Hard Landings: Memory, Place and Migration

Abstract

How do migrants make themselves at home—or not—in new worlds and what sorts of work are involved in this process? This chapter’s opening premise is that of an inextricable connection between the material, physical worlds of place and location and the psychical and experiential worlds of memory and the unconscious. Using as a case study my own experience of migrating from London to Melbourne, this chapter draws on Laplanchian psychoanalytic theory to explore the role of memory in the process of making a home in a new place.