Katie Walsh

British expatriate belongings: mobile homes and transnational homing

ABSTRACT This article explores the mobile homes and transnational homing of British expatriates in Dubai. In the article, I analyze ordinary domestic objects that play a special role in the homemaking practices of their expatriate owners, drawing on eighteen months of ethnographic research including participant observation and home-based interviews. I argue that thinking about belonging through belongings is productive because it is empirically and theoretically attentive to the way in which the home is experienced simultaneously as both a material and immaterial, lived and imagined, localized and (trans)national space of belonging. Furthermore, the homes of expatriates make explicit the fluidity and multiplicity of home as process. This article focuses on three things found in British expatriate homes in Dubai: a painting, a plastic bowl, and a DVD.

Examining ‘Expatriate’ Continuities: Postcolonial Approaches to Mobile Professionals

In recent years, the interdisciplinary fields of colonial and postcolonial studies have been enriched by nuanced analyses of the ways in which racialised colonial identities (cross-cut by gender, class and sexuality) have been enacted in particular settings. Nevertheless, the quantity and quality of knowledge about the lives of European colonials and settlers can be held in stark contrast with the relative scarcity of studies of those who might be regarded as their modern-day equivalents: contemporary ‘expatriates’, or citizens of ‘Western’ nation-states who are involved in temporary migration processes to destinations outside ‘the West’. These contemporary expatriates are rarely considered through a postcolonial framework. As a corrective, this special issue of JEMS draws together eight articles, each of which explicitly engages in different ways with this theoretical concern. In this introductory paper we argue for the significance of the past in shaping contemporary expatriate mobilities and note postcolonial continuities in relation to people, practices and imaginations. While discussing the resonances across various geographical sites, we emphasise the need to also consider the particularity of postcolonial contexts. Finally, we suggest that we need to broaden the current, somewhat myopic focus on Western expatriates, to understand them in relation to other groups of migrants, particularly in globalising cities, and to include the perspectives of locals.

Geographies of the Heart in Transnational Spaces: Love and the Intimate Lives of British Migrants in Dubai

Abstract With reference to British transnationalism in Dubai, this article examines the discourses surrounding three types of intimate relationship – couple, family and friend – as sites in which love might be located and experienced. As such, it responds to a widespread neglect of the emotions in accounts of migration. The discussion focuses on the ways in which British migrants negotiate different sorts of love relationships with Britons both in the UK and in Dubai; how such relations in different places are inter‐connected; and the way in which they are central to spatial imaginations of mobility/dwelling, home/away, proximity/distance and absence/presence.

From ‘Trucial State’ to ‘Postcolonial’ City? The Imaginative Geographies of British Expatriates in Dubai

This collaborative article adopts a postcolonial theoretical framework to examine the imaginative geographies of British expatriates in Dubai. The analysis compares qualitative data from two time periods: 1968–71, immediately prior to the Federation of the United Arab Emirates when this area of the Arabian Peninsular was known as the ‘Trucial States’, and 2002–04, some 30 years post-Federation. We argue that imaginative geographies of Self/Other are evident in the practices and discourses of both time periods, and, in spite of their being reconfigured, there are strong continuities in evidence. These imaginative geographies help to constitute the British (expatriate) Self, while contributing to the separateness of the British expatriate community in the colonial and postcolonial contexts. In order to trace the dis/continuities in this process, we focus on four sets of cultural practices and the discourses that surround them: social clubs, dress, food, and excursions.

Emotion and migration: British transnationals in Dubai

This paper examines some of the emotions highlighted by interactions between British migrants and Gulf nationals in the emerging global city of Dubai. Tracing the emotions that emerge in ‘expatriate’ handbooks, field notes, and interview narratives, I contribute to an emerging body of work that focuses on the embodied migrant and troubles the notion of privileged migrants as being detached from place. I demonstrate that attention to the emotions framing such interactions, in both geographical and temporal terms, can help us to better understand migrant encounters.

