‘We achieve the impossible’: discourses of freedom and escape at music festivals and free parties

In this article, we explore the notion of freedom as a form of governance within contemporary consumer culture in a sphere where ‘freedom’ appears as a key component: outdoor music-based leisure events, notably music festivals and free parties. ‘Freedom’ is commodified as central to the marketing of many music festivals, which now form a highly commercialised sector of the UK leisure industry, subject to various regulatory restrictions. Free parties, in contrast, are unlicensed, mostly illegal and far less commercialised leisure spaces. We present data from two related studies to investigate how participants at three major British outdoor music festivals and a small rural free party scene draw on discourses of freedom, escape and regulation. We argue that major music festivals operate as temporary bounded spheres of ‘licensed transgression’, in which an apparent lack of regulation operates as a form of governance. In contrast, free parties appear to ‘achieve the impossible’ by creating alternative (and illegal) spaces in which both freedom and regulation are constituted in different ways compared to music festival settings

Between Cross-Border Friction and Opportunity: Moldovan Immigrants in Spain

This chapter highlights the migration process of Moldovans in Spain as a result of the collapse of the USSR and which led to the country’s independence. Drawing on 30 in-depth interviews with Moldovans who migrated to Spain from the late 1990s to the present, the chapter examines how the political processes that occurred in Moldova, which are reflected in the gradual opening up of the Schengen border, produce friction and uncertainty, influencing the experiences of Moldovans and having repercussions in their subsequent lives and work trajectories in Spain. First, the chapter aims to introduce the concept of “friction” to examine how the reinforcement of the State border as a (re)bordering process contributed to the development of uncertainty as a subjective experience of immigrants who contend with frustrations in the Spanish labor market. Second, I raise the term of “opportunity” as a consequence of fluidity marked by opening up of borders that favor the free movement of citizens. Opportunity as a concept aims to show how the new scenarios created by greater EU integration help Moldovan immigrants achieve better integration in Spain