Portable anchors of home

Abstract

The essay asks: how can you bring home with you on a journey? Even on the move, we feel attached to different familiar places, relationships, symbols, and stories. For migrants, home is in the making and becomes more of an inner process rather than a physical exterior. Yet even this inner home needs tangible anchors you can touch, smell, hug, or taste—small homemaking objects this essay calls “portable anchors of home.” As migrants' lives become increasingly transnational, one may have a multitude of anchors (shallow or deep) in multiple real and virtual locations, which can be unanchored and re‐anchored. The essay argues that our “portable anchors of home” help us to stay grounded, even when we are physically on the move and allow us to be mobile without feeling detached from people and places that make us feel at home.