Romanians from Serbia in Denmark

Levitt and Glick Schiller, it isprecisely through such interlocking networks
of social relationships that ideas, practices and resources are unequally
exchanged, organised and transformed (2004: 1009). The content of such
‘dual lives’ is therefore neither static nor homogeneous. Transnational
practices may be performed differently between various groups and
generations, as is the case with the practices of sameness and difference put
forward at different stages in the immigration process. But, while I agree
with Levitt and Glick Schiller that transnational ties are not binary
opposites, but rather form part of a mutual transnational field (2004: 1003),
it is also important to recognise,with Escobar, that, for most people most of
the time, ‘culture still sits in places’, and that attachment to andin ‘place’
therefore continues to have both practical and emotional importance
(Escobar 2001 in Jackson etal. 2004: 6–7). I therefore use the notion of
dual lives to underscore the often contradictory ways in which migrants
engage with their surroundings and develop competencies in relation to
both their homeland and thesociety of settlement.
This dual orientation has received much attention in the recent literature
on diasporas. Werbner (2000: 5), forexample, stresses how immigrants tend
to fight for citizenship and equal rights in the place of settlement, often
alongside other ethnic groups, while at the same time continuing to foster
transnational relations and living with a sense of displacement and of
loyalties to other places and groups beyond that of settlement. I argue here
that this implies a divided or dual social life, not only between the ‘home at
home’ and the home in the countryof settlement, but just as much between
a public realm that is open and comprehensible to the Danes, and aprivate
realm that focuses on ‘Serbdom’ or ‘Vlachness’. This private realm is to a
large degree unobserved, ifnot concealed, in relation to the public gaze, but
it retains an important role in shaping the worldview, normsand values of
the ‘transnational citizen’. In the case of the Serbian Vlachs, invisibility
may well be a convenient strategy for blending in with the Danish majority
population. Nonetheless,such a practice appears to hinge on the existence
of a private realm in which norms and cultural practices thatare different
from those of the majority culture are prevalent.