Paper short abstract:

Paper long abstract:

How do we understand the mobility of people, and the transformations brought by the mobility to the lives of migrants? Time and space determine the varied causes and types of migration, and thus the effects of migration. Most debates about the migration privilege the economic perspectives and the north-south transmigrants at the cost of social and ideological dimensions and the south-south migration, and hardly include temporary migrant workers in the discourses. Against this backdrop, this paper reflects, through methods of storytelling, the way that migration influences the sense of belonging. How do migrants renegotiate a feeling of belonging when they are back home? This article scrutinises the subjective experiences of individual migrants and how those experiences are constructed by and in turn construct migrants' sense and politics of belonging. Three Bangladeshi temporary migrant workers' stories are at the root of much of this paper. The article provides the dynamics of (re)construction processes and the role that trajectories play in altering the shape of belongings that portray experiences of individual migrants from Bangladesh to the Gulf. Of special interest in this context is the increased significance of religion as a resource of belonging. The stories of migrants presented in this paper open up new avenues for the readers to reflect on the volatility of belonging and the issues that constitute mobility exciting for migrants.

Key words: Migration, Belonging, Bangladeshi temporary migrant workers, Religious motives.