Belonging to the In Between

Abstract

In a world with an increasing flux of people, questions of belonging to places and people become more complex and relevant as natural attachments to places and people decrease and imagined communities and places rise to the occasion. This thesis discusses lifestyle migration towards a community in Spain called Benalí which entails the project of the inhabitants to change and negotiate their way of life. Three months of fieldwork dissected the intertwinement between Benalíans relation to the environment, a sense of self and feelings of belonging. Although it seems that the inhabitants desire a life in which a unity with nature and sensing a community spirit are central, this thesis shows how these motivations are mostly based on escaping from a former life which is imagined as the opposite. This results in the ascribed meaning of Benalí which is inspired by being a type of antithesis of former lives, an antistructure. Therefore, the inhabitants sense of self and feelings of belonging relate to the project of negotiating life, of deconstructing normalized values, and by being in between phases of life.