The article revisits my personal relationships with fieldwork members in an ethnography on transnational migration between Ecuador and Italy. As this focused on the social relationships and practices that may connect emigrants with their motherland, the import of my interpersonal relationships was a crucial one. In reflecting on their development and impingements, I draw on three interpretive categories: respect, in terms of reciprocal recognition and legitimation with the members of the social group I had selected for my fieldwork; opportunities, i.e. the influence of structural factors, along with contingencies, on my ethnographic involvement; and interests, that is the motivations and objectives underlying my participant observation, along with the expectations emerging in those I met and stayed with. The implications and dilemmas of my field relationships are also sketched out, with respect both to the knowledge generated through my fieldwork, and to my own positioning within it. I finally reflect on the scope for collaboration, and for fair and 'balanced' relationships with the interlocutors of my research.
Once an alternative approach to the mainstream, transnationalism has gained increasing currency and salience in migration studies. What is left of its theoretical import, however, after establishing that proper transnational activities, aside from remittances, are relatively infrequent; and that such practices are not incompatible with – and are even facilitated by – successful integration overseas? This article contends that the theoretical toolkit of transnationalism can still be helpful in studying migrant life trajectories, with particular respect to their everyday life sphere. Theoretical progress should be made, however, in three regards: (1) a stronger connection with globalization studies; (2) further elaboration on the reference points of transnational ties; and (3) a deeper reflection on the relevance of identifications and senses of belonging to migrant connectedness with their homeland. Along these lines, an understanding of transnational ties and relationships is outlined, in terms of potential and selective attributes of day-to-day interactions between migrants and their non-migrant counterparts.
AbstractAlthough return migration is a significant topic in current policy, the competing interests of sending and destination countries in promoting it and the prospects of making return strategies 'from above' a viable and desirable option for migrants are relatively neglected topics. In this article, I explore the distinct agendas, meanings and expectations underlying the prospects of return migration from Ecuador to Italy. I approach this recent migration flow through ethnography and an institutional analysis of the policy strategies and discourses emerging in the source country. The Ecuadorian government has recently developed a Plan Retorno aimed at facilitating emigrants' return and economic reintegration. The narratives of Ecuadorian migrants generally reveal a deep‐rooted expectation to return home. While initially hoping to return home 'soon', however, migrants systematically tend to postpone their homecoming. When it does take place in the short term, it is likely to be through migration 'failure' rather than an actual accomplishment of their earlier objectives. Given the distinct interests and expectations driving them, it is possible to assess the relationship between the two approaches to return. I conclude that return migration, irrespective of its actual accomplishment, is relevant to a better understanding of emigrant policies and of immigrant life trajectories overseas.
AbstractThe paper explores the meanings and effects of external voting in the context of a recent migration flow ‐‐ of Ecuadorian migrants to Italy ‐‐ approached through an original fieldwork investigation. During the first long‐distance voting experience of Ecuadorian immigrants, in October 2006, an exploratory survey was conducted in the cities hosting polls in Italy. This provided an opportunity for an inquiry into the motivations and expectations underlying emigrants' electoral participation, with a focus on their patterns of inclusion overseas and their transnational ties. While Ecuador has been appealing to emigrants as a non‐territorial "Fifth Region" with unbroken loyalties and citizenship rights, expatriates' involvement was largely dictated by patriotism, homesickness and the desire to reproduce their social milieu abroad, rather than by a primary concern with political life in the motherland. A more nuanced understanding of emigrant transnational participation is hence advanced, appealing to categories such as visibility, recognition and communal identification, and with an emphasis on the processes reproducing and negotiating "Ecuadorianness" from overseas. The paper ends with some critical remarks on the scope for migrant political transnationalism, and on the agendas and expectations underpinning it.
- Abstract Transnational caregiving, i.e. the ongoing affectional and material care relationships between migrant parents and children left behind, has gained increas-ing salience in international literature. The paper builds on the results of one of the first empirical investigations on the topic in Italy. The biographical experience of transnational mothers is approached within a local immigration context (the prov-ince of Trento). Relevant insights are thus provided on four areas of concern: the origin and the development of migration processes; the relationships with the motherland and the forms of transnational caregiving; the relationships with local communities, and the networks migrants rely on, in the context of settlement; the personal experiences of transnational motherhood and the future life expectations. Besides making sense of the differences in transnational parenthood stemming from national origins, and from the structuration of migration systems, the paper copes with a key question: to what extent, and under which conditions, can rela-tionships of "proximity at distance" be fungible with those drawing on physical proximity? What is lost and what is retained in the bond between dear ones - in terms of exchanging information, affections and material resources - once it cannot rely on physical co-presence?Keywords Female migration - Migrant mothers - Transnational caregiving - Transnational family life - Care work.
