Paolo Boccagni will give an invited lecture at the University of Ghent, next 16 December, as a part of the Seminar “Meet the Phd Jury: Social work, Homelessness, Migration and the Borders of the Welfare State”. Paolo’s lecture will be on “From home to homing, and back to house: revisiting a decade of research into home and migration” (abstract below). The seminar is jointly organised with the following research consortia: TRAHOME, PANHOME, IDC Stadsacademie IDC CESSMIR, UNU-CRIS (migration and social policy cluster); supported by the Doctoral Schools of Ghent University. The seminar will take place the day before the public PhD defense of Sophie Samyn.

Paolo Boccagni | From home to homing, and back to house: revisiting a decade of research into home and migration

In this seminar, I revisit the interdisciplinary field of knowledge production about home and migration, with a view to foregrounding its prospects for conceptual innovation and societal/political relevance, starting from my own fieldwork stories. My core argument is that the transition from home to homing, analytical as much as experiential, is incomplete without finally returning to some form of house and housing. This is meant to encourage resonances in the research (and perhaps the biographical) trajectories of the participants, and ultimately to elucidate the critical and political side of home studies. On the one hand, this perspective allows researchers, policy and practice to nourish reflexivity on what having one’s place in the world means, and on what being denied this need and right entails, on the other hand.