In my first few blogs I have been getting into serious debate about the meanings of home to relocating peoples...and realised I have not explored, here anyway, what home might mean to me.
Have I relocated to NZ? yes...as a child. And from childhood onwards, I've moved house over 20 times now (and counting).
So relocating is part of my life's pattern, part of what I've come to expect every few years.
Part of my norm, my 'usual' and not a bad part at all.
Much of the positives about moving house are about the way each new home comes to mean 'home' to me.
At what stage after the move do I look forward to coming back to my house because it will feel like 'home'?
When I'm travelling home in the traffic, hungry and weary at the end of the day, what is it about my 'home' that I am looking forward to experiencing?
Some of my thoughts over the last 15 months in this new place of home:
...The sunsets, sitting on the balcony, feet on the railings, silently soaking in the largeness of the light out there. Looking further, past those near office buildings- upwards and outwards to a red- streaked stretch of wide, quiet sky.
...I'm safe, I'm up high, there's noone above me...it seems physically safe here. Noone looks in, walks past, knocks on my door at odd hours - just getting into the building isn't easy. It lends a welcome veneer of safety anyway. I'm grateful every day for my veneer. A choice and freedom.
...It's so quiet, so free of unexpected, uncontrollable noises. No dogs, children, lawnmowers, leaf blowers, neighbourhood parties...(well, maybe an occasional Friday night!).
... It's just big enough for one. For me and there's no room, no guilty empty spaces suggestive of guests to fill them. Not even a fold down sofa bed... There's choices and freedom from choices.
... Afternoon sun-filled rooms, coming home to warm furniture, orange chairs turning soft and golden, warm breezes drifting aimlessly in around the floor, tired warm dry air over me.
...Clean, plain creamy walls, calm and uncluttered, able to let my mind wander, to think and dream.
...Safety in hearing other neighbours coming home too, knowing I'm tucked inside my warm golden room. By myself, but not alone. Choices and freedom from choices.
**************************************
Tuesday, November 20, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
Migration narratives
I've been reading a fascinating review of a research study based on case studies of people who moved to NZ after WW2 - 'MIGRATION AND NARRATION' (Brigitte Boenisch-Brednich)http://tihane.wordpress.com/2007/10/26/migrating-affordances/
The researcher identifies 3 main narratives which i felt were just as pertinent today:
a) Stories about leaving and arriving
b) stories about the first year in New Zealand, which are stories about cultural misunderstanding, language problems, homesickness; basically about feeling alien, and being considered alien.
c) there is a form of narratives covering the whole life of a migrant: the narratives of comparing countries and cultures – the culture you come from and the one you are now living in.
The Estonian researcher Kai Pata who reviewed this study on her blog site (see link above) sums up the key aspect of comparing the countries, which was a common theme for the migrants questioned, and was an ongoing process; part of their settlement.
I felt strong links with my own interest in researching and identifying current migrant experiences, paritcularly of professional peoples, I've heard the same stories;
the feeling of alienation and isolation; of being seen as alien; of needing to compare cultures...
Maybe these narratives form part of a common journey to create what Ruth Hill Useem termed in 60's sociology speak as 3rd culture kids (TCKs); those children who became global nomads, whose parents eg. military, were constantly on the move
These children were forced to create their own independant identity that remained intact when they moved from 'home' to 'home'.
But it' s not just the children in these situations who face issues of where the home base is, but increasingly the world is a nomadic place for professionals, executive level personnel encouraged to participate in schemes which entail taking on the top jobs, the CEO positions on 2-3 yr contracts. And taking their families with them.
The need for a third culture becomes relevant not only for the individual's sense of identity but
as a way of surviving in the workplace, working out how to function in a space between, outside? of ones own familiar country's culture, but not wholly adopting the new country's ways.
The idea of workplace cultures, corporate cultures, institutional culture where certain unspoken norms and rules , dress codes and behaviours prevail is already a well known reality to many.
But in the personal, family, home lives of people who choose a temporary (albeit long-term) move for professional reasons, there is also a need to create something new.
Both in the workplace and outside world, the prevailing culture they face is new and unfamiliar in its attitudes, values and practices. Yet their own culture is needing to be preserved for the (inevitable and presumed) return home...
