Legacies of displacement (:) the memories and meanings of home among an extended Greek Cypriot family

This study explores the memories and meanings of home in my extended family, who were internally displaced following the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. It is based on oral history interviews and field research in the houses of participants and of my own crossing to the family’s place of origin. The study identifies three ideas of home, analysed in four different chapters. The first idea concerns ‘being-at-home’ in the post-1974 Greek Cypriot society and examines accounts concerning the interaction between refugee and non-refugee populations in the immediate period following displacement. The second idea relates to a relational association of home to the extended family and examines how my relatives interpret the effects of displacement on family life. The last idea of home regards the relationship between the property left behind, identity and belonging. The two chapters resulting from this relationship focus on the house of residence as home and the family orchards as home. The thesis reveals how women were able to transcend the ‘pains of displacement’ through the housing arrangements they purposefully followed after 1974, recreating the setting and socialisation of the extended family that characterised their village in urban environments. Men on the contrary, while having secured employment in the service industry in cities, continued to practise their farming skills on land they bought or received in the south. They thus, established a ‘farmer identity’ representing the lost home that complemented their way of life in the urban and capitalist present.