Searching for Home in the Migration Context: Exploring Small and Big Home-Making Experiences through Belgian Taiwanese Immigrants' Life Story Narratives

For this thesis, I chose Taiwanese immigrants in Belgium as my research subject and examined a series of questions regarding the notion of home in the migration context and the immigrant's daily life while living in a foreign land. The main research questions guiding this study are: What are Taiwanese immigrants' experiences of homemaking (「家」的製作」) in Belgium? What are their experiences of managing dual home relationships between home and host countries? What does the concept of "home" mean for them in an immigrant context? How can they feel at home in their daily life? This research also considered other important issues related to the notion of "home" in the migration context, as well as how the immigrants identify themselves culturally and ethno-nationally. In order to explore the life and homemaking practices of Taiwanese immigrants in Belgium, both anthropological and qualitative interview methods were used to collect data. Between 2017-2020, I conducted online participant observations in several Belgian Taiwanese immigrant virtual communities on Facebook and also offline fieldwork at the Ecole Sun Yat-sen (旅比華僑中山學校) in Brussels. These online and offline fieldwork experiences provided good opportunities for me to get more familiar with and become closer to this immigrant community and to meet new people by inviting them to participate in the study. In total, 42 Taiwanese immigrants were recruited to participate. Additionally, through simultaneously using both semi-structured and photo-elicitation interview methods, I collected textual and visual data regarding Taiwanese immigrants' life and homemaking experiences in Belgium. Since the author had developed varying levels of closeness and friendship with each participant, and in order to keep their narratives in context and complete, eight of the research participants' life stories are demonstrated in full in this thesis. The remaining participants' stories and narratives also played a vital role in helping me to understand Taiwanese immigrant life in Belgium on a broader scale, and some of these narratives are discussed in the thesis where appropriate. In this thesis, a new theoretical concept of intersectional home (交織的家) is proposed, which revises the concept of intersectionality (交織性) that originated from gender and black women's studies. Like intersectionality, the main argument of "intersectional home" I proposed in this study stresses that the notion and meaning of home for immigrants in the migration context is dynamic, fluid, and multidimensional, rather than static or unchangeable, and there is no single domain or factor that can cover all aspects of the notion and meaning of home for immigrants. More importantly, the notion and meaning of home for immigrants is influenced by the intersection of an individual immigrant's distinct lived circumstances and his/her personal background. In addition, it is also important to point out that the notion of home in this thesis could be classified into two different types: small home and big home, as proposed by Magat (1999). The concept of small home refers to the notion of home that is embodied in an individual immigrant's personal and private life domains. Conversely, the concept of big home refers to an individual immigrant's cultural and ethnonational sense of belonging and identity. By analyzing the research data, especially the eight life stories presented in this thesis, it is clear that both small home and big home are not unidimensional; rather, they are multidimensional and changeable, according to an individual immigrant's lived circumstances and their practical needs in immigrant life. This study found that the notion and meaning of home for Taiwanese immigrants can be tangible or intangible, ranging from physical dwellings, daily religious practices, transnational social spaces, furniture or personal belongings, familiar foods, neighborhood mobility, family letters, a sense of belonging, ethnonational identity, and interpersonal relationships. Moreover, the narratives further reveal that the notion of home in the migration context is an outcome that is socially constructed by dialogical and mutual interactions between individual immigrants, their cultural environments, and lived circumstances, both in local and transnational contexts. Accordingly, the findings of this study challenge conventional perspectives regarding the notion of home, which is consolidated in a physical building and rooted in a specific place. On the contrary, the homemaking experiences shared by the Belgian Taiwanese immigrants in this study demonstrate that the notion of home for them is not necessarily a physical building or dwelling. Immigrants living in a foreign land can further obtain a sense of feeling at home (家的感覺) through different locality scales, including private dwellings and familiar environments or surroundings in a community, city, or even country. Furthermore, many of the Taiwanese immigrants who participated in this study maintain close interactions with their families in Taiwan and regularly travel back and forth between their home and host countries. In this regard, they construct a transnational social space, not only connecting their previous life in Taiwan with the current one in Belgium, but also through transnational connections and communication practices that extend their notion of home beyond the limits of a single national border. International immigration does not only mean that people leave their home country and (re)build a new home or search for a sense of home in their new place of settlement. It also means that people leave behind their previously familiar culture and lived circumstances. In this perspective, immigrants face difficulties in navigating differences between their own and host cultures and have additional problems in identifying themselves culturally and ethnically and in searching for their sense of belonging and identity of their big home while living in a foreign land. This is due to the fact that people's ethnonational identity is not merely decided by themselves, but also affected by how others see them. With regard to the big home and subjective ethnonational identity, it is interesting to find that, in this study, the research participants apply different ethnonational-identity performance and negotiation strategies in their daily life in order to fulfil their practical needs and further correspond to distinct lived circumstances and interpersonal relations. Although "Taiwanese" is the most acceptable and popular ethnonational identity label applied by the majority of participants in this study to depict their cultural and ethnonational identities, some of the research participants still accept and apply other ethnonational labels or sentences to describe themselves, including "I am Chinese from Taiwan," "Chinese," and "Taiwanese for being, Belgian for learning." Moreover, it is interesting to note that some of the research participants are more likely to perform the Taiwanese part of their identity in their private life or at home, although they devote more effort to performing as Belgian in public life or while interacting with their Belgian counterparts. However, since discussing ethnonational identity issues is sensitive to some degree, especially when Taiwanese immigrants interact with their mainland Chinese counterparts, "downplay" and "transvaluation" are two of the most frequent ethnonational identity negotiation strategies that are applied by the majority of Taiwanese immigrants in this study. These two strategies can help to avoid embarrassing situations or even potential conflict when interacting with mainland Chinese. Similarly, as with small homemaking experiences, the meanings of big home for Taiwanese immigrants vary, and participants utilize distinct strategies to find a sense of belonging toward their big home and to perform their ethnonational identities in different lived circumstances in order to fulfil practical needs. It is important to note that the aim of this study is not to try to provide a generalized conclusion or a scientific model. The life and homemaking experiences presented here are subjective and also inter-subjective, particular, context based, and intersectional affected by each immigrant's distinct lived circumstances and personal background. However, the author expects that this thesis will assist people to better understand the diversity of Taiwanese immigrants' real-life and homemaking practices in a foreign country. Moreover, as all of the research participants are first-generation Taiwanese immigrants in Belgium, this study is lacking in voices from different generations. Since the notion of generation has been confirmed to be one of the most vital factors influencing an immigrant's life experiences, future studies could consider the voices of different immigrant generations with regard to the above issues. In addition, future studies could also compare how distinct lived circumstances and contexts in different host societies further influence Taiwanese immigrants' life and homemaking experiences in foreign lands.status: publishe