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Visit, Separation, and Deconstructing Nostalgia

Russian Students Travel to Their Old Home

Hebrew University

TAMAR RAPOPORT

Hebrew University

The article theorizes the disruptive nature of immigrants' visit to the native home in terms of temporality and space. Such a disruption demands that immigrants reevaluate their relationships to the old home. Probing visiting tales elicited from immigration stories, the authors discuss how separation from the old home is effectuated during visits to the native home through the simultaneous and contrary processes of (1) linking up with the familiar, (2) distancing from the old home, and (3) appraising personal change in the new home. The authors conclude that these processes deconstruct the personal and cultural sources that cultivate a sense of nostalgia. This article argues that such diffusion or conversely the nurturing of nostalgia is context bound. The immigration stories were gathered by in-depth interviews conducted with forty-three university students who immigrated to Israel from the former USSR in the "big wave" in the 1990s.

Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, Vol. 29, No. 1, 32-57 (2000)
DOI: 10.1177/089124100129023819


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