Atrapados/ trapped in space and time: protracted precarity in the homing of Argentine middle-class temporary migrants in Perth, Australia
Year: 2023
Type: article
Abstract: In the past twenty years, Australia has re-directed efforts to diversify the recruitment of temporary labour and students, attracting middle-class migrants from new sources, such as Latin America. This paper explores how structural, political and socio-economic contradictions in countries of origin and destination shape Argentine migrants’ everyday experiences of trying to create a new home. Drawing on ethnographic research, this paper builds on work on temporary middle-class migration to show how a ‘homing’ lens contributes to refining our understanding of how precarity can become protracted for middle-class migrants moving from the Global South to the Global North. The findings demonstrate that feelings of detachment from their past home but difficulty planning a future due to their temporary status exclude such migrants from the ontological stability necessary for homing. Using metaphors of ‘walls’ and ‘skidding’, we show how spatial and temporal precarity discourage emotional and material investment in their present homes.
Authors: Bernardo Dewey, Farida Fozdar
Institutions: The University of Western Australia, Curtin University
Language: English
Subfield: Demography
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: hybrid
Funder: University of Western Australia
OpenAlex ID: W4362555014