Making Palpable Connections : Objects in Migrants’ Transnational Lives

Based on ethnographic fieldwork among migrants from different countries in Sweden in 2011, this article argues for the importance of looking at material aspects of migrants’ everyday life in transnational contexts. It delineates how objects are intertwined with memories and practical uses. They are palpable connections, carried across borders from “here” to “there” and back because they appeal to people’s acquired taste, and reconfirm social ties in space and time. The sense of continuity they contribute to, and the related sense of normalcy, can explain the non-existence of nostalgia and alienation that are part and parcel of a different analytical construction, that of migrants as displaced persons