'Going Back': Homeland and Belonging for Greek Child Migrants

Abstract

Homeland, rather than a physical locality, is a narrative of a migrant's personal past; it is often a mythic landscape formed by childhood nostalgia. This is especially so in the author's collection of oral testimonies of Greek child migrants who arrived in Melbourne during the 1960s and 1970s. Their act of 'going back' to Greece in adulthood can be analysed within the framework of identity formation, an ongoing process reliant on the revision of personal and collective memories. The interviewees' symbolic conception of this act of going back and their attachment of meaning (or lack thereof) to place has many implications for the way this demographic constructs national, transnational and cultural belonging, both in collective and individual terms. Going back was an experience of self-discovery, a repudiation or 'retranslation' of the narrative of homeland. Ultimately, the experience of going back enhances trans-cultural identities. Interestingly, the experience had more importance for their conceptualisation of place, and their sense of belonging in Australia, than it did for their sense of belonging in the homeland. This can be linked to the importance of their respective community networks, and the importance of these communities in their childhood sense of security and their adult sense of familiarity. The reality of the confronted homeland was at odds with their mythic landscape. Unexpectedly then, going back increases a sense of belonging in their own self-constructed cultural landscapes in Melbourne. Show more