Based on long-term anthropological field research in various Hmong villages in Northern Thailand (2001-2002, 2003), the paper focuses on the Hmong, a diaspora people who migrated from Southern China (since the 17th century) to Southeast Asian countries as well as to numerous other countries (e.g. USA, Australia, France) around the world. Despite their statelessness and their long history of (forced) dispersal, the Hmong have always succeeded in adapting and maintaining their cultural identity. Religion plays a vital role for the preservation of Hmong transnational networks and the emplacement of Hmong culture. Spiritually, the Hmong are anchored in their residences, which are seen as representations of the cosmos. The residence is both a living quarter and a place of spirits, ancestors and worship that unites all members of the household and protects them from malevolent outside influences. Due to these spirits Hmong accommodations provide the stateless Hmong with a genuine “Hmong place” to which they are strongly attached, both ritually and socially, no matter where this place is geographically located.
During fieldwork, multisited research on settings, understood as places connected to sociocultural activity and meaning, enabled to grasp further various (partly imaginary and spiritual) Hmong sites of emplacement and belonging, which do not only exceed geographic boundaries but also - via shamanic practices - boundaries of this world. By means of religious belief and sociocultural practices the Hmong incorporate all spaces -unknown and known, real and imagined - into spheres where Hmong people, their “souls”, as well as their ancestors’ spirits reside and are interconnected.