Bodily attachment to place: The case of elderly migrants in Norway

Abstract

Abstract Scholarship on transnational migration illuminates social relations and movement across two or more nation-state borders. However, recent scholarship has criticized this earlier work for neglecting barriers to these cross-border movements and ties. Calls have been made to include the physical body and its impacts on migrants’ ability to lead transnational lives. Based on biographical interviews with elderly migrants from Poland and Pakistan living in Norway, this article argues that the physical aging process may constrain older migrants’ mobility and deepen their attachment to their place of residence. The concept of bodily place attachment has been coined to highlight this increased sedentariness. In the article, bodily place attachment occurs in three forms: first, through the increased bodily vulnerability that aging brings; second, through familiarity with the physical make-up of their environment, which is important in situations of sensory decline; and third, through dependence on personal care by the welfare state. By adding the concept of bodily place attachment, the article provides nuance to former theories on transnationalism by identifying the physical body as a potential barrier to transnational practices and by describing how certain bodily practices arise that tie people to their place of residence.