Strangers everywhere? Home and unhomeliness in newly arrived pupils’ narratives on exile

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article scrutinises the ways in which pupils who have experienced transnational migration construct ‘home’ and the unmaking of ‘home’. Researchers have argued that migrants’ perspectives on belonging are seldom granted scholarly attention. Here, we seek to redress this oversight by inquiring about the ways in which newly arrived migrants define their (un)homeliness in Sweden in the context of astate-sponsored introductory language programme. The focus is on how these pupils themselves define the notion of home, their sense of belonging, and what they envision as necessary to achieve in order to become part of the national community. What emerges in these stories is aconstant negotiation to fill the idea of ‘home’ with content. These negotiations take place in apresent, but always in relation to both apast and an imagined future– in which homeliness appears in different ways, with different meanings.