ABSTRACT
An immigrant who leaves her home behind in order to settle in new lands witnesses profound transformations in her social network and notices changes in her geographical surroundings. The politics of (re)settlement and movement is an important avenue of scholarship that may provide much needed perspective on landscapes of mobility experienced by immigrants. Landscapes of mobility are not unmediated panoramas of free flows of people and moving objects. Rather they are tethered by instances of stability and stasis, borders and check-posts. State restrictions to travel regulate human movement across nations. Immigrant settlements are stable nodes within a network of effluence; these spaces anchor flows of people moving between them. Nostalgic memories and invented traditions help immigrants stabilize a changing social world in their diasporic settlements. Recreations and reconstructions of home and homeland in new settings bring permanence to an otherwise unstable world of migration. This chapter focuses on the constitution, politics and mappings of these complex landscapes of home and homeland.
