The Role of Nostalgia in (Re)creating Place Attachments for a Diasporic Community

The concept of nostalgia implies a level of romanticization of a place or time period, a selective “remembering” of a place held in the imagination of an individual or group of people. These imaginings produce a narrative that both extends place attachments to other community members, and potentially create shared myths of place. We use the Mongolian Kazakh population as a case study of how, over time, strong place attachments evolve into place-based narratives of home and identity for diasporic communities. We argue that strong place attachments are the foundation of place-based narratives, but these narratives are nostalgic as well, highlighting key ethnic and cultural practices that reinforce ethno-cultural unity and create idyllic images of place to help maintain a collective place valuing despite residence far away.