Migration and the Search for Home

This book explores the impact of transnational migration on the views, feelings, and practices of home among migrants. Home is usually perceived as what placidly lies in the background of everyday life, yet migrants' experience tells a different story: what happens to the notion of home, once migrants move far away from their natural bases and search for new ones, often under marginalized living conditions? The author analyzes in how far migrants' sense of home relies on a dwelling place, intimate relationships, memories of the past, and aspirations for the futureand what difference these factors make in practice. Analyzing their claims, conflicts, and dilemmas, this book showcases how in the migrants' case, the sense of home turns from an apparently intimate and domestic concern into a major public question.

Marks an important contribution to the migration-home nexus as an emerging research field both in migration studies and in home studies Offers a comprehensive analysis of migrants' search for home, covering cognitive, affective and practical dimensions Provides an original theoretical and methodological toolkit for research on belonging and identification in migrants' everyday life, at a local and transnational level Takes an interdisciplinary perspective by bringing together sociology, anthropology and geography to explore the notion of home, or the search for home, and the meanings around it

Autorentext
Paolo Boccagni is Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Trento, Italy. His main research areas are transnational migration, social welfare, care, diversity and home, and his publication record includes articles in Ethnic and Racial Studies , Global Networks , Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies , and Housing, Theory and Society . He is also Principal Investigator of the European Research Council project HOMInG The home-migration nexus: Home as a window on migrant belonging, integration and circulation (ERC STG 678456, 2016-2021).

Inhalt
Introduction .- 1. A new lens on the migration-home nexus .- 2. Researching migrants' home .- 3. Migration and home over space .- 4. Migration and home over time .- 5. Migrants' home as a political issue .- 6. Conclusion.