PhD thesis final - Royal Holloway, University of London

Chapter1- Introductioninterconnections between migrant identity and belonging, making identity a key aspectto explore in studying contemporary transnational migrants‘ experiences and emotionalprocess.Not merely an integral affective dimension of identity (Crocher 2004; Hedetoft andHjort 2002), belonging also has emotional components as it often implies feelings suchas being at home; feelings of safety and comfort. However, feelings such as these arenot born out of nothing or inherent to people‘s experience; instead, it is argued that theyhave to be made and constituted. As Bell‘s understanding of belonging illustrates, ‗onedoes not simply or ontologically ―belong‖ to the world or to any group within it.Belonging is an achievement at several levels of abstractions.‘ (Bell 1999: 3). Buildingon this conceptualisation of belonging, this research aims to explore the ways in whichmigrant belonging is constituted in relation to their transnational migration andgrounded everyday lives. Especially, I consider how an array of feelings reflectingmigrant belonging are developed in migrants‘ everyday lives and what migrants do tofulfil their longing to belong.1.2. Migrant belonging and everyday practicesTo understand migrants‘ emotional process of belonging as everyday groundedpractices, this research pays special attention to migrants‘ practices and behaviours tofulfil this process. In this, a social practice is a useful concept which, as Hitchings (2010)argues, allows us to understand and discern people‘s everyday behaviours (Hitchings2010). To do so, he suggests that an examination of people‘s practices should considerthe specific combinations of factors that ‗guide their actions associated with particularplaces‘ (p. 288). Besides, he also reminds us that people may not be always in charge of15