1. Introduction: Stranger, Guest, Researcher – A Case for Domestic Ethnography in Migration Studies (Paolo Boccagni and Sara Bonfanti) -- 2. A House of Homes: On the Multiscalarity and Ambivalence of Homemaking in a Multicultural Condominium in Italy (Adriano Cancellieri) -- 3. The Next-Door Migrant: Autoethnography of Everyday Home Encounters across Difference (Francesco Vietti) -- 4. Welcome upon Conditions: On Visiting a Multigenerational Immigrant House(hold) (Sara Bonfanti) -- 5. Shared Flats in Madrid: Accessing and Analysing Migrants' Sense of Home (Alejandro Miranda-Nieto) -- 6. 'Visiting Home' as a Method and Experience: Researching Russian Migrants' Homes in the UK (Anna Pechurina) -- 7. Rooms with Little View: Reluctant Homemaking and the Negotiation of Space in an Asylum Centre (Paolo Boccagni) -- 8. (In)Visibility: On the Doorstep of a Mediatized Refugees' Squat (Daniela Giudic) -- 9. Looking for Homes in Migrants' Informal Settlements: A Case Study from Italy (Enrico Fravega) -- 10. Attending Houses of Worship as Homes Out of the Home (Sara Bonfanti and Barbara Bertolani) -- 11. Transnational Circulation of Home Through Objects: A Multisited Ethnography in Peruvian 'Homes' (Luis Eduardo Pérez Murcia) -- 12. Migrant Domestic Space as Kinship Space: Dwelling in the "Distant Home" of One's in-Laws (Barbara Bertolani) -- 13. Whose Homes? Approaching the Lived Experience of "Remittance Houses" from Within (Paolo Boccagni and Gabriel Echeverria).
This open access book provides insight into the domestic space of people with an immigrant or refugee background. It selects and compares a whole spectrum of dwelling conditions with ethnographic material covering a variety of national backgrounds – Latin America, North and West Africa, Eastern Europe, South Asia – and an equally broad range of housing, household and legal arrangements. It provides a fine-grained understanding of migrants' lived experience of their domestic space and shows the critical significance of the lived space of a house as a microcosm of societal constellations of identities, values and inequalities. The book enhances the connection between migration studies and research into housing, social reproduction, domesticity and material culture and provides an interesting read to scholars in migration studies, policy makers and practitioners with a remit in local housing and integration policies. "This wonderful edited collection extends our understanding of migration not only into the confines of the domestic space but also into the territory of the ethnographer. What does it mean to be a guest in a migrant home? This collection of chapters traverses this question in diverse settings and circumstances of homemaking […]. Boccagni and Bonfanti have skilfully created an intricate lace of ethnographic accounts that provides a nuanced understanding of the built environments where migrants live, how they relate to their homes and how this is articulated in their attitudes toward majority society. The chapters, each on its own and together as a collection, advance our understanding of the researcher being a guest in the migrant home, just like the migrant being a guest in the host country. This complexity of ethnography and positionality makes this edited book an essential reading for migration scholars and ethnographers alike!" Iris Levin, Lecturer in Urban Studies, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia "This book demonstrates how ethnographies of home and dwelling can bear on the study of migration and its manifestation in domestic space. Entering someone's home as a researcher challenges our ethical registers: the researcher moves between being a stranger and a guest. The authors point to the dilemmas researchers encounter in intimate settings and how they might be resolved. A valuable and timely book for researchers on dwelling, home and movement." Cathrine Brun, Professor of Human Geography, Centre for Lebanese Studies, Oxford, UK "This excellent collection delves into the relationship between migration, domesticity, and material culture. It is ethnographically rich and impressively varied in its geographical scope, with insights that will prove extremely useful to scholars and practitioners alike. The great strength of the volume lies in the fascinating diversity, granular detail and methodological care of the contributions, with authors deploying concepts and arguments that prepare a great deal of fertile ground for future work." Tom Scott-Smith, Associate Professor of Refugee Studies and Forced Migration, University of Oxford "This insightful collection departs from the simple yet significant question of roles: What happens when the researcher/participant relationship, becomes guest/host instead? By seeing and interpreting domestic spaces as ethnographic field sites, the contributions shed light on refugees' and other migrants' lived experiences of home and housing. Drawing on empirical evidence from diverse types of homes, across geographic locations, Migration and domestic space: Ethnographies of home in the making offers valuable and fresh perspective, encouraging new connections between material and emotional, public and private, in migration research." Marta Bivand Erdal, Research Professor in Migration studies, Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO).
Home, as a special attachment to (and appropriation over) place, can also be cultivated in the public urban space, under certain conditions that we explore through a case study in Rinkeby, Stockholm. This article analyses various forms of homemaking in the public among the Somali-Swedes who live there. It shows how, in the case of vulnerable immigrants, a neighbourhood feels like home insofar as it facilitates a continuity with their past ways of living, sensuous connections with a shared 'Somaliness', reproduction of transnational ties, and protection from the sense of being 'otherised' that often creeps among them. However, homemaking in the public is ridden with contradictions and dilemmas, including those of self-segregation. The grassroots negotiation of a sense of home along these lines invites a novel approach into the everyday lived experience of diverse neighbourhoods in European majority-minority cities.
