the research. I claim that such approach reflects on the idea of the processual nature of my interlocutors’ experience; it reveals their experiences in the period before and after the act of migration, while also allowing for the demonstration of specific in-between practices of my interlocutors. following lifestyle migration theory (Benson and O’Reilly 2009), I will pay attention to the interplay between structural and individual factors that influence lifestyle migration but also to the physical maritime environment which, according to my interlocutors, importantly influences their migration experience. Apart from the sea as a physical environ- ment, special attention will also be given to sea imaginaries. Although these imaginaries alone cannot explain why people choose to migrate, I claim that these culturally relevant represen- tations of the sea are an important element contributing to the understanding of maritime lifestyle migration. following these ideas, I will “navigate” between ethnography, images and environment, reflecting on the concept of liminality; I will explore the connection between the sea, sea imaginaries, and the experiences of maritime lifestyle migrants, as well as discuss the process by which sea imaginaries are translated into practice, while also touching upon how the physical maritime environment influences the experience of maritime lifestyle migrants. To achieve this, the paper will first explain the theoretical foundations of the lifestyle migra- tion phenomenon, emphasizing the relation between the social construction of places and the choices of lifestyle migrants, introducing the debate on liminality as it was tailored to lifestyle migration research; secondly, it will discuss the importance of these cultural dimensions in the specific environment and ethnographic setting among so-called ‘liveaboards’1 in the Mediterra- nean. finally, the sea images, the maritime environment, the importance of nautical technology and details from individualized biographies will be put in a dialogue. My interlocutors’ experi- ences of deterritorialization in perpetual motion and practices of mobile dwelling that epitomise ideals of individual freedom and self-sufficiency will be put in a dialogue with the debates on liminality and will be contextualised within the contemporary context of late modernity that promotes, enables and generates »the escape« to the sea. Maritime lifestyle migration Lifestyle migration has been recognized as a growing and disparate phenomenon with impor- tant implications for individuals, societies and places (Benson and O’Reilly 2009, hoey 2010, Benson and Osbaldiston 2014). Michaela Benson and Karen O’Reilly defined lifestyle migra- tion in a broad definition as the spatial mobility of “… relatively affluent individuals of all ages moving either part-time or full time, permanently or temporarily to places which, for various reasons, signify for the migrants something loosely defined as quality of life” (2009: 621). One of the first studies in this direction was a book The British on the Costa del Sol (2000) by Karen O‘Reilly who wrote about British migrants living in expatriate enclaves in Spain. With a similar ethnographic approach, Michaela Benson researched middle-class British migrants