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Paper short abstract

Many Hmong in Alaska cultivate meaningful situatedness after migration through subsistence practices such as gardening, gathering, and animal procurement. These practices support meals, healing, cohesion, and continuity, thereby shaping felt life and belonging by linking body, land, and kinship.

Paper long abstract

This paper discusses how migration is lived and belonging is cultivated by Hmong families in Anchorage, Alaska through subsistence practices that promote continuity of practice, relationships, and ecological materiality.

Hmong migration to the United States is closely linked with their role in the “Secret War” in Laos that coincides with the Vietnam War, followed by flight and resettlement as refugees. In Anchorage, many families cultivate gardens, gather wild plants, grow medicinal herbs, fish and to a lesser degree hunt, procure domesticated animals for food and ritual, and circulate herbal remedies and food through kin networks. These activities are described as ways of feeling right, staying healthy, and continuing multigenerational practices rather than as something primarily motivated by economic concerns.

Sensory distinctions between store-bought and garden-grown food and sedentary and physically engaged life are included in how place and well-being are evaluated, and it is through smell, taste, touch, and labor that this new environment is engaged and embodied.

I argue that these subsistence practices are continued in ways fitting this new environment and function as an affective infrastructure of belonging. Felt life is produced through tangible practices that connect embodied selves with landscapes, memories, relationships, and know-how. These practices, along with the healing and ritual practices connected to them, promote continuity with previous life and the broader diaspora while adapting to new ecological and economic conditions.

Attention to these practices illuminates how migration is experienced as an ongoing project of making life livable and meaningful amidst changing conditions.