ABSTRACT

An increasing number of Westerners are leading lifestyles where they repeatedly spend long periods of time in Goa, India. This article discusses the phenomenon in terms of marginal mobility. The main focus is on the problems that the transnationally mobile lifestyle can cause for individuals. The article shows that the mobile lifestyle of the Westerners in Goa involves various vulnerabilities, for example in terms of personal crises, official residence status, visas and children’s education. The article is based on extensive ethnographic research.

KEYWORDS: marginal mobility, sedentary norms, India

ABSTRACT

An increasing number of Westerners are leading lifestyles where they repeatedly spend long periods of time in Goa, India. This article discusses the phenomenon in terms of marginal mobility. The main focus is on the problems that the transnationally mobile lifestyle can cause for individuals. The article shows that the mobile lifestyle of the Westerners in Goa involves various vulnerabilities, for example in terms of personal crises, official residence status, visas and children’s education. The article is based on extensive ethnographic research.

KEYWORDS: marginal mobility, sedentary norms, India

ABSTRACT

Global modernity with its economic and technological transformations generates new mobile lifestyles that challenge officially recognized forms of human mobility. The new European nomads presented in this article are representatives of this newly emergent form of mobility. Closer ethnographic scrutiny reveals that these people are constantly on the move, and work and use several income-making strategies while on the road. Not only mobility and economic strategies, but also conceptions concerning reasons to be mobile, relations with the background society and the public spaces they traverse share similar features. There are numerous criteria according which it is possible to talk about them as representatives of a new type of contemporary mobility, for which peripatetic nomadism, marginality and inventiveness are central characteristics. In the article I discuss the field research data that underscores the characteristics according to which my interlocutors can be conceptualised as“marginal mobile subjects”: their income depends on mobile and flexible economic strategies which define their patterns of more or less irregular movement; their social reality consists of inbetweenness, a lack of networks of assistance and invisibility in public space. Although they like to state that their lifestyle is a result of a free choice, the situations in their everyday lives reveal that their freedom is actually constrained by unfortunate or unsatisfactory life situations which often lead to feelings of marginalisation and being deceived by their background society, and they tend to bypass state bureaucracies imposing “sedentary norms” on their lives.

KEYWORDS: mobility, marginality, peripatetic nomadism, inventiveness, global modernity

ABSTRACT

Global modernity with its economic and technological transformations generates new mobile lifestyles that challenge officially recognized forms of human mobility. The new European nomads presented in this article are representatives of this newly emergent form of mobility. Closer ethnographic scrutiny reveals that these people are constantly on the move, and work and use several income-making strategies while on the road. Not only mobility and economic strategies, but also conceptions concerning reasons to be mobile, relations with the background society and the public spaces they traverse share similar features. There are numerous criteria according which it is possible to talk about them as representatives of a new type of contemporary mobility, for which peripatetic nomadism, marginality and inventiveness are central characteristics. In the article I discuss the field research data that underscores the characteristics according to which my interlocutors can be conceptualised as“marginal mobile subjects”: their income depends on mobile and flexible economic strategies which define their patterns of more or less irregular movement; their social reality consists of inbetweenness, a lack of networks of assistance and invisibility in public space. Although they like to state that their lifestyle is a result of a free choice, the situations in their everyday lives reveal that their freedom is actually constrained by unfortunate or unsatisfactory life situations which often lead to feelings of marginalisation and being deceived by their background society, and they tend to bypass state bureaucracies imposing “sedentary norms” on their lives.

KEYWORDS: mobility, marginality, peripatetic nomadism, inventiveness, global modernity

ABSTRACT

The article traces, by means of extended ethnographic participant observation, the cultural construction of a particular type of male marginal mobility, namely that of economically marginalised Moroccan migrant men. For these men, the departure from Morocco as irregular migrants to Europe appeared as a means to escape a life without a horizon. They faced lethal dangers during their journeys across the Strait of Gibraltar in small open boats, and Spain appeared unwelcoming to them, since the traditional sector of migrant labour, industrial work, could no longer absorb them. These men had very few other options than to invest in transnationalising the distinctive ethos of dabbar, i.e. ‘arranging’ survival strategies and social relations in the unregulated and lowest echelons of the labour market in Spain. For a large number of these Moroccans, permanent EU residence and citizenship turned into means of broadening the sphere of dabbar. Many of these men currently engage in transnational trading activities of second-hand goods, including small electronic devices, shoes and clothes and household utensils.

KEYWORDS: transnational mobility, irregular migration, Morocco, survival strategies, economic marginalization

ABSTRACT

The article traces, by means of extended ethnographic participant observation, the cultural construction of a particular type of male marginal mobility, namely that of economically marginalised Moroccan migrant men. For these men, the departure from Morocco as irregular migrants to Europe appeared as a means to escape a life without a horizon. They faced lethal dangers during their journeys across the Strait of Gibraltar in small open boats, and Spain appeared unwelcoming to them, since the traditional sector of migrant labour, industrial work, could no longer absorb them. These men had very few other options than to invest in transnationalising the distinctive ethos of dabbar, i.e. ‘arranging’ survival strategies and social relations in the unregulated and lowest echelons of the labour market in Spain. For a large number of these Moroccans, permanent EU residence and citizenship turned into means of broadening the sphere of dabbar. Many of these men currently engage in transnational trading activities of second-hand goods, including small electronic devices, shoes and clothes and household utensils.

