Longing in Belonging

The mobilization of people populations and placesand the social interrelations of space and time memory and longing and the global and localare uniquely analyzed in this fascinating study. Instead of viewing social and cultural relations through the lenses of rigid institutions fixed territories or rooted communities Ilcan focuses on mobile sites to explore the cultural politics of settlement. This book examines the social relations of longing and belonging to be found in nation building ethnographic practices dwelling and diasporas.Ilcan propels us into various dimensions of movement as well as social relations in the fields of dispersion transition and displacement. Drawing on insights from cultural studies sociology and anthropology she inquires into contemporary and critical issues on the movement of peoples. Transitional communities represent the tensions and risks confronting those compelled to leave home or those for whom a sense of longing superseded any feeling of belonging.This book provides fresh insight into the placement and displacement of particular social groups including guest workers migrants and immigrants. Ilcan covers the varieties of diasporic relations and the settlements they form as well as the manifold ways in which they affect traditional practices of settlement. She considers the cultural economic and political implications of globalization evoking the struggle in our places of habitation and the strategies deployed to subvert our habits of settlement.