Liveaboards in the Mediterranean: Luxury or Marginality? – Ethnographic Refl ections on Maritime Lifestyle Migrations

ABSTRACT

As a result of the opening of internal borders in the EU and the rapid development of affordable navigation technology, there is a constantly increasing number of people from Western Europe in the Mediterranean who have adopted a lifestyle that revolves around living working and travelling on boats. Through ethnography we will reflect on 1) different forms of the liveaboard phenomenon; and 2) contextualize the phenomenon within lifestyle migration theory and discuss overlapping, interweaving and dispersing between cases.

KEY WORDS: lifestyle migration, mobility, liveaboards, Mediterranean Sea