Despite the mass dislocation and repatriation efforts of the last century, the study of return movements still sits on the periphery of anthropology and migration research. Homecomings explores the forces and motives that drive immigrants, war refugees, political exiles, and their descendants back to places of origin. By including a range of homecoming experiences, Markowitz and Stefansson destabilize the key oppositions and the key terminologies that have vexed migration studies for decades, analyzing migration and repatriation; home and homeland; and host, returnee, and newcomer through a comparative ethnographic lens. The volume provides rich answers to the following questions: _ Does group repatriation, sponsored and sometimes coerced by national governments or supranational organizations, create resettlement conditions more or less favorable than those experienced by individuals or families who made this journey alone? _ How important are first impressions, living conditions, and initial reception in shaping the experience of home in the homeland? _ What are the expectations that a mythologized homeland encourages in those who have left? Filling a conspicuous gap in the literature on migration in diverse fields such as anthropology, politics, international law, and cultural studies, Homecomings and the gripping ethnographic studies included in the volume demonstrate that a home and a homeland remain salient cultural imperatives that can inspire a call to political action.

About the Author
Fran Markowitz teaches anthropology in the Department of Behavioral Sciences at Ben-Gurion University in Beersheva, Israel. Anders H. Stefansson is research assistant at the Institute of Anthropology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark.

Reviews
Homecomings is a welcome addition to the limited recent literature on return migration and homecoming experiences. ... an inspiring text that unravels the manu hidden layers of mobility, return and homeness..... -- Anastasia Christou, University of Sussex * Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies *
These studies, focusing on experiences of return migration in several continents, challenge assumptions about the relation of mobility to home. 'Homecomings' are never simply returns from exile, however, but also the unsettling of pasts and the making of futures. -- John Borneman, Princeton University
Homecomings is a welcome addition to the limited recent literature on return migration and homecoming experiences. ... an inspiring text that unravels the manu hidden layers of mobility, return and homeness. -- Anastasia Christou, University of Sussex * Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies *



Book Information
ISBN 9780739109526
Author Fran Markowitz
Format Paperback
Page Count 300
Imprint Lexington Books
Publisher Lexington Books
Weight(grams) 345g
Dimensions(mm) 228mm * 161mm * 18mm