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Paper short abstract

Ethnography of Lithuanian lifestyle mobility in Fuerteventura shows how war anxiety and “escape” framings recast “better life” projects as morally contested safety-building. Among mothers, care provides a moral rationale for longer-term settlement, shaping how guilt and anxiety are negotiated.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how war anxiety reshapes Lithuanian lifestyle mobilities. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork with lifestyle migrants, digital nomads, and seasonal residents in Fuerteventura (2021–2025), I trace how mobility projects shifted after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. Motivations once articulated through cosmopolitan idioms of self-realisation, slower rhythms of life, and wellness have become entangled with imaginaries of threat and historical memories of occupation. Empirically, I document a shift from flexible, rental-based stays towards more durable settlement practices. Analytically, I conceptualise this shift as a war anxiety-driven hybridisation of motivations and imaginaries within lifestyle migration, where “a better life” projects become inseparable from projects of safety.

Foregrounding affect, the paper focuses on fear, guilt, and the moral pressure exerted by the origin society to stay and prepare to defend the homeland. These emotions do not merely accompany mobility decisions; they shape what can be said, justified, and enacted. Among mothers, care and child protection become a central moral rationale for longer-term settlement, while also intensifying the felt stakes of leaving. Media analysis provides contextual evidence for the production of guilt and polarisation: Lithuanian debates about politicians purchasing holiday properties in Southern Europe frame such assets as “escape infrastructure”, generating accusations of betrayal. As a result, conditionally privileged mobility is re-signified as both heightened privilege and morally contested, sharpening tensions between those who can leave and those who remain immobilised. Taken together, these materials suggest that war-driven imaginaries reorganise the moral economies of mobility.