Migration and Belonging

This research cluster seeks to bring together scholars of migration from across the university to engage in discussion and presentation of research with the goal of developing a more transdisciplinary analysis of the human experience in migration. This cluster focuses on two themes that sometimes exist in tension: migration, or geographic movement often motivated by economic or relational considerations; and the idea of belonging--what poet and writer Luis Francia describes as the idea of home--that is often expressed as intangible desire. These two themes actually touch on much larger humanistic concerns, including what it means to create a sense of belonging or community, the factors that contribute to resiliency in the face of life changes, and how the negotiation of belonging or not belonging rootedness or dislocation, community or alienation, is articulated.