RP2: Home(s)

On Thursday, we got a little stuck on the idea of the "homeland" and home.

When talking about diaspora, we have to think about that idea of home. Where is it, what is it, is it even real? There were so many takes on the idea of home, and we never came to a consensus. I've been thinking about my home since then.

Parreñas and Sui have a short definition of home, describing it as "what diasporic subjects yearn to locate but from which they are continuously displaced by the dual processes of migration and marginal inclusion (Parreñas, Sui 16), and that seems like a definition I can stick with.

I'm not sure where my home is. I was born and grew up in Oregon, so I normally call that home, but my family and my history lies in Mexico. My parents migrated to the States before I was born, and as a fetus I had no say in what country's passport I would receive but now I stay in the States by choice - meaning I could move to Mexico and live fairly well there. I have a house there, family, I speak the language fluently. In everyday talk, I call it Mexico home. However, no matter what, is that my actually my home? It's like that place I "yearn to locate" but can't actually find anymore. Or maybe I have just found more than one home.

I go by life just living in two places. We can go back to Manalansan and think about the spheres a little more. There's these two spheres that almost completely overlap. The matter in each keeping barely apart and me just floating around, not really choosing a side but simply noticing how everything seems to touch but not completely. Like that border between oil and water, some drops of each crossing into the other and seeming so fluid yet never being able to completely mix.

For many, the idea of home is elusive. The idea of the homeland is blurry and for some it doesn't exist at all. For me, I'm finding out, I have no home, but homes. Two places that I will forever inhabit in body and mind. I guess being the children of (im)migrants comes with some perks.