“Adopting an ethnographic and heuristic approach, my study uncovers the everyday pleasures, frustrations and constraints young mobile professionals experience in moving to and making a new home in six global cities – London, New York, Paris, Dubai, Shanghai and Singapore; and how their sense of home and other associated invariables such as belonging, identity, community, place and people relationships have been impacted as a result. It demonstrates that for these persons, home is not a singular concept but a complex and multifarious phenomenon.

My presentation shall consider home a) as a gentrified but generic living space (Home is a Non-place); b) as the often insurmountable challenge of home-making or – configuring (Home is an In-between Place); c) as a loose collection of material possessions (Home is a Bricolage of Ordinary E/Affects); d) as the mechanical but not in the least mundane set of practices involved in securing and maintaining a base of operations (Home is a State of Emergency); e) as people and relationships (Home is a Strong Network of Weak Ties); and finally, f) as a new cutting-edge phenomenon in user-centric communications technology (Home is a Cloud).”

If you happen to be New York and attending the Conference / Meeting.  Come hear me speak at the “Migration of Professionals and the City – Mobility, Locality and Identities of Expatriates and the Global Elite” session on Tues, 28 Feb 2012, 8.00 – 9.40 am, in the Lincoln suite, 4th Floor, Hilton New York, 53rd St & 6th Ave.  I’m the 4th speaker and will probably go on at 9:15 am.

This presentation also marks the end of a journey that began April 2010.  From here on, it’s countdown to (going) home – however you interpret that.  =)