Paper short abstract:

My paper explores narratives of homecoming as evolved from an internet forum, where migrants narrate their visit to home country. I examine how migrants envisage their visit, how they describe a real-life experience of being there, and finally, how projections take the form of a counter-narrative.

Paper long abstract:

My paper will investigate the notion of homecoming as evolved from entries in an internet forum on post-enlargement migration. Since 2004 I've been collecting data from on-line issues of the influential Polish paper 'Gazeta Wyborcza', which widely discussed migration issues. Both migrants and those who stayed home reacted to the newspaper articles by posting their own opinions, which quite often took the shape of personal accounts of migrants' experiences. I shall focus on narratives concerning regular trips of post-enlargement migrants to their home country.

My methodological point of departure is a concept of 'projections', a distinctive category of short stories, which serves as a model for an ideal homecoming in my data. First, I shall present how migrants envisage and plan their visit to Poland. Secondly, I shall focus on how migrants describe their experience of being there, when their expectations were not met. Finally, I shall point at those entries where projections take the form of a counter-narrative of an ideal homecoming even before migrants' planned visit home. I shall conclude by connecting the discourses of migration with those of the post-communist transformation in Poland.