Exploring the lifeworlds of Halima, Omar and Mohamed, three middle-aged Somalis living in Melbourne, Australia, the author discusses the interrelated meanings of emplacement and displacement as experienced in people's everyday lives. Through their experiences of displacement and placemaking, Being-Here examines the figure of the refugee as a metaphor for societal alienation and estrangement, and moves anthropological theory towards a new understanding of the crucial existential links between Sein (Being) and Da (Here).

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgements

Introduction: Greeting Xamar

PART I: THINKING WHAT WE ARE DOING

Chapter 1. Walkers of the Everyday

PART II: EMPLACEMENT

Chapter 2. Placing Somalia
Chapter 3. Living One-Eyed
Chapter 4. An Accidental Move
Chapter 5. Home-Building
Chapter 6. Homewards

PART III: DISPLACEMENT

Chapter 7. At Home in the Universe
Chapter 8. Gendered Dis/Emplacements
Chapter 9. Displaced Stories
Chapter 10. Placeless Dreams

Final Juncture: Concluding Words

Bibliography
Index

Annika Lems is a postdoctoral research fellow at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern, Switzerland. She completed her PhD at Swinburne University in Melbourne, Australia in 2013. Her work is influenced by existential and phenomenological approaches in anthropology and philosophy, and her research focuses on the themes of mobility and immobility, place and displacement, visual and narrative storytelling, and memory and temporality.