Food as a matter of being : experiential continuity in transnational lives

This chapter is based on the research project “The Transnational Life of Objects: Material Practices of Migrants’ Being and Belonging,” which promotes a broad interest in how objects constitute transnational social spaces established by migrants and by their counterparts who stayed behind. The question of how people make choices, exercise agency and create continuity in conditions of transnational migration is pursued, with the focus on objects and material practices. Deliberations around the meanings of “the taste of home” are plentiful in the intersected fields of food, migration and material culture studies, and tend to focus on identity and memory. Indeed, food can be interpreted as a material expression of belonging, status or family history, or of social and cultural difference. Food can be central to migrants’ creation of places of remembrance or pride, mourning or celebration, privacy or symbolic communion, or economic connection with the relatives who stayed behind. As the negotiation of belonging often entails communication through objects, food parcels are involved in multifaceted quests and attempts to belong. However, by presenting and discussing some ethnographic examples of sensuous aspects of transnational interconnections in situations of physical separation, I promote a complementary approach that centres on the materiality of food and food-related objects and practices

Migration, transnationalism and development on the Southeastern flank of Europe

The South-east Europe and Black Sea region presents a fertile terrain for examining recent international migration trends. A wide range of types of migration can be observed in this region: large-scale emigration in many countries, recent mass immigration in the case of Greece, return migration, internal migration, internal and external forced migration, irregular migration, brain drain etc. These migratory phenomena occur within the context of EU migration policies and EU accession for some countries. Yet within this shifting migration landscape of migrant stocks and flows, the fundamental economic geography of different wealth levels and work opportunities is what drives most migration, now as in the past. This paper sets the scene for the special issue in three ways: first, by defining the three key concepts of migration, transnationalism and development; second, by setting the geographical scene, with the aid of relevant statistics on the migration, development and remittance trends in the various countries of the region; and third, by summarizing the highlights of the papers in this issue of the journal, which range in their coverage from Ukraine and Moldova in the north, to Greece and Albania in the south

"Only volunteers"? Personal motivations and political ambiguities within Refugees Welcome to Malmö civil initiative

Between 7 September and 12 November 2015, approximately 800 volunteers met up to 1000 refugees a day under the banner of Refugees Welcome to Malmö, at Malmö Central train station as the first point of the asylum seekers’ arrival in Sweden. Based on in-depth interviews, this chapter analyzes the volunteers’ motivations, experiences and ambiguities, against the background of a specific historical, organizational and local context in which this grassroots initiative emerged. Special attention is paid to the volunteers’ perceptions of their work and to collaborations and conflicts with other actors in the field. The analysis of the volunteers’ positions toward the politicization of a civil initiative points to the need for city context-sensitive research on the changing constellations of actors who provide support to refugees