Antonina Stasińska
Prace Etnograficzne, Tom 47, Numer 1, 2019, s. 37 - 54
https://doi.org/10.4467/22999558.PE.19.003.11321
Motility and the Cosmopolitan Dimension of Transnational Long-distance Relationships
In the times of emphasized fluidification mobility becomes self-evident and naturalized, though socially desirable and anticipated. By following research participant strategies and practices, this paper analyzes the meaning of terms such as privileged and naturalized mobility, cosmopolitanism and transnationalism, and shows its multi-dimensional character. Based on the author’s ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2016–2018 among young, educated and highly mobile Poles and foreigners who live in transnational long-distance relationships and an auto-ethnographic perspective, this article examines the notions of motility, cosmopolitanism and transnationalism and shows how mobility is rooted in their everyday lives. In this specific ethnographic context, transnational longdistance relationship is a verification tool of interlocutor practices and cultural competence that are needed to maintain the relation in the times of individualizing modernity.