Framing movement experiences: Migration, materiality and everyday life

This article aims to discuss contemporary migrations from the perspective of material culture. The discussion presented here assumes that material culture plays a significant part in all migration processes by establishing lines of continuity between present and past, confirming and reproducing identity and belonging, framing everyday life and displaying new positioning strategies. Beginning with two snapshots of recent ethnographic fieldwork carried out in Brazil and Canada, I hope to contribute to the discussion of contemporary migration through studying the lens of materiality and the role it plays in these processes. It will be argued that material culture is a productive tool, not only to address the grounds, motivations and resources people activate in order to utilize migration as an effective option, but also to discuss the relationships between movement, settling, cultural reproduction and innovation.

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Written by Marta Vilar Rosales