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.