Belongings

Abstract

This article is concerned with transformations in ideas of home, place, belonging and identity in the context of the transnational patterns of communication and mobility which increasingly characterize our contemporary, destabilized (or, according to some, deterritorialized) world. The article examines the cultural significance of the transgression of borders of various sorts which arises from these forces, and investigates how these transgressions are regulated in different circumstances. These issues are explored at both micro and macro levels, in relation to the household, the nation and the local or transnational community as ‘spaces of belonging’. The article argues for a ‘materialist’ version of cultural studies which is sensitive to both the symbolic and the material geographies within which people’s identities are formed.