Transnational Dreamscapes: The Dance Between a Multi-Dimensional Love, Embodiment, and Preservation in the Afterlives of Migration

Abstract

Migration is typically conceptualized as a one-time event that demarcates where the body circulates. However, the sustainment of transnational ties suggests learning how to navigate a world geographically and culturally distant from the motherland is a never-ending process. In response, this thesis grapples with the question of what it means for migrants to have lived out their adult life and begin to undergo the process of aging in their country of arrival. In centering the lives migrants nurtured prior to migration, this thesis also grapples with the question of what is left behind and given up when they choose to believe in the possibilities of migration. Drawing on the concepts of rhythm analysis, embodied place attachment, and embodied placemaking, I argue that the lives carried out in the pre-migration context have shaped and continue to color the embodied practices, temporal disjunctors, and acts of self-preservation that emerge in the post-migration context. In short, beyond conjuring material, cultural and social exchanges, transnational ties are embodied and unfold on an individual level.