Seite - 186 - in Mobile Culture Studies - The Journal, Band 1/2015

186 Mobile Culture Studies. The Journal 1 2o15 Nataša Rogelja | The sea: place of ultimate freedom? Turner (1969) and is today experiencing a revival. Van Gennep related the concept of liminal- ity to the transitory phase in rites of passage (to the middle phase between separation from the old position and incorporation into the new one), while Turner further developed this idea by concentrating on the in-between state of liminal, situated between two fixed points. Passing the liminal stage, the individuals are socialized into their new status. Turner also introduced the term liminoide (1982) that not only refers to the in-between state but to any position outside. Since the liminoide state is described by Turner as a transitional phase that individuals enter voluntarily, it was associated with leisure space and adopted as more a suitable term then limi- nal among various researchers of lifestyle migration (Korpela 2009, Benson 2011). As we will see in the ethnographic material, the models of liminality and the liminoid are in the case of my interlocutors only partly useful, as they entered this “liminal position” voluntary and once “there”, they also actively create their future options (rather than passively experiencing the leisure space). Their attempts to inhabit the gap between possibilities are better suited in the third space of inbetweenness, borrowing from homi Bhabha vocabulary, where various modes of unbelonging (Rogoff 2000), smuggling along (Rogoff 2006) or simply “lifestyle experiments within late modernity” can be observed. As we will observe in the following lines, the idea of unbelonging - unbelonging not as being at a loss, of inhabiting lack, of not having anything, but rather as an active, daily disassociation in the attempt to clear the ground for something else to emerge, as developed by Irit Rogoff (2000) can serve as potential explanatory context for in-between practices and places of maritime lifestyle migrants. Ethnography, environment and imaginaries “We became liveaboards” “In 1976 we sold our house, waved goodbye to the family, and took to the sea in a boat we had built ourselves. We became long-distance, liveaboard cruisers […]. Abandoning brick walls and gardens, property taxes, and interference from authorities who continually tried to order what we might or might not do, we took on the less comfortable but much more invigorating life of responsibility for our own actions, health, welfare and safety […] “ (cooper, cooper 1994: 11). Sell up and Sail by Bill and Laurel cooper is one of the books that became bibles on long- term cruising. One can find cooper‘s book on many liveaboard boats, on swap-book shelves in marina toilets and clubrooms in shipyards. Although the liveaboard phenomenon is highly diversified, most of my interlocutors started their story in similar words as the coopers did. I could also observe that the broader context of how they began to live aboard was usually mar- ked with the books they read, with the stories they heard (usually about the man who sailed off) or with youth experiences with the sea, sailing or travel. Tom (50) and Prudence (52) for example met in England in their early twenties. As a child Tom lived in Tanzania and Uganda with his parents. Prudence, the oldest among seven children, was always at hand for babysitting.