Between Homesickness and Nostalgia: How Return Visits Shape Homewards Orientation

Abstract (English)

This paper explores the impact of access to return visits on homewards orientation relying on data collected during my 12-month ethnographic fieldwork with Hungarian and Venezuelan migrant communities in London.
Fortier (2000) defines return mobility as the “performative act of belonging” and Ahmed et al (2003) analyze it as the quest for ‘re-grounding’ highlighting return visits as a platform to negotiate connectedness with one's homeland post-migration. In my analysis, I depart by highlighting the unequal opportunities in being able to avail of return visits between Hungarian and Venezuelan migrants living in London. The geopolitical situatedness, distance and travel costs, regulations from the side of both the home and host state and circumstances in the home country were all factors rendering Hungarian and Venezuelan migrants' access to return visits unequal. Transnational moral economies were also significant: while Hungarians fulfilled kinship obligations through frequent returns, Venezuelan kin would often push migrants to stay in the UK to be able to continue remitting and potential return visits were expected to be completed by taking on the ‘debt of communality’ (Carling 2008) in the role of a ‘remittance bourgeoisie’ (Smith 2006).
These factors also rendered return visits qualitatively different. Amongst Hungarians, one could talk about migrants assembling livelihoods across borders transnationally with return visits often replacing permanent return as maintaining relationships, providing care, affirming identities, maintaining territorial rights, and enjoying the resources provided by the homeland were all made possible within their context. Amongst Venezuelans, however, the inability to engage in regular visits made the rare occasion of return take on a pilgrimage-like spiritual aspect, with distance sustaining the ‘myth of the homeland’.
Both Hungary and Venezuela are quickly transforming in the process of autocratic regimes led by populist leaders turning these countries growingly illiberal, with people being hindered from accessing their democratic rights. I propose that as return visits serve to confront the changes that have taken place in migrants’ home countries during their absence, they allow migrants to re-evaluate if the feelings they have for the country are rooted in its current reality or are pertinent to a bygone past that is not recoverable. Relying on the distinction between homesickness and nostalgia (Smeekes and Jetten 2019), I argue that through visits home, Hungarians have the chance to confront their homesickness and recognize that what they long for largely pertains to the past and as such, the object of their longing is unattainable. However, due to the difficulty of accessing return visits, Venezuelans are cemented in a collective longing and a conviction that their country can be recovered as they remember it from a glorious past at the height of its prosperity, which is one important factor that keeps fueling homewards orientation.