Where are you from?: An Investigation into the Intersection of Identity, Materiality, and Attachment for In-motion Individuals.

Abstract

The migrant serves as a figure through which cultural experiences emerge, engage with, and flow through. While national identity categorisations have long been central to migration studies, with more recent work beginning to reflect the increasingly interconnected identities in the world today, I contend that it is rare to find an identity definition that accurately captures in-motion individuals’ complexities. Therefore, in this study, I redefine the concept of national identity by centring mobility at the core of self-identification. Using the question ‘Where are you from?’ as a starting point to delve into the lives of ten participants aged 20-25 with diverse cultural backgrounds, I examine, through mixed methods, how everyday objects and practices  such as clothes, tattoos, food, music, and sports  challenge the traditional notion of national identity as a stable, fixed category. In challenging these foundations of national identity, I introduce the concept of the ‘in-motion individual’ to investigate the fluid, evolving, and politically charged concept of mobile identities. More specifically, I use the concepts of difference and attachment to offer new insights into how in-motion individuals engage with their ever-changing sense of national identity at the scale of the everyday. In analysing how difference and attachment create feelings of closeness and distance to an individual’s sense of national identity, I advocate for a more dynamic and self-determined conception of mobile identities in migration geographies today.