Sailing the Adriatic. Leisure mobilities and the social construction of the Adriatic seascape

The Adriatic region is a frontier area and it is imagined in different ways and for different purposes. As a matter of fact, the Adriatic region maintains an ambivalent combination of unity and diversity both in the ecological sense and in the social-cultural one. Accordingly, cultural memories and civilizational legacies of the Adriatic are exploited at different scales and levels by the contemporary institutions. Nation-States, regions, cities of the Adriatic to a good extent refer to an “Adriatic imaginary” often in the overarching European framework. These endeavors of institutional imagination are generally bound to some development expectations, namely in some fields as ecology, cultural policies, sustainable mobility, fisheries and, last but not least, tourism. However, such an Adriatic identity does not work for trans-national development as well as some might expect. Frictions, misunderstanding and political marginality too often affect the idea of the Adriatic as a European lake. In this article I take a different standpoint and try to explore the social construction of the Adriatic from another perspective: the one of the people that crosses the borders of the Adriatic for tourism. My hypothesis is that one could get an alternative and perhaps more realistic vision of the contemporary “Adriatic Seascape” by understanding behaviors, values and expectations of the people, who move across and around the Adriatic basin for leisure purposes. I base my analysis on a number of quantitative and qualitative data collected among tourists boating across the Adriatic in 2009-2010. Plus, another set of data collected among sailors participating at the “Barcolana” regatta in 2012.