Transnational Homemaking Practices: Identity, Belonging and Informal Learning

Abstract

In the context of increased diversity, mobility and migration, as people change residence and break the connections of origin, family and childhood, which conventionally provide a link between place and identity, it is important to understand the challenges of constructing a plausible narrative of personal history and continuity that can provide a connection to place. Drawing on symbolic interactionism, as a theoretical framework, in which reality is seen as socially constructed and developed in interaction with others, this study aims to highlight diverse and complex experiences of transnational living, exploring how practices based on tradition, memory and identity converge towards the constructions of place, space, belonging and social inclusion renegotiated in the new environment. In doing so, the aim is to identify key elements that constitute a type of informal education as it emerges from how homemaking is organised and practised in contemporary everyday life by transnational families. The empirical research is based on biographical visual narratives of five transnational families living in a small town in the Midlands (as part of an exploratory study conducted between 2008 and 2010). By bringing a specific ‘practice’ approach and using visual methodologies to examine participants' narratives, this study brings a unique view on transnational families ‘from within’ their homes, capturing ways in which they represent and re-create themselves. This article explores homemaking practices as experienced by people who migrate from their country of birth, aiming to identify conceptualisations and meanings of ‘home’ that create a type of informal learning that goes beyond the confines of the physical space of the home into the new place of residence, linking it with notions of citizenship and social inclusion.