Chapter 4: Transnational Migration and Diasporas

Interviews with:

Pnina Werbner, Deirdre McKay, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Peggy Levitt, Robin Cohen.

How are the ideas, feelings and practices of home (or homing) influenced by transnational migration? What does home mean for communities that have long been living in exile, but are still connected to an idea or a nostalgia for the place they left behind? To how many homes can transnational migrants feel they belonging? These are some of the questions addressed in the five interviews included in this chapter.

The practices of transnational migration empirically show the limit of thinking that there is only one home (e.g., Blunt, 2007; Cheran, 2006; Hammond, 2004a). Transnational migrants develop multiple attachments to places and communities. While keeping ties with what they left behind, they establish new connections in the place they live in, or in other areas where other family or community members reside. If the home left behind may retain a strong symbolic value in the life of diaspora communities, it is also true that perceptions of home are multiple and complex for these groups.