The Tunisian Diaspora in Britain: The London Case

The rise of a transnational paradigm in migration studies reminds us that contemporary migrants construct homes and identities through complex networks that cut across their homelands and host countries. The intersection between home, identity and networks is at the centre of the multidisciplinary field of migration. Addressing this in the case of Tunisian Londoners is the focus of this pioneering doctoral thesis. Drawing on a holistic qualitative research method, combining ethnographic fieldwork with netnographic research on social media, this multi-sited study addresses narratives of migration and dislocation, cultural challenges and identity as well as home and belonging. Specifically, it looks into how different ‘ways of belonging’ and ‘ways of being’ are practiced by Tunisian Londoners; considers how they make sense of their spaces of belonging and articulate their identities; and whether they form a visible cultural entity in the super-diverse context of London. Multiple ways of belonging and ways of being stand meaningfully as cultural, economic and political arenas in Tunisian Londoners’ diasporic space, working to mark out a distinction in terms of ethnic belonging as well as class and gender configurations. While establishing ties in the place of residence are key to home-making, transnational dynamics and mobility are also part of the sense of home for Tunisians of London, whereby the ‘search for home’ is intimately tied to the search for a stable sense of identity and belonging. By overcoming the dichotomies between virtual and physical spheres, the study offers an understanding of Tunisian spaces of belonging as a dialogic, relational phenomenon, and of identities as an ongoing, evolutionary process of transformation within the rapidly changing communication technoscapes.