Where and When is Home? The Double Displacement of Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia

Studies on the displaced have begun to examine the critical role of place and home. We seek to illustrate how Georgian IDPs from Abkhazia conceptualize home. Georgian IDPs are experiencing what we term a ‘double displacement’, spatially and temporally. We identify ‘home as journey’ as the dominant way they imagine home, as they situate home in the past and the future. However, IDPs construct and reproduce the past and future senses of home through various home-making practices that occur within the context of the current places where they reside. By drawing from 118 in-depth interviews with IDPs, conducted in 2007, we are able to provide insight into how home is imagined and re-imagined under conditions of displacement.