In the beginning of cultural studies as we know it, and more generally of the cultural turn in the human scien­ces, there was text, but since texts seemed to be transparent carriers of lived ex­pe­ri­ences and social relations, they tended them­selves to remain invisible as such. Then, with the structuralist critiques of culturalism, all became text in a much more emphatic sense: there seemed to be nothing else in the world. In recent years, there has appeared a back­lash ten­dency to get rid of textual mediations in order to revive lived reality in its absolute im­me­di­ate presence. As text­ual­ity once exterminated subjective and objective realities, now there are efforts to kill the text and dance on its grave.

I do not want to join either of these purist conceptual cleansings. Instead, my plea is for the con­taminating notion of mediation as a necessary basis for cultural studies. This is no radically new idea, but neither are its adversaries, contrary to their own self-images. Purifying attacks on com­plexly mediational forms of understanding – particularly but not exclusively in structuralist streams of thought – often make use of the recurrent romantic trope of radi­cally breaking free from tradi­tion, including the tradition of modern thought itself.

This article examines intra-European relations in narratives of Swedish lifestyle migrants living permanently or part-time on the Spanish Sun Coast. It pays particular attention to the complexities of Swedish migrants’ cultural identities and patterns of self-segregation in the Spanish society by investigating the following questions: How do boundaries of social networks that Swedish lifestyle migrants participate in, or interrelate, with a sense of ‘likeness’? In what ways are the formation of these ‘international’ networks mediated through ideas of cultural similarity and parallel difference, and how do such notions both override and uphold boundaries tied to social, cultural and racial divisions? It is argued that the formation of so-called ‘international communities’ on the Spanish Sun Coast tend to cluster mainly north-western European lifestyle migrants, which calls for an analysis of ‘orientations’ towards a certain ‘likeness’, and the function of these spaces and communities as spaces of ‘institutional whiteness’ that work as a ‘meeting point’ where some bodies tend to feel comfortable as they already belong here. The social and cultural boundaries that surround these communities destabilises the idea of a common, culturally homogeneous European identity and display intra-European racial divisions mediated through discourses of cultural differences. What appears is a south–north divide built upon a deep Swedish postcolonial identification with Anglo Saxon and north-western European countries and cultures, and a parallel dis-identification with (the former colonial powers in) southern Europe.