“¿Nuestro nuevo hogar?” [Our new home?]: Examining Puerto Rican Migration and Conceptions of Home, Place-Making, and Belonging

Abstract

Abstract In recent years, the largest population movement from Puerto Rico to the continental United States in over fifty years has occurred following a prolonged economic crisis, exacerbated by the humanitarian disaster that took place after the archipelago was struck by Hurricanes Irma and Maria in 2017. Since September 2017, just under 200,000 Puerto Ricans have relocated to the continental United States, the largest number migrating to Florida. Yet not much is known about the adaptation of this population who relocated postdisaster. To contribute to the scholarly literature on Latino integration and based on data from in-depth interviews with 19 Puerto Ricans who moved to Central Florida both before and after the hurricanes of 2017, we focus on the ways in which Puerto Ricans conceptualize home and belonging. We also examine how place-making and belonging are related to emotions, an often-neglected dimension in the study of migrant integration. We engage with literature on space and place and draw from research on emotions and migration to propose five conceptions of home among migrants: home as family, home as identity, home as pleasure, home as community, and home as plausibility.