Paper short abstract

Starting off from a study of Tamil refugee’s illness and well-being in Norway, this paper discusses how migration implies a transit and movement of people, objects and practices travelling within a global network to new localities in which they take on shifting values and meanings.

Paper long abstract

Starting off from a study of Tamil refugee's illness and well-being in Norway, this paper discusses how migration implies a transit and movement of people, objects and practices travelling within a global network to new localities in which they take on shifting values and meanings. Recognising how migrating objects and images are severed from traditional points of reference, I suggest how 'objects in diaspora' can highlight shapes and objects' openness and potential for new creative interactions and structuring of experiences, illness, feelings and sensations, thus, as a kind of 'social agents'. This view rests in an understanding of objects, as also rituals, to be living phenomena; as they are interactive in the present and bring together structures and symbols in the context of senses of illness, well-being and decisions of identities (ethnic, communal, local, national and personal). From this view, I explore how materiality and objects can be seen to interplay in global relations of knowledge, illness, well-being and identity.