1. A New Lens on the Migration-home Nexus

The emergence of research centres, networks and journals with a special focus on home has been a remarkable development in the last decade. Content-wise, while an extended bibliography is out of the scope of this book, a reference can be made to at least some key studies of home “on scales ranging from the domestic to the diasporic” (Blunt, 2003: 72): Altman & Werner (1985); Benjamin & Stea (1995); Chapman & Hockey (1999); Morley (2000); Miller (2001a); Blunt & Dowling (2006); Duyvendak (2011); Smith (2012); Briganti & Mezei (2012); Kusenbach & Paulsen (2013). In terms of journal articles, major conceptual overviews of home have been provided, from different disciplinary backgrounds, by Dovey (1985); Lawrence (1987); Saunders & Williams (1988); Somerville (1997); Moore (2000); Chapman (2001); Fox (2002); Mallett (2004); Easthope (2004); and Jacobson (2009). Illuminating reflections can also be found in the works of major sociologists (most notably in Schutz’s [1945] Homecomer), philosophers (e.g. Heller, 1995) and anthropologists (e.g. Douglas [1991] on home as a socially organized Kind of space).

The category of migrant, here, broadly refers to people on the move from high migration pressure countries. While highlighting home-related commonalities and dilemmas across migration systems, my map includes only some preliminary notes on the home experience of specific categories such as highly skilled migrants (cf. Nowicka, 2007; Butcher, 2010), migrant returnees (Markowitz & Stefansson, 2004; Ralph, 2009; Bivand, 2014), elderly migrants (Meijering & Lager, 2014; Buffel, 2015; Walsh & Nare, 2016) and, in a longer-time perspective, migrant diasporas (Brah, 2005; Blunt & Bonnerjee, 2013). Most notably, my account cannot be exhaustive of the complex and emotionally laden home experience of asylum seekers and refugees. Key contributions, in this case, include Black (2002); Korac (2009); Jansen & Lofvig (2009); Kabachnik et al. (2010); Brun (2012); H. Taylor (2015); Kissoon (2015); Donà (2015). 

“Home is where one starts from”, from T.S. Eliot, Four Quartets (1943).

Exceptions include edited volumes such as Rapport & Dawson (1998a), Al-Alì & Koser (2002a); and Ahmed et al. (2003a). See also, most recently, the comparative study of Levin (2016).

See, however, Glick-Schiller & Fouron (2001); Espiritu (2003); Lam & Yeoh (2004); Brettell (2006); Wiles (2008); Ralph & Staeheli (2011); Liu (2014).

Besides this, a systematic analysis of the migration-home nexus has meaningful practical implications. Social cohesion, urban, welfare and integration policies have much to gain from an in-depth understanding of migrants’ ways of perceiving and experiencing home, compared with natives and non-migrants, in light of their respective assets and structures of opportunities.

Of course, the depiction of an isolated individual in Fig. 1.1 – whether a “sedentary” or a “mobile” one – is an oversimplification: individuals’ ways of homing are critically affected by, and interact with, those of their significant others (primarily family members and friends), on a variety of scales.

I am indebted to my friend Mubi for the drawings in Figs. 1.1 and 1.2.

At stake, then, is the gap between the real and the aspired shape of what an individual or collective actor frames as home – in terms of a dwelling place (Clarke, 2001) and beyond. Of course, the gap may be irrelevant, or inexistent, whenever there is substantive overlap between the real and the desired home.