CREES

The homeland is an enigma and has become a fluid concept which is not necessarily exclusively associated with country of birth due to the transnational movements of people. Such movements of individuals occur for a variety of reasons that include work, business, lifestyle, study, family, trauma, humanitarian and human rights. Both permanent and temporary migrants have been subject to a wealth of experience that confuses the concept of ‘home’. The fluidity of the concept of home usually lies with the experiences of the migrant both in the home and host country. Some migrants are forced to leave their birth countries because of personal or national trauma (eg. human rights violations, politics, war and natural disasters), while others leave out of choice and for less traumatic reasons (eg. lifestyle, work, study and family). While some migrants settle in their host countries with minimal discomfort, others encounter challenges in settlement such as hostility and suspicion. Some migrants more easily integrate into their host society by perhaps assimilating into already established ethnic or cultural communities. Others find assimilation more difficult because of the lack of community support. However, joining an established ethnic or cultural community can also result in less assimilation into the wider community, therefore creating a dissonance in the concept of home for the migrant.

These different notions of home and homeland constitute salient and evocative spatial metaphors, illustrating the ways our lexicon can produce a range of meanings, interpretations and political uses around these concepts. While such ideas and tropes remain pertinent, the extent to which the homeland provokes counter discourses around deterritorialisation, displacement, dispossession, travel, migration and mobility, remain less certain. Such uncertainty invites an urgent call to re-evaluate the meanings attached to the concept of the homeland or what constitutes ‘home’ for people today.

This collection aims to highlight the often ignored intersections between issues of home and host country, the foreign and the familiar, and imaginary and concrete homelands. State-centred views of what constitutes the homeland continue to dominate, but what is apparent is that these limit our perspectives to understanding the connections between home, citizenship, displacement, migration, belonging and identity.

We invite reflective essays, which may address questions such as the following in order to develop new perspectives on concepts of home and homeland.
What are the cultural connotations and semantic implications of the word ‘homeland’?
In what ways is the concept of ‘the homeland’ an enigma?
What does it mean to think of our respective nations/countries of citizenship or birthplaces in the current context of mobility and flux?
What does it mean to desire a lost homeland?
In what ways does homeland embody a sense of nostalgia?
In what ways does the homeland provide a new paradigm of national identity?
What does homeland mean when it is threatened or destroyed by military occupation, invasion, war, genocide, terrorism or natural disaster?
In what ways has travel shaped new ideas about ‘self’ and ‘home’?
If dispossessed people share pasts that are fragmented, is a classical notion of ‘home’ necessary to sustain who they are?
Where is there room for migrants in the space of the homeland as a site of indigenous origins or ethnic homogeneity?
How do migrants find inclusion in the homeland? How are they excluded from the discourses of homeland?
How do migrants and their families identify with their adopted homeland, even if they relocate their homelands elsewhere?
What does it mean to go back and forth between two homes?
How have indigenous, migrant, refugee or settler communities conceptualised the notion of homeland?

We also encourage a variety of types of contributions, including creative submissions, such as storytelling, poems and other alternative formats. Creative submissions may include reflections on the above or following questions:
What is the meaning of home?
Is home associated with the birth country or is it associated with the place of settlement?
What does it mean to return home?
What does it mean to live in exile?
What are your experiences when you return home?
What does it mean to be connected to different cultural spaces?
What are the experiences that you face in terms of identity and belonging when you return to your birth country?
Can you identify with the culture of the place that you left upon returning?
Why leave or choose not to leave home?
Why return or choose not to return home?

A 300-word abstract for academic papers, along with a short biography, should be sent by 30 November 2009 to catherine.gomes@rmit.edu.au

Please send all completed submissions by 1 June 2010.