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Enduring Bonds of Place: Personhood and the Loss of Home

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Nostalgia, Loss and Creativity in South-East Europe

Part of the book series: Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe ((MOMEIDSEE))

Abstract

This chapter seeks to examine not only the regional problems of population disruption in South-Eastern Europe, but also to set our concerns in an overall perspective, namely that of global migration. Nostalgia is not asynchronic; it needs to be related to the overall context of modernity, and indeed of post-modernity. In order to react appropriately to these contemporary demographic upheavals, we need to exercise empathy and imagine ourselves into the perceptions of people whose thinking about their place is rather different from our own. We are called upon to enter imaginatively into the degree of disruption experienced by individuals removed from the place where these relationships are the essence of being.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Among the UNHCR’s ‘Top 10 Source Countries’ of refugees are Syria, Afghanistan, Somalia, South Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Myanmar, Iraq, Colombia and Central African Republic. See UNHCR 2015a.

  2. 2.

    Massive population displacement from Africa and the Middle East has recently taken on the scale of a major humanitarian crisis, posing threats to the very existence of the EU itself, which, through the Schengen Agreement, includes open borders among its founding principles.

  3. 3.

    Betts 2015 suggests that the changing conditions of population displacement require new categories—for example, ‘survival migrants’—as well as new ways of treatment.

  4. 4.

    Zetter 1991, 2007 has examined the issue of ‘labelling’ and its effects on displaced people’s ability to reconstitute their lives.

  5. 5.

    Barutciski 1998 emphasizes the importance of this distinction and the need for different legal regimes to deal with IDPs and refugees.

  6. 6.

    Strictly speaking, they were not refugees because, under the terms of the Treaty, they had been granted full citizenship rights in their new country.

  7. 7.

    See, for example, Dikomitis 2009, 64ff; Halilovich 2013.

  8. 8.

    For a fuller description of the significance of such activity, see Hirschon 2014, 24–26.

  9. 9.

    du Boulay’s masterful volume (2009) contains the fullest interpretation of the interwoven and many-layered meanings of fundamental elements. Her chapters on earth and on water enlighten our understanding of their deep significance in a Greek Orthodox village. See also Kain Hart 1991 on the Orthodox ritual calendar, and Dikomitis 2009 on village rituals and return pilgrimages to expropriated Greek Cypriot villages.

  10. 10.

    Korac 2009, in her admirable comparative study of Yugoslavian refugees in Rome and Amsterdam, is among those who problematize the question of ‘home’ and how it is constructed.

  11. 11.

    For examples in Basque society, see Douglass 1969; Ott 1993.

  12. 12.

    See, for example, Baric 1967; Rheubottom 1976.

  13. 13.

    See also the responses to Kibreab by Turton, Stepputat and Warner, and Kibreab’s rejoinder in Kibreab 1999.

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Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Marilou Polymeropoulou and Oska Paul for research assistance in preparing this chapter, and to Penny Costley-White for helpful editorial comments.

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  1. St Peter’s College, Oxford, UK

    Renée Hirschon

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  1. Renée Hirschon
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  1. Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Catharina Raudvere

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Hirschon, R. (2018). Enduring Bonds of Place: Personhood and the Loss of Home. In: Raudvere, C. (eds) Nostalgia, Loss and Creativity in South-East Europe. Modernity, Memory and Identity in South-East Europe. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71252-9_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-71252-9_9

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  • Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, Cham

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