Children of Romanian Migrants between “Here” and “There”: Stories of Home Attachment

By analysing interviews from a larger qualitative study conducted in a Romanian village (Vulturu, Vrancea County) from the South-East region of the country, this paper explores the ways Romanian migrants’ children who were born in the country of origin but migrated to Italy or the so-called 1.5 Generation (Rumbaut 2002; 2012) talk about their ties with the home country. In other words, is Romania presented as more - or something else - than the original homeland?

The study analyses the concept of home attachment in terms of transnationalism understood as affective ties (Huynh and Yiu 2012; Paraschivescu 2011). Based on evidence from interview data a typology of attachment to the home country is outlined and further discussed. The results point to the conclusion that the issue of attachment to the home country is discursively constructed by respondents both explicitly and implicitly by multiple references to the family migration project and their immigrant status at destination. Moreover, I argue that the different types of attachment identified in the interviewees’ discourses are mediated by the subjective assessment of the integration experience into the host country.