When people move from one place to another, they don’t come empty handed. Whether they move to a new country, across continents or to a new apartment down the road, people are carriers of memories, mindsets and things, material and metaphysical, that shape how they establish new livelihoods, and new senses of home.
But changes will inevitably occur: conditions from the past brought to the present that spur forms, both old and new, of identification, interaction and inclusion within and counter to the communities, settings and environments of their places of settlement. In doing so, what do people keep, what do they leave behind, and what will they dream up in negotiating new ways of living? Investigating new angles of the migrants’ daily lives this group focuses on major questions regarding migration, especially those related to self-perception and identification (personal and collective), otherness, estrangement, belonging and positioning, imagining, aspiring and expecting.