Home in the re-making: Immigrants' transcultural experiencing of home

Abstract

In a context of unprecedented cross-cultural migration, immigrants struggle to adapt to new cultures. The experience of home as physical, social, individual and temporal belonging is important to immigrants' adaptation processes. Extant literature either focuses on dimensions of home without reference to immigrants, studies material culture related to home, or researches identity projects of migrants without explicitly focusing on their subjective experience of home. This study adopts a phenomenological perspective to gain an in-depth understanding of first generation immigrants' subjective transcultural experiencing of home. By means of autobiographical phenomenological interviews the study identifies three ways of experiencing home: Longing for the past; transcultural mingling of social relationships and consumption; and experiencing home within oneself. The study corroborates extant literature on home, material culture and consumer acculturation and complements this literature with an additional, inner-directed focus of experiencing home. The findings have important implications for corporate and public policy makers.