Author Archives: mairose

Rethinking & Recreating “Home” Across Space

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Collaborative art hanging on wall inside GNH lobby

Taking a course at UBC on the topic of immigration has made me reflect a lot on my own personal story of movement through place. I was born on Vancouver Island. While I have travelled plenty, I now call the city of Vancouver my home. Because the only two places I have ever called home are relatively close together, I had never been able to imagine myself in the shoes of an immigrant. I had only ever conceived of migration as permanent movements across vast distances and international borders. As I spend time in the classroom and at my fieldsite at the West End’s Gordon Neighbourhood House (GNH), conversations and observations have brought my attention away from statistics and maps, and into the human experience of migration. As people leave behind the places that they once called home, they must find new ways to belong in a foreign environment.

I arrived in Vancouver in 2009, knowing close to no one in the city. It was exciting, but it was not immediately “home”. Three years later, Vancouver is now more home to me than Vancouver Island, where I spent the first 18 years of my life. In fact, more so than ever before, I feel as though I comfortably belong to a particular community of people: UBC. Although I have never spoken a word to the vast majority of the tens of thousands of its students and staff, UBC feels like my home. When I arrived at my fieldsite at GNH, I saw a newspaper clipping in which one of the mothers who participates at the Weekend Family Place program described the warm community amongst the members who bring their children there every Saturday evening. Alongside my own experience of community at UBC, this made me ask: What makes a community, and how can that community in turn create home? In thinking about this question, an idea by Arjun Appadurai came to mind.

Appadurai identifies “the work of the imagination as a constitutive feature of modern subjectivity” (3). While Appadurai focuses his analysis on the role of electronic mass media in facilitating shared imagination, I began to see his idea of community formation through collective imagination at work in both my fieldsite and in my personal life. Communities are formed when “a group…begins to imagine and feel things together” (8). As I observed the families and their children at GNH eating dinner, playing with toys, and sharing tips on raising young kids, the sense of community grew increasingly apparent. When I asked one of the mothers what it is that makes the group so close, she explains, “I’ve been coming here for years. We eat dinner together and chat every week”. Nowadays, she says she cannot walk through the West End with her two sons without getting waves and greetings from other kids. She does not know who they are, but her children do. “It’s great!” she laughs. Another mother explains to me, “I cannot imagine this program ending. It has become such a big part of our lives!”

Community is fostered in part through shared experiences. It is not restricted to any particular setting, nor is it dependent upon a certain type of relationship. Through imagination and shared feelings, individuals are brought together. As one of my informants from GNH told me, “Home is a place that you feel loved…[and] where you are safe and secure.” As people move from their birthplaces, home takes on a multitude of meanings for different people, and it is fostered through the connections felt at communities like GNH and UBC.

"Weekend Family Place" set-up at GNH

Works Cited:

Appadurai, Arjun

1996            Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization, pp.1-22.

Malkki, Liisa

1992            National Geographic: The Rooting of Peoples and the Territorialization of National Identity among Scholars and Refugees. Cultural Anthropology pp.24-44.

“One must be continually prepared for anything, everything – and perhaps most devastating – nothing”

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When I began my first day of work at Gordon Neighbourhood House (GNH), I felt unsure about a number of things. I had only a vague idea of what sort of work I might be doing as a volunteer in two different programs, I had no good ideas about what my final project might look like, and I did not have a clue where my inspiration was going to come from. There were only two things that I felt confident knowing: I am a volunteer and I am a student researcher. As for the rest of my doubts and confusion, I thought to myself, “Let the pieces fall where they may”. Surely my research would work itself out.

When I introduced myself to my program supervisor on the morning of my first shift, I explained my dual role with ease. Yet, after 11 hours of meeting GNH members, chopping vegetables and blending hummus for a communal meal, and doing my best to ensure the two-year-olds at “Weekend Family Place” stayed away from the street, things became even less clear. I was so concerned with plunging into my work as a volunteer, I was not sure whether I had fulfilled my duty as an ethnographer. My struggle in establishing an even balance between two roles had shaken my confidence about my position at GNH.

Communal meal at GNH's Food Skills For Families

When at GNH, I am first and foremost a volunteer. I am fortunate enough to have been welcomed into the organization, and am there to do whatever most benefits them. I wanted to ensure from the first day that everyone I interact with knows that I am also a student working on developing a final project. Because my role as student researcher shapes so much of my experience, I began with a naive assumption that others would show an active interest in my work. On the morning of my first shift, we introduced ourselves one-by-one, and I told everyone about my position. Everyone smiled at me, but no one asked further questions. I was then asked what my favourite food is. “My mom’s cheesecake,” I replied. That remark elicited much more of an excited response.

The most challenging component of my fieldwork thus far has been establishing a balance between participant and observer. In participating, however, I began to feel as though I was missing opportunities to do research. My own understanding of my role felt further confused when I approached a woman in one of my programs and asked her if she would be willing to do an interview with me one day, exploring conceptions of home and community. She nodded politely, and immediately proceeded to get up and leave the room. Panic set in. Will I be able to collect enough data if I spend my time busy making crafts with kids or cleaning dishes? In a chapter in FieldWorking by Chiseri-Strater and Sunstein, I found a quote by Margaret Mead that resonated with my own experiences:

 

“The fieldworker must choose, shape, prune, discard this and collect finer detail on that… But unlike the novelist…the fieldworker is wholly and helplessly dependent on what happens…One must be continually prepared for anything, everything – and perhaps most devastating – nothing.”

 

I was terrified of discovering nothing. It is not always possible, nor does it always offer the best insights, to be constantly asking questions or watching from the background with a pen and notepad. One personal learning curve in my work is to grow comfortable with the process of observing things as they happen. Simply being at the fieldsite allows for a deeper understanding of the place and the unspoken side of the culture that the place comprises. At my fieldsite, as at all places, sometimes this means that “nothing” happens at all.

The West End: Home to Gordon Neighbourhood House

 

Works Cited:

Bonnie Stone Sunstein & Elizabeth Chiseri-Strater 2007. Fieldworking: Reading and Writing Research. Bedford/St. Martins.