Unfinished Mournings: Vamik Volkan on Migration

The psychoanalyst Vamik Volkan reminds us that migration is not merely a geographical journey but also a profound psychological passage. To leave one’s homeland is to part with more than soil and borders; it is to lose familiar people, landscapes, languages, and rituals that once anchored the self. These losses, Volkan suggests, often take the form of “unfinished mournings”—griefs that cannot be fully resolved because what has been lost continues to live within us.

In this context, Volkan introduces the notion of linking objects: the small, cherished items migrants carry with them—a photograph, a piece of fabric, a family recipe. These objects become symbolic bridges between worlds. They soothe and sustain, allowing fragments of the old life to accompany the new. Yet they also wound, for they remind the migrant of what can never be entirely retrieved. Comfort and pain intertwine within them, keeping the past alive while making the present bearable; Unfinished Mournings: Vamik Volkan on Migration.

Volkan also speaks of border identity—a psychological condition of living in-between, suspended between two cultural realities. The migrant inhabits this liminal zone, never fully belonging to either place. This in-betweenness can be deeply unsettling, marked by longing and dislocation. Yet, paradoxically, it can also be fertile ground for creativity and transformation. Out of fragmentation may emerge a more layered and resilient sense of self.

Ultimately, Volkan’s insights reveal that migration is not only about adaptation but about working through loss. When mourning is denied, the past becomes a haunting presence; when acknowledged, grief can deepen one’s capacity for renewal. In learning to live between worlds, the migrant may discover not only what has been left behind, but also what continues to grow within.

If you find yourself caught between past and present, holding onto memories that both comfort and ache, therapy can offer a space to honor these unfinished mournings.