Short Abstract

Focusing on both “home” as an expression of migrants’ agency and point of reference for people on the move, and its politization in unequal regimes of (im)mobility, this workshop discusses how different meanings of “home” are constructed and materialized in the context of migration in the Americas.

Long Abstract

In migration research, “home” is often understood as a fixed point of departure for internal or cross-border mobility. Circular and return migration, prolonged trajectories over months or years, remittances to the home community, and the transnational construction of home and family life via digital media, however, demonstrate that “home” is a rather complex construct whose meaning is constantly being renegotiated through experiences of (im)mobility. Accordingly, “home” should rather be considered an “ideal” approached through political, affective, and material processes of “home making” (Jansen and Löfving 2007) than an essentialized, static place.

In relation to mobility, “home” becomes discursively and materially constructed by different stakeholders including people on the move, nation-states and international organizations. While expressing migrants’ agency, “home” is also highly politicized and contested in the current unequal regimes of mobility. For example, the US-American right-wing discourse of “remigration” holds an essentialized notion of what “home” for Latin American and Caribbean immigrants may mean. Simultaneously, due to securitization policies and the externalization of borders along South-North and South-South migration routes in the Americas, thousands of migrants are forced to temporarily make a home for themselves in transit places.

Focusing on these political, affective, and material dimensions, this workshop discusses how different imaginaries of “home” become constructed, drawn upon and materialized in the context of (im)mobility regimes in the Americas. We invite contributions exploring these dynamics in contemporary settings, alongside those analyzing them through a longue durée lens, including precolonial and colonial times.