Paper short abstract:

This paper discusses key aspects of the relationship between identity, socialization and notions of attachment for a group of adults from binational and multilingual families, and how their sense of belonging is shaped and expressed.

Paper long abstract:

Over the past decades the number of transnational families has increased. Among them are binational families in which both parents originally derive from different countries and speak different languages. The emergence of this particular form of transnational families poses questions about the children's sense of belonging and identity. The sense of home and belonging are intrinsically related and often become a synonym for the country where the individual lives, which again is assumed to be the country of origin to which one belongs by virtue of multiple links.

But what about the particular cases of the children from binational families who have experienced attachment to different places due to their parents' origins and their own socialization. How do these children who grew up with multiple linguistic, cultural and national attachments express and define their sense of home and belonging? How much of belonging, how much of longing and how much of actually being in place are involved?

This paper discusses key aspects of the sense of belonging for a group of adults from binational and multilingual families. The interviewees give a variety of answers which all point to the fact that their sense of belonging is linked to, both the concept of home and their identity. These multilingual adults prove to be active agents engaged with the cultural and linguistic models of their past and the interaction with others, making pragmatic choices with regard to their at times conflicting relationship between language identities, socialization and inherited cultural traditions.