Paper short abstract:

The paper discusses how certain artefacts become aestheticised in the mobile lives of lifestyle migrant children in Goa. Toys and clothes gain particular meanings when they travel back and forth between India and the West and children have vital affective, bodily and sensory engagements with them.

Paper long abstract:

An increasing number of western families are engaged in a lifestyle where they spend half of the year in Goa, India, and the rest of the year in western countries (usually in the parents' countries of origin). This paper investigates how certain artefacts become aestheticised in the mobile lives of such children. I argue that toys and clothes gain particular meanings when they travel back and forth between India and the West. When the children play with such toys and dress in such clothes, there are important affective, bodily and sensory (in terms of feeling and smelling) engagements with them. The artefacts become to signify home and belonging, and even personal heritage of the individual families, in the situation where their national and spatial belongings are vague and fluid. Interestingly, Indian objects often gain particular significance when the children are in the west whereas it is western objects that are crucial in Goa, a process which tells about a certain "double belonging" of these children, and a constant negotiation of those belongings. Very often, the children's parents are involved in artistic enterprises, which creates a particularly aestheticised environment that in turn affects how children view surrounding artefacts. The paper is based on extensive ethnographic fieldwork among children of western lifestyle migrants in Goa.