Uprootings / Regroundings

Questions of Home and Migration

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Edited by Sara Ahmed, Claudia Castaneda, Anne-Marie Fortier and Mimi Sheller

Berg Publishers

Due/Published November 2003, 288 pages, paper

ISBN 1859736297

New forms of transnational mobility and diasporic belonging have become emblematic of a supposed 'global' condition of uprootedness. Yet much recent theorizing of our so-called 'postmodern' life emphasizes movement and fluidity without interrogating who and what is 'on the move.' This book examines the interdependence of mobility and belonging by considering how homes are formed in relationship to movement. It suggests that movement does not only happen when one leaves home, and that homes are not always fixed in a single location. Home and belonging may involve attachment and movement, fixation and loss, and the transgression and enforcement of boundaries.

What is the relationship between leaving home and the imagining of home itself? And having left home, what might it mean to return? How can we re-think what it means to be grounded, or to stay put? Who moves and who stays? What interaction is there between those who stay and those who arrive and leave? Focusing on differences of race, gender, class and sexuality, the contributors reveal how the movements of bodies and communities are intrinsic to the making of homes, nations, identities and boundaries. They reflect on the different experiences of being at home, leaving home, and going home. They also explore ways in which attachment to place and locality can be secured Ð as well as challenged Ð through the movements that make up our dwelling places.

Uprootings/Regroundings: Questions of Home and Migratio is an exploration of the parallel and entwined meanings of home and migration. Contributors draw on feminist and postcolonial theory to explore topics including Irish, Palestinian, and indigenous attachments to 'soils of significance,' the making of and trafficking across European borders; the female body as a symbol of home or nation; and the shifting grounds of 'queer' migrations and 'creole' identities.