Former ‘hominger’ Alejandro Miranda-Nieto, now at Oslo Metropolitan University, will give an online presentation based on his past HOMInG fieldwork at University College Dublin, next February 17. The title of his presentation is Shared flats in Madrid: Social anchoring and the development of migrants’ sense of home. 

17th February 2022 13:00-14:00 | Zoom event (register here)

See the abstract of Alejandro’s presentation below.

Alejandro Miranda-Nieto, Oslo Metropolitan University, Norway

Shared flats in Madrid: Social anchoring and the development of migrants’ sense of home

Abstract: Many migrants opt for shared accommodation as a way of coping with the shortage of affordable housing in large cities. As a distinct type of co-housing, flat sharing has been described as one of the many forms of housing precariousness, and even as a type of homelessness. This seminar presents a series of issues arising from an ethnographic study conducted with Peruvian migrants in Madrid. It examines how people anchor a sense of home in the context of transnational migration, and how this process takes place in the context of dwelling in a shared flat. It argues that, while dwelling in a given place and anchoring a sense of home are closely related, they do not always go hand in hand. The (in)congruence between living in a given place and evoking feelings of home partly depends on the role that dwellers play within the shared household and the degrees of control that they have over different settings within the flat. The usage of the domestic space and the ways in which its settings become compartmentalised constitute entry points to the conceptual elaboration of social anchoring and its purchase to understand migrants’ sense of home.