Imagining Finland: negotiating the sense of self through return imaginaries

Abstract

When embarking on a migration journey, migrants cultivate personal ideas of themselves ‘here’ and ‘there’. This includes one’s reflections about a possible return – the return imaginaries. They emerge from the time-, place- and person-specific ideas, attitudes, feelings and possibilities before, and after, relocation. Through a digital ethnographic study, this paper seeks to expand the research done on how the so-called ‘middling’ migrants negotiate the sense of self through return imaginaries. I discuss one such group, Finns, in the UK and ask ‘what is the role of return imaginaries in negotiating the sense of self in Finns’ translocal place-making in the UK?’. The results show that Finns’ return imaginaries function as a framework for positioning and reaffirming the self in relation to the UK and Finland during one’s migration trajectory. In relation to their idea of return, Finns negotiate the questions ‘who am I?’ and ‘who do I want to be?’. Through reflecting on the everydayness in the UK and Finland, and their ideas about return visits, Finns produce a ‘translocal sense of self’.

Culturally Divided by a River: Rural Identity and Regional belonging of Two Rural Communities in Romania

“…With regard to the issue of local territorial identities, the economic development of places and regions continues to be something that needs to be studied when we seek to understand the place of identity construction in contemporary geographical analysis. Such approaches turn regions and places into perceptual regions, into places in which new kinds of identities can be imagined [32,33]. Local economic development and regional planning are important features of a region's identity construction that must be borne in mind in the context of the construction of the local identities of places and regions, since they frame both people's ordinary way of life and the cultural landscape of communities [34].…”