On 6 November, at 12pm local time, Paolo Boccagni will give a guest lecture at McGill University, in the ISID Series, convened by the McGill Refugee Research Group.

Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento) Undoing nothing: Waiting for asylum, struggling for relevance

This lecture unpacks the complex ways in which “home” matters for refugee studies, as well as for those who go through forced displacement. It draws on the recent book Undoing Nothing, in conversation with a burgeoning literature on refugee biographical and housing pathways, but also on the political, emotional and moral repertoires associated with home in representing them. Whether home is assumed as a concept, a place, or an object of memories, aspirations and struggles, it provides a powerful analytical prism into any form of dwelling, including those that fall below any standard of decent housing, or of mainstream domesticity. The asylum center in which fieldwork was undertaken for this project is a case in point – a non-home environment, in which the significance and ambivalence of home can be appreciated in descriptive, discursive, practical, reflexive and existential ways. This ultimately shows the promise of approaching home as a processual endeavour that conflates different agendas and interests, both as a category of analysis and of practice