Contrasting parallels : reflexive sociology/ies from a migrating sociologist

Abstract

This paper grapples with the specific situation of a professional sociologist struggling to make sense and articulate the analysis of his transition to the status of a trans-migrant, after leaving Malta to take up employment in Prince Edward Island, Canada. This is done by focusing on the problematization of the process of ‘coming round’ to migrant status, particularly in how the understanding of ‘home’, and its ‘bridging’ across two geographical spaces, is seen and analyzed by the subject/object. The assessment presents both a positivist-rational and a self-reflexive exercise in accommodating to the decision to migrate. The rational component of the analysis is teased apart separately from the more intimate ethnographic one, offering a sense of the complex multi-layering of the ‘coming to terms’ with the migration experience. The overall parallel analysis presents insights into the distinct social, cultural and psychological ‘remote preparation’ to, and after, actual migration, and its effects on the changing meaning(s) of ‘home’.