Moving Matters
Moving Matters is a richly nuanced portrait of the serial migrant: a person who has lived in several countries, calling each one at some point "home." The stories told here are both extraordinary and increasingly common. Serial migrants rarely travel freely—they must negotiate a world of territorial borders and legal restrictions—yet as they move from one country to another, they can use border-crossings as moments of self-clarification. They often become masters of settlement as they turn each country into a life chapter.
Susan Ossman follows this diverse and growing population not only to understand how paths of serial movement produce certain ways of life, but also to illuminate an ongoing tension between global fluidity and the power of nation-states. Ultimately, her lyrical reflection on migration and social diversity offers an illustration of how taking mobility as a starting point fundamentally alters our understanding of subjectivity, politics, and social life.
"[A]n extended essay that tries to weave together her own experiences moving among countries, her interviews with other serial migrants, and her engagement with a theoretical literature, mostly on migration and identity. . . . Recommended."—D. W. Haines, Choice
"This deeply personal and subtle work both critiques and transcends the key concepts of writing about identity in recent decades. It instead invests itself in the experience of serial migration as the focus for working through the unresolvable binds of existence that permanent resettlement in a foreign society engenders. The precision and originality of Ossman's exploration owe much to the richness of her fieldwork and research on individuals, including herself, who move from one, to another, and then another society in their lifetimes."—George Marcus, University of California, Irvine