KEYWORDS: transnational mobility, irregular migration, Morocco, survival strategies, economic marginalization

ABSTRACT

This article’s mission is twofold. First, it serves as introduction to the present thematic issue, which includes six different case studies discussing contemporary mobile lives across the globe. Second, it presents the concept of marginal mobility, which unifies the thematic issue. The marginal mobilities concept is understood as a heuristic tool for the comparative study of contemporary mobilities. Today various mobile subjects construct their mobile lives in highly comparable manner, as well as share very similar experiences. We argue that what we have at hand are new kinds of researchable entities that challenge the widely shared academic consensus for drawing clear analytical and conceptual bounda- ries between the mobile subjects from the Global North and South. As the contemporary analytical language of migration and mobility studies lacks an appropriate term for such mobile lifestyles, we prefer to conceptualise them as marginal mobilities. According to our understanding, these mobilities can be compared by the following five unifying characteristics: they are highly mobile (1), not entirely forced nor voluntary lifestyles (2) that occur along loosely defined trajectories (3). They generally lack politicized public spheres (4) and they are marked by the sentiments of marginality, liminality and con- stant negotiation against the sedentary norm of the nation state (5). Comparing different ethnographic cases is therefore important and can offer an opportunity to delve deeper into the cultural logic of contemporary mobile lifestyles.

KEYWORDS: marginal mobility, globalization, emerging mobile lifestyles, marginality, comparative study

ABSTRACT

This article’s mission is twofold. First, it serves as introduction to the present thematic issue, which includes six different case studies discussing contemporary mobile lives across the globe. Second, it presents the concept of marginal mobility, which unifies the thematic issue. The marginal mobilities concept is understood as a heuristic tool for the comparative study of contemporary mobilities. Today various mobile subjects construct their mobile lives in highly comparable manner, as well as share very similar experiences. We argue that what we have at hand are new kinds of researchable entities that challenge the widely shared academic consensus for drawing clear analytical and conceptual bounda- ries between the mobile subjects from the Global North and South. As the contemporary analytical language of migration and mobility studies lacks an appropriate term for such mobile lifestyles, we prefer to conceptualise them as marginal mobilities. According to our understanding, these mobilities can be compared by the following five unifying characteristics: they are highly mobile (1), not entirely forced nor voluntary lifestyles (2) that occur along loosely defined trajectories (3). They generally lack politicized public spheres (4) and they are marked by the sentiments of marginality, liminality and con- stant negotiation against the sedentary norm of the nation state (5). Comparing different ethnographic cases is therefore important and can offer an opportunity to delve deeper into the cultural logic of contemporary mobile lifestyles.

KEYWORDS: marginal mobility, globalization, emerging mobile lifestyles, marginality, comparative study

ABSTRACT

The author discusses digital practices of preserving and representing multicultural heritage, first against the backdrop of dominant, official and often (nationally) exclusivist practices of “doing heritage”. The former are understood as tools for preserving, developing and embedding cultural heritage in wider experiential spaces, while the latter often serve as the tool for homogenisation and sanitisation of na- tional cultural and social spaces. To do this, the author focuses on presences and absences of WWII, socialist Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav migrant heritages in contemporary Slovenian digital spaces, i.e. how digital media are used to present and preserve these variegated heritages. In order to interrogate the practices and strategies of defining and managing heritage in the digital media environment, the author discusses several vernacular interventions as re-presences of the Yugoslav past. With respect to the specificities of the techno-cultural environment in which the topic “lives”, the author introduces the concept of“co-historicity” to denote the ways affective media practices facilitate contemporaneous “be- ing” in different, individualised, mediated and mediatised re-presences of the past.

KEY WORDS: digital heritage, co-historicity, digital storytelling, migration

ABSTRACT

The author discusses digital practices of preserving and representing multicultural heritage, first against the backdrop of dominant, official and often (nationally) exclusivist practices of “doing heritage”. The former are understood as tools for preserving, developing and embedding cultural heritage in wider experiential spaces, while the latter often serve as the tool for homogenisation and sanitisation of na- tional cultural and social spaces. To do this, the author focuses on presences and absences of WWII, socialist Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav migrant heritages in contemporary Slovenian digital spaces, i.e. how digital media are used to present and preserve these variegated heritages. In order to interrogate the practices and strategies of defining and managing heritage in the digital media environment, the author discusses several vernacular interventions as re-presences of the Yugoslav past. With respect to the specificities of the techno-cultural environment in which the topic “lives”, the author introduces the concept of“co-historicity” to denote the ways affective media practices facilitate contemporaneous “be- ing” in different, individualised, mediated and mediatised re-presences of the past.

KEY WORDS: digital heritage, co-historicity, digital storytelling, migration