ABSTRACT
This chapter takes a closer look at migration heritage sites in their transnational dimension. It begins with a consideration of the distributed personhood and distributed agency of migrants before moving to examine the material manifestation of those qualities. Particular attention is given to remittance houses which today, as in the past, populate the landscape of emigrant villages and towns in many migrant-sending regions of the world. The village of San Tin, in Hong Kong’s New Territories, is given as an example of the way that the presence of remittance houses of various ages constitutes a map of one village’s emigration history. Attention then turns to the affective capacity of remittance houses, citing Julie Chu’s study of such houses in a village in Fujian and the way that, as the houses decay or become outdated, their owners overseas are impelled to labour to provide money to renovate or replace them. Returning to Zhongshan County, an account is given of the circumstances in which, in the early 20th century, the neoclassical style of architecture was adopted for houses built there by migrants based in Australia.
