A Passport Home: The significance of belonging in the Comoros, Zanzibar, the UK and France August 2009 - July 2011

Overview

This project looked at some of the less economic motivations for migration and mobility among people who can claim attachments to, and who are familiar with, a number of different places. Personal obligations, religion, a quest for a better education, a desire to live with family or simple homesickness are all reasons for mobility. This research focused in particular on a group of Comorian Zanzibaris who move between East Africa and Europe, and examined how their motives for moving are underpinned by and contribute to ideas of home and belonging. In doing so, the project aimed to deepen our understanding of migratory processes that are not predominantly economic in character, and to examine the emotional and personal contexts that frame mobility, as well as the legal constraints and opportunities afforded by belonging in several different places at once.

Topics

DiasporaFamilyNetworksReligionTransnationalism

Regions

AfricaEurope

Outputs

Walker, I. (2010) Becoming the Other, Being Oneself: Constructing Identities in a Connected World, Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Walker, I. (2012) 'Ntsambu, the Foul Smell of Home: Food, Commensality and Identity in the Comoros and in the Diaspora', Food and Foodways: Explorations in the History and Culture of Human Nourishment, 20(3-4): 187-210

Walker, I. (2011) 'Two Fisherman’s Songs: From Ngazidja, Comoro Islands', Wasafiri, 26(2): 59-62

Walker, I. (2011) 'Hybridity, Belonging, and Mobilities: The Intercontinental Peripatetics of a Transnational Community', Population, Space and Place, 17(2): 167-178