Next HOMInG seminar [56_21] will be held on June 3th, at 10am CEST, by Stefania Toma.

Abstract

What is Home for families living in poverty and at the margins of society? Can we understand their international (or rather liquid) migration as aspiration for creating a place where they can feel at home? What do Romanian Roma returnees want to say about their home? The presentation will explore these questions based on an exploratory combination of pre-pandemic and pandemic fieldwork in a Transylvanian village.

During the years I witnessed how the segregated Roma community has changed. More and more families started to participate in international migration, and periodically spread throughout Europe. This process had visible effects in the local physical and social space. These changes can be interpreted as the material imprint of family aspirations. While these aspirations might seem something that can be well bounded or grounded (as a house, for example), there is a contentual tension besides the well-known conceptual diversity of regarding what does Home mean. This contentual tension does influence the very everyday life of families. Thus Home is like a balloon that creates the feeling of intimacy, safety, and property because it has walls or boundaries; in the same time is mobile to a certain extent (it can grow or change), and last but not least it is fragile (because of the aforementioned contentual tensions). In conclusion, the elasticity of Home is granted by appreciation of its finiteness or incompleteness.

Following the presentation, the Zoom-floor will be open for comments, ideas, critics, discussions, and questions.

Anyone is welcome to the seminar, please register by writing an email to bernardo.armanni@unitn.it