Home in Motion: Eritrean Diasporic Experiences and the Negotiation of Home Across Transnational Spaces

ABSTRACT

This article examines how unequal legal, economic, and mobility conditions shape homemaking among Eritrea's contemporary ‘generation of asylum.’ Drawing on 160 survey responses and 13 in‐depth interviews, it compares Eritreans living in first‐asylum settings in Uganda and Ethiopia, categorised as OAUE, with those living in European destination settings in Italy and Sweden, categorised as OEUIS. The findings show that political estrangement from the Eritrean state can coexist with enduring affective attachment to Eritrea, while participants’ capacities to establish home in their countries of residence vary substantially. The comparison identifies a ‘proximity paradox’: participants living geographically closer to Eritrea in OAUE may experience weaker host‐country belonging than those living farther away in OEUIS because of greater legal insecurity, restricted mobility, and constrained economic opportunities. These inequalities can also stratify transnational homemaking. Regional cities, weddings and family reunions can provide temporary homing through cultural continuity and familial connection, but access to these spaces is unevenly enabled by travel documentation and economic security. Aspirations for return are similarly conditional on political and legal change rather than expressions of nostalgia alone. The article contributes to migration and diaspora scholarship by conceptualising temporary homing as a provisional and unequally accessible process shaped by migrants’ positions within unequal mobility regimes.