Transnational Circulation of Home Through Objects: A Multisited Ethnography in Peruvian ‘Homes’

Abstract

What is the added value of visiting migrants’ current and previous houses when investigating the transnational circulation of home? This chapter addresses this question, drawing on ethnographic research in houses inhabited by Peruvian migrants in England and Spain and by their relatives in Peru. Through the analysis of how the domestic space is organised and how individuals interact with their everyday materialities we can better understand the transnational circulation of home. Some objects can help those living at both ends of a migration corridor to feel emotionally and symbolically connected. As my empirical findings show, ordinary materialities play multiple roles in keeping families connected across transnational spaces. Moreover, everyday materialities afford migrants to be connected not only to the family members who stayed put but also to those who passed away. More broadly, engaging with migrants and their significant others’ domestic spaces contributes to conceptualise transnational homemaking. By entering into people’s domestic space migration, researchers can better understand the emotional and even spiritual connections that migrants and those affected by the migration of others establish with those objects and with people that no longer dwell with them. In short, we can better understand the ‘secret life’ some individuals built with their objects.