Homecomings and returns recently referred to "silent migration" and "structurally invisible" movements (Stefansson 2004) seem to be increasingly significant for global mobility (Levitt 2007) as an emotive moment in a migrant's life cycle or as an imaginative project based on diasporic memories of expulsion. Homecoming and return produce diverse long and short term visits: heritage tourism, sacred journey, repatriation, work contract, remittances, and political activities of many levels. Not only people are involved in these processes but also commodities, soil, bones, stones and artefacts. On one hand we deal with the process of de-mythologizing the myth of return, on the other hand with the de-diasporization of transnational belonging.

This workshop sheds light on to intersections and controversies of "return" and "homecoming" by problematizing the interplay between multi-placement and displacement and by questioning the issue of structural invisibility of homecomings. The question is how return migration and homecoming become visible in legal, cultural and social life of both home and host lands. How do "homecomings" as "future projects" redefine the sense of place, the relations between migrants and the real or symbolic homeland? How do people relate "homecoming" to repatriations directed to areas other than those considered "home"? How do returnees change and modify the public space in a new old home? We welcome both papers based on ethnographies as well as theoretically informed contributions on homecoming and return in transnational age.

[Kongress-Homepage]