Imperial geographies of home: Memsahibs and Miss-Sahibs in India and Britain, 1915-1947.

Recent debates concerning both transnational and diasporic populations have pointed to the complex and fluid senses of belonging experienced by many of those moving - or being moved - across borders and away from homelands. In particular it has been emphasized that as well as promoting a sense of plurilocality, such movements frequently evoke intense and privileged understandings of the homeland. In this paper, I highlight the multi-directionality that is often demonstrated by such populations, and reflect on the implications that physical (rather than just conceptual) movement between imagined and material geographies of home might have for senses of belonging. In order to do this I explore the experiences of middle-class British women and children who travelled repeatedly between India and Britain in the first half of the twentieth century. I discuss their senses of belonging, self and home as they moved between the two countries, and begin to examine not only the implications for maintaining notions of Britain as home but also the ways in which this operates at a number of scales, including the domestic, national and imperial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]