Yet also, alongside a dual carriageway as this, they start to realise their own culture with new eyes- that it has accompanied them not as a pre-packaged affair, remaining neatly in its little box to be taken out and played with at whim, but is in itself a moving, mobile, changing and growing live entity that refuses to be completly tamed and inert.
Somehow these people deal to and deal with a recreation of a 'third culture' for themselves; one still recognisable and distinct as 'home', comfortingly familiar signs of 'how we always do things', patterns as much of the past as the future...a culture sandwich that created an inbetween space- a temporary life zone.
An example many of us may relate to are 'suitcase people' who, knowing they are only staying a 6 months, as opposed to 2 years, might bring a few photos to place around the room. But probably wouldn't buy or hang any pictures...
Staying put for 2-3 years however, might entail buying certain key furniture items couldn't be brought with them. Decorating with carefully chosen signs of identity, making the place feel 'homely'.
And it's how people go about personalising their space that interests me; what do they do to create a zone of otherness, a cultural bubble in which the physical environment is made to help shape the estabishment of that 3rd culture, the home away from home.
The researcher identifies 3 main narratives which i felt were just as pertinent today:
a) Stories about leaving and arriving
b) stories about the first year in New Zealand, which are stories about cultural misunderstanding, language problems, homesickness; basically about feeling alien, and being considered alien.
c) there is a form of narratives covering the whole life of a migrant: the narratives of comparing countries and cultures – the culture you come from and the one you are now living in.
The Estonian researcher Kai Pata who reviewed this study on her blog site (see link above) sums up the key aspect of comparing the countries, which was a common theme for the migrants questioned, and was an ongoing process; part of their settlement.
I felt strong links with my own interest in researching and identifying current migrant experiences, paritcularly of professional peoples, I've heard the same stories;
the feeling of alienation and isolation; of being seen as alien; of needing to compare cultures...
Maybe these narratives form part of a common journey to create what Ruth Hill Useem termed in 60's sociology speak as 3rd culture kids (TCKs); those children who became global nomads, whose parents eg. military, were constantly on the move
These children were forced to create their own independant identity that remained intact when they moved from 'home' to 'home'.
But it' s not just the children in these situations who face issues of where the home base is, but increasingly the world is a nomadic place for professionals, executive level personnel encouraged to participate in schemes which entail taking on the top jobs, the CEO positions on 2-3 yr contracts. And taking their families with them.
The need for a third culture becomes relevant not only for the individual's sense of identity but
as a way of surviving in the workplace, working out how to function in a space between, outside? of ones own familiar country's culture, but not wholly adopting the new country's ways.
The idea of workplace cultures, corporate cultures, institutional culture where certain unspoken norms and rules , dress codes and behaviours prevail is already a well known reality to many.
But in the personal, family, home lives of people who choose a temporary (albeit long-term) move for professional reasons, there is also a need to create something new.
Both in the workplace and outside world, the prevailing culture they face is new and unfamiliar in its attitudes, values and practices. Yet their own culture is needing to be preserved for the (inevitable and presumed) return home...
Yet also, alongside a dual carriageway as this, they start to realise their own culture with new eyes- that it has accompanied them not as a pre-packaged affair, remaining neatly in its little box to be taken out and played with at whim, but is in itself a moving, mobile, changing and growing live entity that refuses to be completly tamed and inert.
Somehow these people deal to and deal with a recreation of a 'third culture' for themselves; one still recognisable and distinct as 'home', comfortingly familiar signs of 'how we always do things', patterns as much of the past as the future...a culture sandwich that created an inbetween space- a temporary life zone.
An example many of us may relate to are 'suitcase people' who, knowing they are only staying a 6 months, as opposed to 2 years, might bring a few photos to place around the room. But probably wouldn't buy or hang any pictures...
Staying put for 2-3 years however, might entail buying certain key furniture items couldn't be brought with them. Decorating with carefully chosen signs of identity, making the place feel 'homely'.
And it's how people go about personalising their space that interests me; what do they do to create a zone of otherness, a cultural bubble in which the physical environment is made to help shape the estabishment of that 3rd culture, the home away from home.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
