Refugees and the Meaning of Home

Helen Taylor is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Research on Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London, UK. She has published in the fields of refugee studies, migration and narrative.

"Helen Taylor has written a thoughtful analysis of stories of home, narrated by Turkish and Greek Cypriot refugees living in London with little or no hope of returning to their pre-partition villages. Rich with insights into the individual and communal struggles of Cypriot refugees to make sense of their circumstances, Refugees and the Meaning of Home proposes new ways of thinking about place, nostalgia, and home culture. While the topic of 'home' is central to the field of forced migration and refugee studies, Taylor's book addressing spatial, temporal, material and relational aspects of 'home' provides a comprehensive and thorough treatment of the theoretical underpinnings and the debates in the field." - Anita Fabos, Clark University, USA "Transcending the immediate setting of the Cypriot refugees from 1974, but drawing on their narratives after four decades of exile, Helen Taylor's book is a nuanced, compassionate and rich ethnography of the universal preoccupation with the meaning of home and, especially, the loss of home for forcibly displaced people. Recognising the multiple, complex, and often contradictory spatial, temporal, material and relational meanings which refugees ascribe to home, Refugees and the Meaning of Home. Cypriot Narratives of Loss, Longing and Daily Life in London is an innovative and subtle exploration of the way forced displacement impacts upon the making, unmaking and remaking of home for protracted refugees." - Roger Zetter, University of Oxford, UK

• 1. Contexts and Catalysts 2. There's No Place Like Home - The Spatial Home 3. Rhythms of Life - The Temporal Home 4. Senses of Belonging - The Material Home 5. Home Is Other People - The Relational Home 6. The Constructed Cypriot Home - Concluding Remarks Appendix: Research Participants