What’s in a (Migrant) House? Changing Domestic Spaces, the Negotiation of Belonging and Home-making in Ecuadorian Migration

Bibliographic Data

ID12633870
AuthorsP Boccagni (0000-0001-8379-8561, University of Trento, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume31
Issue3
Pages277-293
Publication date2013-12-16
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueHousing Theory and Society (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1403-6096 • E-ISSN: 1651-2278
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/14036096.2013.867280
OpenAlexW2025412399
LanguageEN
Citations received77
References cited32

Migrants’ constructions of their domestic spaces, and their struggle to feel at home in both receiving and sending societies, are an emerging focus of research in migration studies. Housing issues are also a privileged observatory on their transnational social engagement, as well as on the changing boundaries of their membership and belonging. This article addresses the everyday bases of their home-making and house-building practices, drawing on a multi-sited ethnography of Ecuadorian migration to Italy. What can be inferred from the ways in which migrants inhabit their houses “here”, while typically investing in better housing arrangements “there”, as to their alignment towards either society? What do their housing-related practises suggest about the potential to feel locally and transnationally at home, given the structural constraints they are subject to? By tracing the meanings, enactments and locations of migrants’ home, I aim to advance the debate on home and migration in two respects: the persistent materiality which underlies the home experience, and the significance of migrants’ houses, particularly in sending societies, as a window on the mixed social consequences of migration

Aesthetics · Business · Ethnography · Making-of · Materiality (auditing · Migration studies · Negotiation · Place making · Social science · Sociology · Subject (documents · Anthropology · Diaspora, migration, transnational identity · Gender Studies · Migration and Labor Dynamics · Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

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