The construction of personal geographies among Romanian older migrants in Switzerland

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