Practices of Place-making in Displacement: Memory and Livelihoods of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in Georgia

Joanna Regulska, Professor, Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies
Vice Provost and Associate Chancellor, Global Affairs

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Abstract

In this project, I argue that IDPs use memory, acts of ‘re-membering’, in order to attain and maintain a state of mobility. They use their memories to do two things: to re-create past ties to a place, and to create new ties to current places. Here displacement does not de-territorialize, but rather produces a process of re-territorialization. Hence, analyzing mobilities also requires an examination of moorings, the places that enable mobility. For the displaced, their places of displacement enable both symbolic mobility and place-making practices that serve to reproduce their identities as IDPs and their connections to 'home'. In this paper, I explore the relationship between memory and place-making (a practice of building ties with a place). I focus on the agency of displaced persons as they act to overcome the experience of dis-placement and retain or regain the symbolic ties to home and homeland through their memories.