Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on Palestinians residing in Sweden and their sense of belonging to their country of origin. I explore the uncertainties and complexities within migrant families that arise from the inheritance, maintenance, purchasing and construction of houses in the West Bank.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focuses on Palestinians residing in the south of Sweden and their sense of belonging to their country of origin. I explore the uncertainties and complexities within migrant families that arise from the inheritance, maintenance and construction of houses in the West Bank. Various practices of housing display multiple and ambivalent moral obligations as well as belongings.

Houses 'back home' can be understood as parts of economic and symbolic exchanges between migrants and their communities of origin. Research shows that people may feel belonging to several places and multiple belongings do not necessarily contradict each other. Transnational networks constituted of mainly family are often the backbone of such multi-local homes. Everyday practices may be transnational and localised at the same time since the socio-economic and political contexts in which people actually live are likely to influence their possibilities and wishes to establish multiple belongings.

Having a house 'back home' may however create several uncertainties, not least if houses are built in a contested area such as the West Bank. Like local Palestinians, my interlocutors risked land-confiscations and house-demolitions carried out by Israel. Neither were they sure to be let in through Israeli-controlled borders when arriving from Sweden. Through a material lens, this paper attempts to grasp ambivalence as well as conflicts within families concerning relations to the West Bank. How do family relations and the political context (including notions of return) influence migrants' negotiations and practices when it comes to those houses? In which ways may the building of houses, or refraining from building, create tensions and affect moral obligations within a family, a married couple or between different generations? What kind of conflicting moral and political obligations do the issue of migrants' houses display?