Seeking a place to Rest: Representation of rounded movement among Russian-Jewish homecomers

This study explores person-place relations in the context of the crisscross movement of Russian-Jewish immigrants (university students) who came to Israel in the early 1990s and who subsequently returned to their homeland on a visit. Readings of the immigrants' "visiting tales" uncovered a repertoire of five identity practices, each of which constitutes a different analytical type of person-place relation. Our analysis attests to the existence of a multiplicity of ways by which immigrants orient to the existence of place(s) and experience places while they re-constitute their relationship with both the old and the new country. Furthermore, it elucidates how they seek a place in which to rest rather than being constantly on the move. This article shows how national homecoming is a living metanarrative that regulates immigrants' relations to place even in the transnational era. It suggests that postmodern thought should be more attentive to the manner in which meta-narratives (national, ethnic, ecological) produce identity practices that orchestrate movement in space and endow meaning to person-place relations.