through digital and physical hosting and guesting, or by continually interpreting and translating others into daily life. Problematization of self is more than a process of mobilization of self - it also entails a process of mooring self in relation to others through hosting along circuits of digital and physical mobility. Hosting during visits to migration contexts has been shown as a means through which migrants connect imaginations and constitute identity by presenting highly selective aspects of daily life while interpreting the identities of friends and family in order to locate them in spaces and intimate avenues of migrant life (Humbracht, 2016). This process, however, is part of an on-going ethical economy of selves and others that entwines both digital and physical spaces and blurs distinctions between subjects like friend and family, tourist and migrant, stayer and leaver. Thus, problematization happens through informants distancing themselves from their daily lives, developing selves through combinations of digital and physical mooring and mobility.
In regard to visits to migration contexts, an important nuance to previous research is that the co-constitution of identity and belonging is a crucial means through which some identities, and thus trajectories, across personal communities become synced and others not. Paola, for instance, when describing hosting friends and family and in London compared Cinzia with a good friend, Marco, that has faded some in importance:
I could see the way they handle London when they come and see me, it’s completely different. They relate to London in a different way, Cinzia embraces it with open arms.
She seems to try new things. With Marco, I would have to think really hard on what to do and where to go, whereas with Cinzia, I could just take her to some hard-core Chinese place in Soho…you can just take her everywhere and she loves it. My life has been in London for ten years. I suppose I create more of a connection with people from my past who are as comfortable as I am in the place where I am now. Probably means that I feel more they are more connected to my present.
Hosting and tourism are key modes through which connection is defined as ethical and imagination brokers are constituted. It is not simply a moral matter of making a visit but one must also orient the self to connect. While Cinzia might not have migrated, their relationship continues to develop through efforts to connect imaginations and continued ability to co-constitute common outlooks that blurs stayer and leaver, migrant and tourist. Moreover in planning and performing visits, hosting incites a distancing from daily lives, making hosts semi-autonomous tourist agencies (Humbracht, 2016) that occur at multiple points across trans-local networks. Paola’s account parallels in some ways the interview with Cinzia, when she also described the importance of hosting friends in her City:
I feel like I’m the one who stayed and am that reference point in (city in southern Italy), so I have a sense of (city in southern Italy) continuity that they’ve interrupted. So when they’re here, I want to show them the (city in southern Italy) of today… As soon as someone is here I find the time to dedicate to them.
Cinzia is reflecting on her position, and thus reflects the subjectification of stayer, but it is not simply that, as she is always mobilized. She went on to explain that a key part of hosting for her is putting on dinner for friends who have moved abroad, and local friends, just after
Christmas, that she linked to a blurring of friends and family: “true friends for me are family, the party on the 29th is a party with my other family.” Thus, hosting and connecting imaginations is a crucial mode, through which self-development becomes a joint project – and an important expression of agency in constructing trans-local selves, blurring lines of familiar/strange, friend/family.
In addition, blurring the exotic and mundane is not reserved for migration contexts.
Expressions of care for the self, by transforming the self into an imagination broker, are performed during return visits as much as visits to migration contexts through acts of displaying change. Andrea, for instance, described that return visits like visits to London are, in part, opportunities to develop his independence. He discussed a moment with his mother as an example:
Andrea: Last time I went (to Italy) I cooked risotto. It was one of the first times I violated the kitchen, it’s been my mom’s kingdom.
Interviewer: Why did you want to do that?
Andrea: I mean, I think it’s one aspect of the bigger independence thing, and making your son, do things by himself. Since I lived there, my mother used to always cook and never tried to make me do anything. So when you move and live by yourself and you learn things you are also maybe happy to do the same things at home.
Developing the self through migration is not simply a form of escapism but actualization.
Migrants, and friends and family, use contextual ambiguity of a return visits and guesting to actualize identities, which connects and re-deploys imaginations of self through self-other relations. Demonstrating the change, allows Andrea’s mothers to co-construct an imagination of his shifting identity.
In addition, routes are by no means bi-directional. Instead, hosting happens at multiple points, encompassing emigration points and several international and domestic migration contexts. What appears to be important for the growth of relationships, is not dichotomies of stayers or leavers, tourist or migrant, but the ability to connect imaginations. Paola’s close friend Anna, who migrated to Germany around the same time as Paola explained that they are different,
as Paola is more a career woman while Anna is a dreamer. This is something she felt was reflected in their different migration destinations. They chose different migration paths, though they have continued to stay in touch, regularly arranging visits in Germany, London and their home town in Italy. Despite different paths, Anna insisted that what is important, is to be able imagine their migrant lives together: ”Well now if I walk around Berlin in the places we went.
Those are our places. Even now, I smile, because I think about it, and she’s here, she belongs to (City in Germany).” Thus, situating others fosters imaginations of relations that blur the familiar and exotic.
Another crucial means of constituting self through self-other relations is digital hosting.
While hosting in physical locations is important for locating selves and others, stabilizing identities through digital practices, is equally as important. In regard to the digital, imagination brokers generally engaged in a high frequency of ICT contact, had intimate familiarity with the daily life of others, used of a multitude of digital platforms, and acted as a primary contact point between members of social networks who distribute knowledge of selves and others and/or a high level of adaptation to others by trying to integrate ICTs into daily life. This confirms Madianou and Miller’s (2011) finding that relationships that develop significantly, tend to integrate multiple forms of media.
Using technology like WhatsApp to interpret and translate others into space is a common means of creating imagined and affective co-presence. Both migrants and non-migrants described that a regular part of daily life entailed visually transcribing loved ones into daily surroundings and activities. Chiara described this with her best friend Marta:
Marta is passionate about art history and museums. There was an exhibition at the British museum on Greece, I took a picture, sent it, and said that “I would like you to be here, to go together.”
Migrant and non-migrant selves are actualized in time and space by coding loved ones into local surrounding that fosters an implicit duty for continued connection across multiples spaces of daily life.
Furthermore, while hosting entails interpreting and co-constituting others, the role of the broker also involved distributing knowledge of others through networks. Brokers both relay
information about others and stimulate connections related to daily life. Lucia, for instance, a London based friend of Cadence, described a friend in Rome, Patrizia, who is part of the same friends network and she explained how much of the networks contact and information is organized by Patrizia. As an example she spoke of how Patrizia keeps friends up-to-date and compels contact between friends:
Patrizia told me that Lorenza was having a problem that her son has this allergy, and she’s really worried about it. So I called Lorenza immediately and asked ‘how are you, is everything okay?’, without saying that Patrizia had told me, you know, to let her feel my presence.
Circulating information and incurring contact between relationships acts to situate informants as key reference points in trans-local personal communities. In addition, it demonstrates an important means, through which certain relationships contribute to actively developing self-other relations after initial migration moments for reinforcing felt connections.