Searching for Home and Belonging: A Grounded Theory Study to Understand the “Emotional Citizenship" of Diaspora Returning to Bosnia and Herzegovina

George Marcus, inspired by David Hume, presents a treatise of the connection between citizenship and emotions, radically asserting that, contrary to the conventional view in political theory, emotions enable rationality and good citizenship, mainly because they foster democratic action. The emotional dimension of citizenship has been further theorized by geography scholars, such as Elaine Lynn-Ee Ho and Lucy Jackson, both of whom employ the concepts of home and belonging as instrumental to our understanding of citizenship. Although these concepts have been developed with contributions from feminist scholars, geographers, social psychologists and anthropologists, a thorough analysis of the theoretical connections between citizenship and emotions is still in its initial stages. Also, an analysis of the actual, specific and distinct emotions comprising home, belonging and, thus, the emotional dimension of citizenship, is gravely missing. My paper aims to fill this gap in the literature by creating a robust theoretical nexus between citizenship, home, belonging and a set of context-specific, ‘political’ emotions. My argument is based on a grounded theory method of analysis of 35 in-depth interviews conducted with members of the Bosnia and Herzegovinian diaspora/transmigrants, who have voluntarily decided to return and settle in BiH.