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This book explores the relationships between home, work and migration among Vietnamese people in East London, demonstrating the diversity of home-making practices and forms of belonging in relation to the dwelling, workplace and wider city. Engaging with wider scholarship on transnationalism, urban mobilities and the geopolitical dimensions of home among migrants and diasporic communities, the author draws on ethnographic work to examine the experiences of people who migrated from Vietnam to London at different times and in diverse circumstances, including individuals who arrived as refugees in the 1970s, as well as those who have migrated for work or education in recent years. Migration, Work and Home-Making in the City thus sheds new light on the social, material and spiritual practices through which people create senses of home that connect them with their country of origin, and reveals how home-making is constrained by immigration policies, insecure housing and precarious work, thus highlighting the barriers to belonging in the city.
List of contents
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Introduction
1. Conceptualising Home, Work and Migration in Urban Contexts
2. Locating East London’s Vietnamese Communities
3. Routes, Journeys and Encounters: Experiences of Departure and Arrival
4. Home, Work and the City: Between Vietnam and East London
5. Material, Emotional and Spiritual Homes
6. Future Homes, Mobilities and (Im)possibilities of Belonging
7. Conclusion: Where is Home in the Super-diverse City?
Participant Biographies
Bibliography
Index
About the author
Annabelle Wilkins is Research Associate in the Division of Languages and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester, UK, within the project ‘Translation, interpreting and the British humanitarian response to asylum seeker and refugee arrivals since the 1940s’. She holds a PhD in Geography from Queen Mary University of London, and her research interests are in home, work, migration and the city. She has published in journals including Area and Gender and Place and Culture, and in the edited collection Spaces of Spirituality.
Summary
This book explores the relationships between home, work and migration among Vietnamese people in East London, demonstrating the diversity of home-making practices and forms of belonging in relation to the dwelling, workplace and wider city.
