Comments on: From Ariel: migratory consent and the definition of “home”

By: scary azeri

scary azeri — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 10:16:18 +0000

I think about this quite often too. I say “back home” and I mean Baku; I say my home and I mean London…It is not easy, and I always thought of myself as not belonging 100% in either. But belonging enough to both, if that makes any sense.
will go and read Ariel’s posting now. Thanks for this.

By: Ariel

Ariel — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 18:19:28 +0000

This is super interesting. I knew this would hit a lot of chords for people — even people whose sense of home is a lot more localized than yours sounds like it is (ie, I’ve been unsure where home is, but I’ve never been choosing between Charlotte, Kiev, and Dubai!) I know a lot of people who don’t know where home is at this point, and even more who don’t know where their families’ “home” is. I feel like I am just starting to approach a sense of home at all, here in NYC, which is somewhere I have no history with; I am up against folks who have been here for generations.

I really appreciated this post. I’m glad the exercise challenged you. I wish I could think of a way to make a map that had room for all of this ambiguities, or rather, I should say that I’m still working on figuring out how. It’s sort of antithetical to the idea of a map, which makes it great — and hard.

By: Natalia Antonova

Natalia Antonova — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:12:38 +0000

That’s what I’m hoping to achieve as well – a place where it’s not about geography but about how I feel.

By: Layla

Layla — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 09:10:09 +0000

Someone recently told me that home can be defined by where you are most comfortable and safe; if the job is great and you are loved, “home” can be anywhere – geography becomes irrelevant.

I’m hoping to grow into that one!