North-Europeans in Spain : Practices of community in the context of migration, mobility and transnationalism

The focus of this special issue is the migration of North-Europeans to the Spanish coastal areas which are known to be tourist destinations. This is a kind of mobility that most commonly has been conceptualised as Lifestyle Migration (cf. Benson & O’Reilly 2009a, 2009b). The concept of lifestyle migration has been developed and widely employed as a way of thinking about mainly relatively affluent and relatively privileged forms of migration around the world. The authors of this special issue are moving away from the view of Lifestyle Migrants as a distinct category of migrant, and away from an emphasis on fluid migration forms in the context of privilege. Here, instead we focus on the human-being-ness of all migrations, the ubiquitous search for community and belonging, and the work of inhabitance (Ahmed et al 2003: 1). We also draw attention to the new structures or sedimented forms of social life that emerge from this work of inhabitance. And we also draw attention to the lack of actual privilege for some of these supposedly privileged migrants. In this special issue, we explore the processes of settlement, belonging and home-making for Lifestyle Migrants that are evident in all migration trends (Walsh & Näre 2016). We wish to emphasise that, although Lifestyle Migrants have tended to be treated as a specific type or category of migrant, they are indeed migrants, just as refugees, asylum seekers, labour migrants, and returnee migrants are migrants. Similar processes are at play here even though theconditions of migration might differ. The people who moved to the coastal areas of southern Spain as permanent residents, seasonal visitors and long-stayers are as much mobile human beings as a category of Lifestyle Migrants. So, in this special issue, rather than focus on what is unique about Lifestyle Migration, we examine in depth the social life, the community makings and the everyday realities of British and Swedish lifestyle migrants as examples of global and diverse migrations. We hope the debates and empirical evidence presented here will thus contribute to a richer understanding of the processes of migration in the context of diverse conditions. Further, having been often subjected to an emphasis on fluidity, mobility, and flux (e.g., Cohen 2015), the papers in this special issue draw more attention than previously to the sedimented practices and outcomes of these migrations. The work that the migrants put into community, belonging, routines, patterns, and means of coping and living in everyday life leads to new forms of community, new ways of living, and new sedimented practices that, in turn, shape future lives and practices (cf. O’Reilly 2012)