“Home Away from Home”: Migration, Place and the Experience of Home-Making. The Case of Tuvaluan Migrants in New Zealand.

Abstract

Post-migration, migrants go through the reconfiguration of place meaning and the reconstruction of home in the host-place. This paper explores migrants’ experiences of home-making, focusing on Tuvaluan migrants in New Zealand. Through interviews with Tuvaluan migrants, it is inferred that New Zealand becomes the new home and the vessel of the Tuvaluan community in which the journey of home-making begins from within the community cocoon to gradual independence and expansion of self and roots in the host-place. Adaptation, acceptance of the new place, hard-work to thrive and intercultural interaction are pivotal to understand and master the system of the host-place, bolster the sense of home and preserve its constancy. Home-making in the host-place, therefore, is a malleable, relational, personalised, translocal and transnational experience in a new environment to achieve emotional, interpersonal and cultural connection as well as ontological security and continuity in the new place.