Heterosexuality and migration in Asia

There have been few analyses of heterosexuality in the context of migration, particularly within Asia. As a corrective, in this themed issue we bring together four articles to contribute to debates on the fluidity of heterosexuality and how the performance of heterosexuality has particular spatialities within East and South-East Asia. Each article uses ethnographic methods to produce nuanced analyses of specific and spatially contingent performances of heterosexuality. A migration focus illuminates how spatial dislocation provides opportunities for both men and women to play out different heterosexual identities. At the same time, migrants come across challenges and obstacles to their performances of heterosexuality, such as the state regulation of the migrant body, economic necessity, and gendered and ethnicised behavioural norms.

Ageing in transnational contexts: transforming everyday practices and identities in later life

ABSTRACT This Special Issue on ‘Ageing in Transnational Contexts: Transforming Everyday Practices and Identities in Later Life’ extends our understanding of how ageing is experienced in transnational contexts. It focuses on how everyday lives and identities in older age are being negotiated by individuals who have migration histories or who are affected by the mobilities of others in their lives. In the introduction, we situate our approach within an emerging strand of research investigating the inter-related processes of ageing and transnational migration. We also present the seven empirical case studies that constitute the issue and discuss their collective contribution for the research field.

Storytelling in Amy Tan’s The bonesetter’s daughter: belonging and the transnationality of home in older age

ABSTRACT Amy Tan’s The Bonesetter’s Daughter is a fictional account of a Chinese American woman and her mother, a first-generation migrant, who is negotiating dementia in later life. Analysis of diasporic novels can provide insight into migrant belonging, especially the emotional geographies of home and emotional subjectivities of ageing that are not commonly or easily elucidated even by qualitative interviewing methods. This article examines Tan’s construction of ageing as an intergenerational, cultural and emotional process, and highlights the role of storytelling as an everyday home-making practice through which the transnationality of home in older age becomes evident.

Review by Walsh

British migration is on the agenda! The recent publication of the three books reviewed here*Global Brit: Making the Most of the British Diaspora (Finch et al. 2010), Expatriate Identities in Postcolonial Organizations: Working Whiteness (Leonard 2010) and Hong Kong: Migrant Lives, Landscapes, and Journeys (Knowles and Harper 2009)*attests to the emergence of British migration, transnationalism and international settlement as legitimate subjects of enquiry. It is perhaps too early to celebrate yet, but this move will surely be welcomed by those trying to challenge a mainstream preoccupation in migration studies with migration flows from the ‘developing’ to the ‘developed’ world, a focus which has contributed to the invisibility of other migrants, including those leaving Europe and America for destinations all over the world. Global Brit is an ambitious attempt to ascertain the scale and destination of contemporary British migration flows and to comment on the ‘nature’ of this migration through attention to five case-study countries (Bulgaria, Dubai, India, Spain and the United States). Meanwhile, the other two books reviewed here are monographs, both focused on the British in Hong Kong, yet surprisingly different from each other in style and analysis. Each makes a valuable contribution to an underresearched field. Commissioned by the Consular Section of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) and updating a previous high impact IPPR report on British emigration (Sriskandarajah and Drew 2006) Brits Abroad: Mapping the Scale and Nature of British Emigration. London: Institute for Public Policy Research), Global Brit asks us to re-envision ‘Brits abroad’ as the British diaspora: a ‘great potential asset [for the UK] in a globalised world’ (p. 13). Although the use of the term ‘diaspora’ in conjunction with British migration is not entirely new, it remains controversial. While the term’s application to other migrant groups has been normalised, the authors contend that it might also describe British citizens living in other countries, not only those who have emigrated and settled, but also temporary migrants and sojourners:

Book Review: Transnational lives: expatriates in Indonesia by Anne-Meike Fechter. Aldershot: Ashgate 2007. viii + 182 pp. £55.00 cloth. ISBN 9780754647430

Transnational lives: expatriates in Indonesia by Anne-Meike Fechter. Aldershot: Ashgate 2007. viii + 182 pp. £55.00 cloth. ISBN 9780754647430.