Restless Expat Syndrome and Place Attachment.

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Kung-fu Hillbilly
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Restless Expat Syndrome and Place Attachment.

Post by Kung-fu Hillbilly »

Image

by Lucille
Jan 31, 2018


... how does place attachment to numerous places around the world impact how we conceptualize our present identities?

Place attachment is defined broadly as the authentic and emotional bond with an environment that satisfies a fundamental human need. In her book This is Where You Belong: The Art and Science of Loving the Place You Live, Melody Warnick talks about how places seem to have a personality, a vibe and how some places are a natural fit and some take a bit more work. But whether its instant or crafted over time, the way we connect to a place is driven by our need to feel a sense of belonging.

...over time a place comes to represent who we are. Put another way, our identity becomes inextricably linked to the place we live. But because we are complicated beings who respond and react to our environments, often certain countries bring out different elements of our personalities and therefore our identity may differ slightly in each new country we call home.

if a place comes to represent a part of our identity, what happens when we leave that place? The answer of course is that we leave a piece of ourselves behind with it. That’s how we can be homesick for a place that isn’t our home. It’s a yearning to reconnect with that part of ourselves. And so what happens is that when we think about parts of ourselves, our memories and who we are, we are also thinking of the place with which that part of us is inextricably tied

full https://www.expitterpattica.com/2018/01 ... ttachment/
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SternAAlbifrons
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Re: Restless Expat Syndrome and Place Attachment.

Post by SternAAlbifrons »

Ohhh.. to have teenage angst about these things again.

Second thoughts..
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Khmu Nation
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Re: Restless Expat Syndrome and Place Attachment.

Post by Khmu Nation »

Although I am very content where I now am and will hopefully stay until I die, I miss Saigon where I lived for about 7 years and I think about it regularly. However I miss it for all the wrong reasons and I know if I still lived there my life would be absolute carnage. So I am better off visiting for a few days once a year to behave as I used to. i.e. irresponsible, selfish, immature, thrill seeking, substance abusing twat, liability and bellend. So if I did leave anything behind it was that asshole.

And where do I never miss, not even for a single second?

London.

Where I lived for most of my life.


:dm:
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Kuroneko
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Re: Restless Expat Syndrome and Place Attachment.

Post by Kuroneko »

Lots of literature around this subject:

Space, Place, and Identity: Issues for Political Psychology Political Psychology, 2006 https://www.academia.edu/25323304/Space ... Psychology

Space, Place and Identity: Intercultural Encounters, Affect and Belonging in Rural Australian Spaces David Radford

In this paper, I explore particular public spaces in a country town, the local hotel and public square, and investigate how these sites produce intercultural encounters between long-term regional residents and newer refugee-background migrant communities. These encounters, occurring in spatial contexts, are (re-)subjectivized by long-term residents and new migrants, and where differences and acceptance are contested and (re)constructed. In this paper I argue that the encounters that take place in these spaces, and the affective (dis)connections that are experienced, foster either a sense of belonging or non-belonging, inclusion or exclusion.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10. ... ode=cjis20
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