Experiencing ‘Moments of Home’ Through Travel: Iranian Diaspora Living in New Zealand

Abstract

Over the history of migration diasporic lifestyles have been regarded as stressful and challenging ways of life. Moving to a new culture and living in locations other than their country of origin causes many Diasporas to encounter significant difficulties including the feeling of being alien and changes in sense of belonging. Travelling back to the home countries of Diasporas has been regarded as one of the main strategies Diasporas utilize to maintain their cultural ties with home and to cope with homesickness and nostalgia. However, so far, scholars have ignored the proportion of Diaspora populations who are not able to travel back to their home countries, although their cultural and emotional needs do exist and need to be fulfilled in Diaspora. There has been a dearth of research on the understanding of the spatial relationships between transnational movements, travel and tourism. This thesis begins to address this gap by looking at the Iranian Diaspora in New Zealand. The main objective of the research encompasses the critical gap in the literature on understandings of Diaspora, travel and ideas of home and so explores how the Iranian Diaspora (re)produces home through travel. This thesis uses ethnographic methods to study the Iranian diasporic community in New Zealand. The fieldwork includes myself, as a participant/researcher and incorporates auto-ethnography, participant observation and in-depth interviews. The material collected has been organized into two main themes: First, how the Iranian Diasporas (re)produce home through taking different forms of trips and, second, how these Diaspora (re)produce home through hosting friends and relatives (HFR) in New Zealand as their country of settlement. The concept, ‘moments of home’, which is developed in the thesis extends how the existing literature looks at ‘home’ through a consideration of its sporadic and temporal nature. Using the notion of ‘moments of home’, this thesis also challenges current understandings of ‘Diaspora Tourism’. The argument is that the concept of ‘Diaspora Tourism’ often is understood too simplistically and follows on from earlier conceptions of home rather than looking at home through the eyes of many of the world’s current diasporic communities. The thesis concludes by arguing for a re-conceptualisation of ‘home’, and hence ‘Diaspora Tourism’, through the concept of ‘moments of home’.