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The construction of personal geographies among Romanian older migrants in Switzerland
Author(s) -
Ciobanu Ruxandra Oana,
Bolzman Claudio
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
population, space and place
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.398
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1544-8452
pISSN - 1544-8444
DOI - 10.1002/psp.2284
Subject(s) - romanian , homeland , trips architecture , refugee , dictatorship , narrative , tourism , communism , population , sociology , gender studies , life course approach , politics , political science , geography , demographic economics , psychology , demography , law , social psychology , engineering , art , economics , philosophy , linguistics , transport engineering , democracy , literature
This paper discusses the construction of personal geographies of (im)mobility among Romanian older migrants in Switzerland and those who moved back to Romania after having lived in Switzerland. The analysis draws on 32 biographical narrative interviews with Romanian migrants aged 57 and older. This is a heterogeneous population consisting of former political refugees, family migrants, and return migrants. The paper reconstructs the strategies refugees used to maintain ties to their homeland during the communist regime, when it was difficult to physically return home, and during the first attempts to re‐establish concrete ties after the fall of the dictatorship. Since then older Romanians have developed a variety of personal geographies of (im)mobility: cutting ties to Romania, tourism, back‐and‐forth trips, attempted, and concrete return. The paper's contributions derive from applying a life course perspective to the study of migration, focusing on little studied groups and on concrete return behaviour and not just intentions.