Migration and the Search for Home

"This book is a must read. It helps us better understand what migration means by looking at migrants' feelings of home, or their lack thereof ... But the book deserves a wider readership than migration studies since it provides so many new insights in what 'home' is about, productively using the angle of migration. Boccagni is not claiming that we have all become migrants or nomads, but the times of stable homes are over for all of us." (Jan Willem Duyvendak, Distinguished Research Professor of Sociology, University of Amsterdam, Netherlands) "Paolo Boccagni joins a group of immigration scholars who are intent on developing the prosaic word 'home' and the somewhat less prosaic 'homing' into serviceable concepts to help us to better understand the complex processes at play for people who are at once emigrants and immigrants as they come to terms with place in multi-scalar terms. The volume constitutes a major contribution to that effort, offering as it does a comprehensive and analytically crisp theoretical argument. This is essential reading." (Peter Kivisto, Professor of Sociology, Anthropology, and Social Welfare, Augustana College, USA) "Boccagni has given us a much needed sociological compass to draw our attention directly to a topic of such import it is usually hidden from view. In his characteristic writing style - philosophical, poetic, reflective, insightful, and always engaging, he charts a theoretical and methodological course that promises to permanently locate analyses of home on the migration studies map." (Loretta Baldassar, Professor and Discipline Chair of Anthropology and Sociology, University of Western Australia, Australia)

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?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 future–and 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.