Are you a migrant or do you have a home?

[sweetheart]

Poll question: Are you a migrant or do you have a home?

Increasingly, america is a nation of rootless migrants who have no families and no roots. It is the symptom of being a "flexible workforce". I'm curious if democratic thinkers are institutionally more disenfranchised... hence the question. If you don't mind speaking up on something so personal, how do you think relocating for work has affected your politics?

[trotsky]

1. How long is "permanent"?

Just curious - your answer will greatly affect my count.

[sweetheart]

2. permanent means 3 months

i realize that's a tad arbitrary, but it seems a semester is an eternity for a student, a trimester is an eternity in pregnancy and season is forever in sport.

In all seriousness, when you fill out your application for a crypto-super secret security clearance and they ask you to list every address you have resided at for your entire life, how many extra pages of paper.... how many addresses do you end up putting?

[Skittles]

3. If I had to guess I'd say it's in the thirties

Thirteen before I graduated from (my third) high school (GI brat).

[DemBones DemBones]

4. Grew up in military family, had forty-three homes by time I finished

high school (seventeen schools in twelve years.) Home is a state of mind and a movable feast; I carry it with me like a turtle does.

Did moving so much influence my political views? Hell, yeah! When you're always the new kid, always the outsider, you notice society's unfairness in a way that the comfy-in-their-hometown kids can't.

[Piperay]

5. I'm still living

in the house I grew up in, left to be by my parents. As far as family all I have is a brother, the rest of my extended repug fundie family (an aunt and assorted cousins)moved away this past spring without leaving a forwarding address. :argh: Gee, I guess that means no more family reunions. :hurts:

[LWolf]

6. 27 that I remember.

I'm not sure how many before age 5.

I never relocated for work. My mom did, when I was growing up, but not just for work; she was just generally restless.

I relocated continuously during the 10 years of my first marriage; never my choice, always the spouse's issue.

Pretty much disenfranchised in many ways.

It's made me stubbornly independent. I'm not trusting. I don't always work well with others. I'm not a follower in any kind of way. Politically, it means that I'm so far out of the norm that my voice is rarely heard, and my votes rarely "win."

[knight_of_the_star]

7. Very permanent

I'm still living with my dad due to financial reasons and because I'm going to college right now.

[Terwilliger]

8. Home is where you are

Home isn't all that. We're all home.

[sweetheart]

9. wherever you go, there you are

indeed. Just it takes being a foreigner and an outsider to discover a certain political reality that some folks never discover... and i was wondering if DU's liberal voices carry the wisdom of that learning... and the results so far say... YES.

The median seems to be about 20 moves of home each. If we were to run that same poll europe, i am positive that 20 would seem ultra extremely high. Let someone else make the good/bad judgement, just it is interesting, as the more one moves, the less likely that family is about to do daycare and be a root in to longer-term sense of community... and all that stuff... compared to where i live in europe now... the local people live where their great grandparents lived... and great greats... much less mobility physically, but that does not mean less mobility socially... just i think the two are politically related, but i have not surmised how.

When your parents never move home and your room is there to move back into after your divorce at age 45, it is something different than being dumped out in to the streets of denver without a place to go... and this long term disenfranchisement creates a subculture (of which i am certainly part) of totally rootless people with no sense of family at all. On seeing a different model in action, i'm not so sure that rootless is such a great thing... and moving hundreds and thousands of miles for cheap labour is perhaps a chronic sickness that leads to broken disenfranchised people, or brave people who realize that they have nothing to lose. The entire issue of immigration/emigration is realistically (globally) one of disenfranchisement in one place that these families and individuals go elsewhere that their roots might find nutrient... and they are hated for doing what is wholly natural... looking for a sense of home on this earth... a gas station that will let you pump before paying... a bank teller who knows your name... sometimes in a world being anonymous is fun like here on DU, but despite the small numbers of survivors, it seems the vast majority of these people end up on the bottom of the ladder in the republican-created hell of never ever having a home or community.

[Yupster]

10. I screwed up the poll

I voted five, but then I remembered a sixth. Everyone subtract one here and add it over there.

At least I didn't vote for Pat Buchanon by mistake.