Send message to Author

Paper short abstract

This paper examines how everyday objects mediate speech and silence in a Romanian diasporic community in Madrid. Focusing on the orange, it shows how sensory memories of socialism enable migrants to express belonging, loss, and eastalgia through tacit, embodied practices rather than words.

Paper long abstract

This paper examines how everyday objects mediate forms of speech and silence within a small Romanian diasporic community in the Madrid area. Romanian migration to Spain intensified after 1989, becoming one of the most significant post-socialist mobility trajectories and giving rise to long-standing, cohesive migrant communities.

Many Romanians migrated prior to Romania’s accession to the European Union, during a period of restricted mobility and material scarcity. Limited in what they could bring with them, migrants encountered difficulties in articulating loss, belonging, and continuity through material means. In this context, memories and sensory experiences became key sites through which what could not always be openly spoken: due to social marginalization, post-socialist legacies, or everyday precarity, was nonetheless expressed. Ordinary objects thus acquired layered, emic meanings, functioning as silent yet powerful communicative devices within the community.

Focusing on one such artifact (Seremetakis, 1994)— the orange. This paper traces how its meanings shift across historical periods and social positions. Although mundane and readily available in Spain, the orange carries dense symbolic significance for this Romanian micro-diaspora, evoking memories of scarcity, privilege, and desire shaped by late socialism. Drawing on interview excerpts, the analysis highlights sensorial memories and forms of eastalgia (Boym, 2001), showing how migrants negotiate speech and silence through everyday sensory practices. By attending to what is communicated without words, the paper contributes to broader discussions on how silence becomes a mode of expression in polarized social and political contexts.