Publication details
I am from Vietnam... I was born in Czech Republic
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2011 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
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| Description | The paper is based on the data from the research on Vietnamese families and their Czech nannies in the Czech Republic and it shows how we think about the idea of cosmopolitanism. We will focus on the images of homeland as the part of the life stories in which the national, ethnic or state belonging as well as belonging to the family history and imaginary homeland play the crucial role. According to the oi cial statistics, there are around 61 thousand Vietnamese immigrants in the Czech Republic with the high average of children in the population. Some Vietnamese families hire Czech women for caring of their kids. We use the ideas of Diogenes, Hannah Arendt and Salman Rushdie as the interpretative tool for preliminary understanding of the situation in these families. We will demonstrate how the concept of cosmopolitanism may help us to understand the situation of people with in-between identity whose biographies cross the boundaries of one state/nationality. By focusing on the process of “wanting the citizenship” and renegotiation of the homeland as the part of post-migratory experience, we will point out the totalizing and ideological aspects of both citizenship and homeland. |