Unimaginable returns: Young migrants’ home connections in the face of forced deportation

This paper comes from a wider project on the ways in which migratory status impacts the home connections made by young migrants. A great deal of work has been done to reimagine the concept of home, and in addition to a physical space the idea of home encompasses feelings, memory, and the imagination. Through participant observation and semi-structured interviews conducted over the last year, I have engaged with migrants’ nuanced relationships and desires connected with Belgium and the country of origin. During the course of this research I have engaged with the issues that face migrants who are undocumented and feel is unsafe to return to the country of origin, and migrants who have permission to stay in Belgium. The undocumented migrants and asylum seekers facing the possibility of deportation do not allow themselves to imagine the possibility to return to the country of origin. The connections they try to create in Belgium are sometimes tenuous, and while these migrants’ focus on remaining in Belgium, their connections still reflect the uncertainty of their situation. On the other hand, the young people who have permission to remain in Belgium allow their imaginations to roam in a wider field of possibilities, and they are less hindered by the uncertainties of their futures. In fact, for these migrants, uncertainty often resembles possibility, and this is the difference that I will attempt to unravel in this paper.