Former homingers Sara Bonfanti and Aurora Massa have just edited, together with S. Chen, a theme section of Focaal, a leading journal of “global and historical anthropology”. The section is OA, including the authors’ co-authored introduction, Vulnerable homes on the move. See the abstract of the Introduction below.
Abstract

In a world of rampant inequality, when millions seek out better futures elsewhere, this introduction situates critical experiences of dwelling within recent debates on home and migration. Seeing vulnerability as an active condition, this theme section records the attempts of individuals and groups on the move in fashioning a home despite adverse socio-cultural, economical, and political situations. Our argumentation considers: the imbrication of structural forces and existential power, the complexity of temporal registers across the life course, and the human capacity for home-making. As asylum-seekers, evicted refugees and deprived mi-grant families struggle to feel at home in precarious circumstances, our ethnographies reveal the violence inflicted by social systems but also the agency of subjects who strive to make the places they inhabit everyday worth living.

Keywords:  agency, (politics  of) care, deprivation, home, institutions, migration, subjectivities, vulnerability.