Emotions on the move: returning home (?) in the family life course from the migration perspectives of return migrants and their family members in Poland and Lithuania
ENTo date, the role of emotions in migration remains largely understudied due to migration researchers focusing their efforts on the economic and social aspects of migrants’ experiences. The same remains true in terms of research on Central and East European migrants, which since 2004 has flourished to unprecedented levels and depths to include a plethora of thematic explorations ranging from migrants’ experiences in the West European labour markets (e.g. Kaczmarczyk and Tyrowicz 2015), to their social, economic, and political integration in the host country (e.g. Grzymała-Kazłowska 2016; Pustułka 2016), the transnational practices of individuals and families (e.g. McGhee, Heath, and Trevena 2012; White 2016), aspects of belonging and identity (e.g. Lulle, Moro§anu, and King 2018; Rzepnikowska 2019), and finally return mobilities (e.g. Dzięglewski 2020). Although the majority of these aspects of migrant experiences are inseparable from the emotions accompanying them, the emotional dimension of migrant existence and migration decisions, while acknowledged, has rarely been given primary focus in studies. The present chapter therefore aims to contribute to this neglected sphere of migrant lives by narrating the emotions in the migration of returnees to Poland and Lithuania. We explore the emotional journey of migration through the following dimensions: (1) what emotions migrants reveal when reporting their migration stories, and how they describe them; (2) their emotions at various stages of the migration cycle from emigration, through life in the host country, and after their return; and (3) specifically, transnational emotions, that is, those that accompany transnational family relationships. [Extract, p. 115].
