Love and its attendant emotions not only spur migration—they forge our response to the people who leave their homes in search of new lives. Emotional Landscapes looks at the power of love, and the words we use to express it, to explore the immigration experience. The authors focus on intimate emotional language and how languages of love shape the ways human beings migrate but also create meaning for migrants, their families, and their societies. Looking at sources ranging from letters of Portuguese immigrants in the 1880s to tweets passed among immigrant families in today's Italy, the essays explore the sentimental, sexual, and political meanings of love. The authors also look at how immigrants and those around them use love to justify separation and loss, and how love influences us to privilege certain immigrants—wives, children, lovers, refugees—over others. Affecting and perceptive, Emotional Landscapes moves from war and transnational families to gender and citizenship to explore the crossroads of migration and the history of emotion. Contributors: María Bjerg, Marcelo J. Borges, Sonia Cancian, Tyler Carrington, Margarita Dounia, Alexander Freund, Donna R. Gabaccia, A. James Hammerton, Mirjam Milharčič Hladnik, Emily Pope-Obeda, Linda Reeder, Roberta Ricucci, Suzanne M. Sinke, and Elizabeth Zanoni

The migrant letter, whether written by family members, lovers, friends, or others, is a document that continues to attract the attention of scholars and general readers alike. What is it about migrant letters that fascinates us? Is it nostalgia for a distant, yet desired past? Is it the consequence of the eclipse of letter-writing in an age of digital communication technologies? Or is it about the parallels between transnational experiences in previous mass migrations and in the current globalized world, and the centrality of interpersonal relations, mobility, and communication, then and now? Influenced by methodologies from diverse disciplines, the study of migrant letters has developed in myriad directions. Scholars have examined migrant letters through such lenses as identity and self-making, family relations, gender, and emotions. This volume contributes to this discussion by exploring the connection between the practice of letter writing and the emotional, economic, familial, and gendered experiences of men and women separated by migration. It combines theoretical and empirical discussions which illuminate a variety of historical experiences of migrants who built transnational lives as they moved across Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the United States. This volume was originally published as a special issue of The History of Family.

Emotions and Belonging in Forced Migration takes a sociology of emotions approach to gain a better understanding of the present situation of forced migration. Furthermore, it helps to bring the voices and views of forced migrants to academic and public debates in Western society, where they have been generally absent and often investigated with predefined concepts and categories based on theories having little relevance to their cultural and social experiences. This work, however, is based on an inductive methodology that carefully carries the voices of forced migrants throughout the research. Therefore, it will be of interest for various audiences from different disciplines in social sciences, as for any readers seeking to learn more about the refugees in his building, neighbourhood, city, or country. Finally, it provides an insightful lens for those who wants to know more about Syria and the Arab uprisings after 2010: It is the first study of what Syrians feel during the entirety of their difficult ordeal fleeing Syria, traversing different countries in the global South, and landing in Western ones. No other book treats this thematic focus with the same geographic and temporal breadth.

Migrant Emotions explores the interrelationships and tensions between mobility and immobility, emotions, affects and experiences, inclusion and exclusion, as well as narratives and representations in both local and global discourses. The overall objective of the volume is to underscore the significance of emotions in the analysis of mobile lives in the past and the current socio-political climate. The book provides a new framework that brings together the study of emotions and migration by focusing on the feelings or emotions of exclusion and inclusion through a range of theoretical lenses. Specifically, it offers a series of complex, interconnected studies on diverse experiences, responses, and voices of migrants (including, refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented, and others on the move) both in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, and across the continents, including Europe (Molesini, Daniel, Stock, Castillo Gonsalves, Cancian, Leese), Africa (Cancian, Kilpeläinen and Zechner), Asia (Mutiara, Paul, Ridgway), and Oceania (Heckenberg). Integral to the volume's original objective is an emphasis on the global diversity of contributors and studies and the global reach of readership for purposes of comparison.

The book explores the intersection of emotions and migration in a number of case studies from across the USA, Europe and Southeast Asia, including the transmigration of female domestic workers, transmigrant marriages, transmigrant workers in the entertainment industry and asylum seekers and refugees who are the victims of domestic violence.

This book, based on extensive original research, explores the lives, the migratory experiences and the social, economic, and emotional practices of Chinese migrant women during their migrations and mobilities in China, from China to Taiwan, from Taiwan to China and in between the two countries. It illustrates how women on the move experience social contempt, misrecognition and economic marginalisation; how women migrants seek autonomy, economic independence, upward social mobility and modernity, but discover the Chinese inegalitarian social order and labour regimes which produce obstacles and impede their ambitions; and how old and new forms of subalternity are reproduced. Overall, the book emphasises what it feels like for the women migrants as they negotiate their way at the crossroad between subalternity and resistance, between subordinated labour and independent, digital entrepreneurship, and between an inegalitarian labour market and new, online opportunities for business and commerce.

In recent years an increasing number of scholars have incorporated a focus on emotions in their theories of material culture, transnationalism and globalization, and this book aims to contribute to this field of inquiry. It examines how ‘emotions’ can be theorized, and serves as a useful analytical tool for understanding the interrelated mobility of humans, objects and images. Ethnographically rich, and theoretically grounded case studies offer new perspectives on the relations between migration, material culture and emotions. While some chapters address the many different ways in which migrants and migrant artists express their emotions through objects and images in transnational contexts, other chapters focus on how particular works of art, everyday objects and artefacts can evoke feelings specific to particular migrant groups and communities. Case studies also analyse how artists, academics and policy makers can stimulate positive interaction between migrants and non-migrant communities.

