Paper short abstract:

Outsiders often criticize lifestyle migration, especially when it involves children. The paper discusses Western parents' responses to such criticism in Goa as well as how children experience their mobile lifestyle. For the children, mobility is a state of normality.

Paper long abstract:

An increasing number of Western lifestyle migrant families live several months a year in Goa, India, and the rest of the year in some Western country(ies). The transnationally mobile lifestyle is based on the individual choice of the parents. Although mobility may be accepted as a path toward success, lifestyle migration - a search for a more relaxed life - is often criticized. Among outsiders, the lifestyle of the Westerners in Goa often seems to raise moral panic especially in regard to children who are believed to grow up rootless and miserable because of the mobility. This paper discusses those critical views as well as the Western parents' responses to them. Moreover, the paper focuses on lifestyle migration to Goa from the children's (3-12 years old) perspective. What does it mean to be born into a transnationally mobile lifestyle? How do the Western children in Goa experience their lifestyle and define their belonging? For them, mobility is a state of normality, not something extraordinary or liminal. This provides a fruitful base to approach the lifestyle as a mobile culture. In addition, the paper discusses the limitations that Indian visa regulations pose to such a lifestyle. The paper is based on ethnographic research in Goa.