A Fractured Mosaic: Encounters with the Everyday amongst Refugee and Asylum Seeker Women

In his critique of everyday life, Henri Lefebvre called for an understanding of the everyday as a complex, fragmentary and dynamic constellation. Apprehending everyday life in this way complements the calls - from scholars of migration geography in particular - to ground meta-narratives of globalisation and mobility within the physical locales, material objects and social and spatial practices where the daily lives of migrants actually unfold. This paper takes up these issues by drawing on qualitative interview research conducted over an 11-month period with asylum seeker and refugee women living in contemporary Irish society. Drawing on some of Lefebvre's ideas the paper examines how the presence and absence of material objects and textures of the everyday train and emplace participants in local contexts while simultaneously linking them in concrete and abstract ways to global transnationality. In this process, the 'fractured mosaic' that marks migrants' social, material and cultural everyday lives becomes crystal clear while illustrating the value of Lefebvre's perspectives for apprehending the intricate sociality and materiality of transnational migration. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.