Anorexia sagrada, inedia

Focussing on the network representation of community through narrative analysis raises further issues about where home ‘is’ and illuminates the multiple and complex belonging that people have to social networks in different places at different times. As with place, networks can be idealised and imagined and this is constructed through narrative.

Having made the move to Spain, some women found that they had indeed achieved ‘the life renewing goal’ (Booker 2004) of a new home. However, for others, Spain did not live up to their expectations and having ‘voyaged’, they wanted to ‘return’ to the UK which was constructed as the place where social networks were more meaningful. Irrespective of where they wished to be, all women wanted to tell a positive story about themselves and the choice they had made and this was evidenced through their narratives. Using the plots of the quest and the voyage and return were again useful since women’s

experiences, motives and agency regarding networks could be examined through their narratives, since it was through these that women made sense of their actions and their lives. Since the main theme in both the quest and voyage and return is the pursuit of a better life, talk of belonging to social

networks in the UK and Spain denoted, represented and constructed this. For some women, social networks in Spain were constructed as being ‘better’, while for others, since a better life was only possible in the UK, networks there were reconfigured as being more meaningful. For those women who lived in Spain part-time, although the UK was presented as home, they were still able to enjoy the more relaxed opportunities to engage with networks in Spain. Again narrative linkage (Gubrium and Holstein 2009) is a useful concept to understand how the different groups of women constructed transnational identities in relation to social networks among migrants in the sending country (Gustafon 2007).

Further, people construct belonging to networks to provide a social context to their lives. What was said and how it was said highlighted the perceived differences between networks in the UK and Spain. Women who wished to return to the UK were unable to overcome those difficulties related to being out of one’s familiar context, or place. In this way, home is pragmatic and contingent on experiences and intention and the ended embedded in both plot typologies is the place to where women construct belonging networks. A narrative approach is useful in analysing how such belonging is constructed and how women position themselves in relation to places.

Although people living in the same place do not have to have the same values (Sherlock 2002), community can be constructed as a survival strategy, so in this way it was common sense and pragmatic to be a part of a community. For the women I interviewed in Spain, community was also about networks and again these networks were talked of differently by those women who wished to remain in Spain and those who wanted to return to the UK. Social contact or belonging in terms of networks was told as meaning more to the women in the place that they wanted to be; networks in Spain were talked of as being multiple, spontaneous, relaxed and informal for those that wished to remain there, whereas social networks in the UK –for those women who wished to return – were talked of as being more established and longstanding, closer and more meaningful. Women who wanted to return to the UK talked of

missing their families as an obstacle which could not be overcome and this links with the quest either being fulfilled or not. Those women who wanted to stay told a story of being able to deal with this and being apart from family not posing a compromise to their being ‘good’ mothers.

The way that the women talked about the UK and Spain was influenced by whether or not they wanted to remain in Spain and this was particularly significant when they talked about social contact evidenced by the content and structure of their narratives. Those who planned to remain in Spain tended to focus on the opportunities for making new friends and how much more sociable British people were in Spain. For those who wished to return to the UK, this was told differently, some of the women found such increased social contact rather intrusive and they resented the lack of control they had in their social relationships. It is interesting that those women who wanted to stay in Spain did not dwell on contacts they had left behind in the UK but rather emphasised increased social opportunities in Spain. For those who wanted to return to the UK and also for those who were unsure about staying in Spain, the focus was on the networks they had left behind with the

consensus being that friendships in Spain were not as deep nor did they mean so much as those established in the UK. A narrative approach is useful in analysing how such belonging is constructed and how women position themselves in relation to social networks. In the following chapter I go on to discuss belonging to ethnic group.