Vanessa Hughes

Narrating 'home': What Can We Learn from the Experiences of German Expellees and Refugees After the Second World War? Vanessa Hughes

This book explores the concept of home by looking at the experiences of expellees and refugees in Germany after the Second World War, situating these in the literature on migration, displacement and home, and in particular transnational anthropological literature. After conducting auto-biographical interviews with expellees, their narratives, influenced by their historical, social and economic context, reveal that their understanding of home has undergone profound changes throughout their life-course, and can loosely be categorised into three phases: the loss of home, itinerancy, and settlement. Throughout these phases the meaning of home was constantly being contested and negotiated by expellees. This has led to an imagined, idealised and romanticised notion of their 'Heimat' (homeland) that now only exists in their (common) memory and is combined with their current home where they describe themselves as 'Zuhause' (at home).