ORAL HISTORY: MIGRATION AND LOCAL IDENTITIES - Academia

Migration as a Catalyst for Values[homestead]. But what was needed was an everyday job, which is thefulfilment of the conviction that a man should work. Indeed, this leadsus to ask about a deeper meaning which Latvian migrants attach towork.Traditional paradigms would stress the four-fold model of home:physical dwelling, family, community, and homeland in both physicalplaces or relationships and also symbolic spaces (Al-Ali and Koser,2001). But as Blunt and Varley (2004) put it: “Home invokes a sense ofplace, belonging, or alienation that is intimately tied to a sense of self.”Questions about some groups of current Latvian transnationalmigrants as a new (or old) form of guest workers (Foner, 2005) canbe further developed if we consider traditional meanings of hometogether with its meaning as a place where the sense of self and socialmeaning are embedded. A sociological survey carried out in 2006showed that 62% of working people in Latvia agree that work plays avery important role in life, and 33% agree that work plays an importantrole. At the same time, leisure time was very important only for29% of respondents (Zobena, 2007). Against the sending country’sbackground, this leads to my core question: how are the relationshipsbetween home and work redefined during the migration experience?For most, the whole way of life in Guernsey is complementary torepeated returns, as it is found in several other studies of transnationalcommunities (e.g., Al-Ali and Koser, 2002). And it is also similar forthose who live for longer periods in Guernsey and/or are married thereand visit Latvia only for holidays. The length and frequency of the visitcannot be used as a rigid indicator of defining one’s transnationalismor discontinuation of it.29