ABSTRACT
A recent European policy document, the Council Decision on Guidelines for the Employment Policies of the Member States (2003), promotes flexibility in order to ‘facilitate the adaptation of workers and firms to economic change’, but it also recognizes the need to aim at ‘the right balance between flexibility and security’. There is obviously something attractive and at the same time dangerous about ‘flexibility’ – not only for European policy makers. In this chapter, I present an empirical study of individuals who live an everyday life of extreme flexibility – that is, migrant researchers. Their ultra-flexible floating-and-switching between places and times is accompanied by the heavy use of all kinds of technology, particularly transportation and ICTs.
