Paper short abstract:

Migratory experience in an anglophone migrants bar, where the migrants became not only regular to the bar but have reshaped the materiality as well as the social network of the bar. Bar as a place in time and space of real physical contact of a migratory network.

Paper long abstract:

The paper is based on six months-long field research in 2013 in the capital of the Czech Republic. Research of a bar mainly visited by anglophone migrants. Anglophone migration (USA, Britain, Australia ...) is privileged with no economic struggle in the Czech Republic. Although most of the bar regulars have been in the Czech Republic since the early 2000s, they are not entirely integrated into the Czech society, and they do not have a good command of the Czech language. Their economic activities are connected to cosmopolitan institutions and are based on the knowledge of the English language. I aim to reveil how being regular to a bar is helping the migrants to adapt to the new country and maintain there life in their new country.

A group of migrants have situated important practices into the space of the bar through which they form their meaning and memory in the new place, new home. They have domesticated the place to the extent that they have their own spaces, glasses, and any newcomer, Czech or migrant, is watched by the regulars and evaluated.

The bar is playing the role of intimacy, home-like, and have been materially changed by the migrants. They have also situated their social network into the bar, it has been made mainly by migrants but also locals, Czechs. The bar is a place where migrants social bonds are performed and materialised. It is a place in time and space of real physical contact of a migratory network.