Immigrants make up 3.15% of the world's population, that's 216 million people. How do you successfully progress from emigration to being a long term immigrant? You may not have moved countries; you may have changed areas, such as rural to city. Have you ever felt disconnected to the place in which you are living, or struggled with the language, humour or behaviours? Have you have missed features of what was once your home, or found yourself wishing your family and friends were more accessible? If you have, even if you haven't changed countries, you may be subject to the emotional challenges that immigrants face, and will find help in this book. Emigrating and immigrating is more than removal companies and getting visas. There are many emotions involved. The combination of excitement and sadness from moving countries is just the tip of the iceberg. In your new country, when you have recovered from the culture shock, and calmed down from the novelty of where you live, there is the 'missing' to deal with. The missing of family, friends, familiarity and the celebrations you would have had with them is often unanticipated and overwhelming. It is not to be treated casually. Immigrants often struggle or return to their homeland because of what they miss, rather than due to economic or practical reasons. The book The Emotional Challenges of Immigration explores many of the emotional issues faced by immigrants or people away from home. In this strategy-filled, self-help book you will find suggestions of how to face the challenges. Whether you consider visits to your homeland a necessity or a luxury, you can learn how to make the most of your time there and how to make the most of visits from your family and friends. If you are a parent or plan on being one, you will find out how you can introduce your heritage to your children. What to do when you receive the news that a loved one is getting married, having a baby or dying. What were immigrants' experiences when they have had big news to share, an engagement, pregnancy, child's milestone. Do you and your spouse have the same priorities on visits to family? Whether a migrant couple or a transnational marriage, issues of homesickness and family visits have to be communicated. You will learn ways to gain or increase a sense of belonging where you are living. You will read that, although you are geographically distant from loved ones in your homeland, you still have a part to play in their lives. Each chapter deals with particular emotional challenges for those away from their homeland. Immigrants' actual experiences are shared and strategies are offered based on what has worked for them. It may be hard to adjust your thinking from wishing for a white Christmas to seeking shade in the heat of summer, but at some stage you have to let go of old traditions and create some your own. Immigrant challenges can be isolating. This book will help you know there are solutions and that you are not alone in your struggles. Through this book, you can find out how to become a more settled immigrant and how to feel more connection with the place in which you are living. Ellie Baker has been an immigrant for 25 years. She has a transnational marriage and was recently termed a 'successful immigrant, ' defined as an immigrant who contributes to the country and community she lives in. Her research into how immigrants cope has led her to offer solutions to survive the sad and bad times, and relish the glad times, of being an immigrant. This book reveals the emotional challenges of being an immigrant. It is a book for immigrants to understand and help overcome their challenges. It is a book for potential immigrants and people who know or love immigrants. Use this book to understand and decrease the emotional challenges of being away from home. Become more settled and happier where you are living."

This book provides insights into the emotional dimensions of human mobility. Drawing on findings and theoretical discussions in anthropology, sociology, cultural studies, philosophy, linguistics, migration studies, human geography and political science, the authors offer interdisciplinary perspectives on a highly topical debate, asking how 'emotions' can be conceptualised as a tool to explore human mobility. Emotions and Human Mobility investigates how emotional processes are shaped by migration, and vice versa. To what extent are people’s feelings about migration influenced by structural possibilities and constraints such as immigration policies or economic inequality? How do migrants interact emotionally with the people they meet in the receiving countries, and how do they attach to new surroundings? How do they interact with 'the locals', with migrants from other countries, and with migrants from their own homeland? How do they stay in touch with absent kin? The volume focuses on specific cases of migration within Europe, intercontinental mobility, and diasporic dynamics. Critically engaging with the affective turn in the study of migration, Emotions and Human Mobility will be highly relevant to scholars involved in current theoretical debates on human mobility. Providing grounded ethnographic case studies that show how theory arises from concrete historical cases, the book is also highly accessible to students of courses on globalisation, migration, transnationalism and emotion. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies.

Migrant Emotions explores the interrelationships and tensions between mobility and immobility, emotions, affects and experiences, inclusion and exclusion, as well as narratives and representations in both local and global discourses. The overall objective of the volume is to underscore the significance of emotions in the analysis of mobile lives in the past and the current socio-political climate. The book provides a new framework that brings together the study of emotions and migration by focusing on the feelings or emotions of exclusion and inclusion through a range of theoretical lenses. Specifically, it offers a series of complex, interconnected studies on diverse experiences, responses, and voices of migrants (including, refugees, asylum seekers, undocumented, and others on the move) both in the twentieth and the twenty-first centuries, and across the continents, including Europe (Molesini, Daniel, Stock, Castillo Goncalves, Cancian, Leese), Africa (Cancian, Kilpeläinen and Zechner), Asia (Mutiara, Paul, Ridgway), and Oceania (Heckenberg). Integral to the volume’s original objective is an emphasis on the global diversity of contributors and studies and the global reach of readership for purposes of comparison.