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This article introduces the notion of ‘accumulated homelessness’ to account for the repeated loss and lack of home experienced by many migrants in Europe today. Through the lens of home and homelessness, we argue that the debate on protracted displacement—often applied only to developing countries—should be extended to Europe. Going beyond the idea of shelterlessness, we consider homelessness as a multidimensional and multiscalar condition which encompasses material and emotional aspects. By analysing two life histories of Eritrean men living in Italy and in the Netherlands, we examine the set of structural, social, and individual conditions leading them to lose home in different places and times as well as their attempts—such as finding accommodation, establishing a community organisation, or moving onwards—to reconstruct home.

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Home, as a special attachment to (and appropriation over) place, can also be cultivated in the public urban space, under certain conditions that we explore through a case study in Rinkeby, Stockholm. This article analyses various forms of homemaking in the public among the Somali-Swedes who live there. It shows how, in the case of vulnerable immigrants, a neighbourhood feels like home insofar as it facilitates a continuity with their past ways of living, sensuous connections with a shared ‘Somaliness’, reproduction of transnational ties, and protection from the sense of being ‘otherised’ that often creeps among them. However, homemaking in the public is ridden with contradictions and dilemmas, including those of self-segregation. The grassroots negotiation of a sense of home along these lines invites a novel approach into the everyday lived experience of diverse neighbourhoods in European majority-minority cities.