This thesis explores issues of literacy and identity through a social constructionist perspective by discussing the concept of a linguistic and national home for an Armenian-Canadian. Through autoethnography, I connect my personal experiences to my culture, and construct a sense of 'home' by writing from both sides of a border: Armenian and Canadian. Autobiographical approaches make use of the self to construct meanings that illuminate larger themes and bear implications for wider audiences (Cole & Knowles, 2000; Kamanos-Gamelin, 2001; Mitchell & Weber, 1999; O'Reilly-Scanlon, 2000). Thus, as I describe the outcomes of my experiences of literacy and identity, I consider the need for critical pedagogy in order to create or 'write' home. / This self-study is based on my realities and the ways in which I understand those realities. Moreover, it follows a phenomenological aim to "uncover and describe the structures, the internal meaning structures, of lived experience" (van Manen, 1997, p. 10). However, the value of finding meanings in the past lies in the possibilities to construct the future. Shirinian (2000) points out that "in the diaspora, meaning has been displaced but not replaced, and one of the principal problems the very concept of Armenian diaspora culture seeks to understand is the relationship between the experience of cultural displacement and the construction of cultural identity" (p. 5). By writing about my home from both sides of a border, I hope to bridge this gap and offer new meanings and perceptions in understanding the Armenian-Canadian experience.

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This thesis examines the immigration to and long-term settlement in post-Soviet Armenia of Armenians from well-established diasporic communities - mostly from Iran, Syria, Lebanon, Iraq, Canada, and the United States. It argues that diverse levels and combinations of anchoring and floating co-exist in the diasporan returnees' return motivations, post-return integration experiences, and identity and belonging (re)conceptualization processes. They are manifested in the returnees' habitual dispositions, imaginative aspirations, and practical considerations, which develop within a particular sociohistorical environment. The study also considers the changes that occur over time in the structural context and in the ways returnees engage with it. It demonstrates that the inclination of returnees toward more rooted or more mobile directions depends, to a large extent, on their diasporic community background, the generation they belong to, and more immediate factors related to their life-cycle stages. Throughout the analysis, the important role of emotions in the return visions and experiences is highlighted. The thesis makes an empirical contribution by studying the largely uncharted case of Armenian diasporic return in the post-Soviet era. At a more theoretical level, it promotes a balanced approach that goes beyond the overemphasis on mobility and the relative neglect of sedentarism that have characterized many works in the fields of diaspora and migration studies over the past few decades. Underlying this balanced path is the goal of recognizing the equal importance of and complex inter-relationship between human agency and objective structures. To this end, the thesis relies on a theoretical framework based primarily on some of Pierre Bourdieu's key conceptual tools, with certain modifications. Thus, the study frames the topic of long-term diasporic return migration within broader social theory. This way, not only does it link diasporic return to paradigms in migration and diaspora studies, but it also views it from a wider angle of social action.