‘Home’ And ‘Homeland’ as Mobile Places: Re-Examining The Term Country of Origin in Migration Studies
‘Home’ And ‘Homeland’ as Mobile Places: Re-Examining The Term Country of Origin in Migration Studies

Author(s): Maria Panteleou
Subject(s): Migration Studies, Asylum, Refugees, Migration as Policy-fields
Published by: Transnational Press London
Keywords: home; homeland; Albanian migrants; mobilities;
Summary/Abstract: The following presentation examines how the perception of ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ is not related tothe country of origin in migration studies, if we take into account the temporal and subjective factor that migrants themselves attribute to these perceptions. Using material from anthropological fieldwork with Albanian migrants, who lived and worked in Greece since the 1990s, moving temporally to Albania in the 2010s, it demonstrates, on the one hand, how they express their perspective regarding their ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ as a foreign place. On the other hand, it shows how the temporal family visits that Albanians welcome in Greece bring the sense of ‘home’ itself together in Greece. The presentation concludes that the term country of origin defines migrants in advance by a spatial notion, whereas the subjective conceptualizations of the ‘home’ and ‘homeland’ show primarily that they are mobile, secondly that they make sense for Albanians through the temporal, relational and experiential dimension of the place.

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