FINAL PAPER PROPOSAL

“In a sense, it is the coming back, the return, 

which gives meaning to the going forth. 

For we really don’t know where we’ve been until we come back to where we were.

Only, where we were may not be as it was 

because of who we’ve become, 

which, after all, 

is why we left.” Northern Exposure

"When I got back, I found out that I was no longer a round peg in a round hole, but a square peg trying to fit a hole that didn't seem to be there at all" 

New Zealand aid worker

“I had the chance to live three times in London, and every time I felt like you know I was taking back from where I left. My person was enriched by the experience I had meanwhile… but my person was not the same person that lived in France or Italy… it was like going back to the Axel that lived in England. And that s why I feel like coming back home when I go to places I once lived cause in some ways my person goes back to the person I once was there.” Axel Polimanti - Hong Kong

When I first wrote about belonging, and specifically about in-betweenness (and I also titled my blog as such), I thought I was making up a new word. I even checked out in an on-line dictionary how to spell it correctly. At the time I did not know much about it, indeed I didn't know it is a phenomenon widely discussed in discourses of migration and transnationalism. The reason why I used it in my blog is that that was simply the way I felt, the way I had been feeling ever since I left England after my first experience abroad, five years ago. When I was "back home", back to the place were I was born and raised, and where, technically and theoretically, I belong, I used to define myself as an alien, an outcast, an outsider  And despite it harbors several people that look tremendously like me, how can I call a place home, if when I am there I feel like I was a foreigner?  How can I call it home, if when there and I speak my language I feel more of a stranger than when I am abroad and I communicate in language that I acquired years after acquiring my driving licence?

Nobody ever taught me about the tricks of the "coming back", the reverse culture-shock, about the difficulties of the re-entry, and, especially, no one ever told me that there is an entire scholarship out there about concepts such as "home and away" and "belonging". Thanks to the course I took in Culture of Migrations, I could finally detect and name each one of my feelings, each one of my demons. Besides, I have to say, my perspective has changed, slowly but irreversibly. 

I found out that in-betweenness is not the only one alternative to the feeling of being home. The consequences of migration are tremendously diverse, and so are the feelings emerging from it. There are factors such as third spaces, multiple identities, communities of-the-like... I am not sure that I would have been able to do discover all of this otherwise, and to grow up and expand my knowledge, and for this I need to thank my professor. 

Although, as I said, several scholars, writers, journalists have researched about notions of "home and away" and its implications before I did, I would like to give my contribution with a little research I did myself. In my final paper, I am going to explore the ways in which foreignness can dilute and re-shape one's identity. I begin here. In the first part of my paper I will take into consideration people who left their countries of nationality as young adults, and I will explore whether/how their perception of where they belong becomes nebulous. Once homesickness leaves room to enthusiasm and one settles to the paces and lifestyle of the new country, does their notion of "home" changes? Are they enriched by the new experience, or divided? Have their feelings of where they belong changed or they have remained the same? I argue that foreignness changes us irreversibly and that our notion of home changes after we adapt to a new place. I will then move on trying to provide a definition of "home" , intimately related to "belonging", and formulating hypothesis as to why our perception of where we belong changes over time and space.

With this in mind, and with the aim of reinforcing my arguments, I will refer to previous scholarship about the topic of migration and belonging. Particularly interesting at this regards are the essay "Home and Away" by Sarah Ahmed, "The Art of Coming home" by Craig Storti, some chapters from Michiel Baas' "Imagined Mobility: Migration and Transnationalism among Indian students in Australia", particularly ch. #1 "Departure, Migration, Transnationalism and what lies in-between", and ch.#3 "Learning how to work in-between". These texts together categorize different "places of belonging": In-betweenness / Third Dimensions (or Third Space) / Communities of foreigners, and so on.

Equally useful, I believe, will be to consider Lara Markova's essay "Mapping In-betweenness" and Hron's "Translating pain", about another layer of migrating: the suffering of the migrant. I will combine these arguments with the answer provided by diverse students (who have changed their countries of nationality for different reasons) in several video-interviews that I shot and that I will include in the bibliography.