Homemaking in the public. On the scales and stakes of framing, feeling, and claiming extra‐domestic space as “home”

Abstract

This article reviews the emerging literature on the negotiation of home‐related feelings, claims, and practices in the public urban sphere, under the rubric of homemaking in the public. This contributes to a better sociological understanding of home and illuminates long‐debated societal questions such as the interaction between majority and minority groups and the shifting boundaries between what is (regarded as) public or private. While home has traditionally been understood as a private and domestic matter, it also has a major public significance. As a category of analysis, it reveals how supposedly domestic attitudes, routines, and practices are scaled up into the public domain. As a category of practice, it is a powerful discursive resource for contentious politics in the extra‐domestic domain. Who is entitled and legitimated to claim a public space as “home”, and what this implies for inter‐group categorizations and relations, are questions that deserve original and comparative analysis in sociology. Processes of domestication of the public sphere, of mutual interaction between public and private life realms, and of claims‐making on various scales can be fruitfully revisited along these lines, by advancing an original research agenda on the ways of framing, feeling and claiming public space as home.

Entre contrôle de l’image de soi et fermeture. Retour sur la grammaire des attitudes adoptées par des personnes réfugiées dans le cadre d’entretiens biographiques

“…En outre, quand il a pu avoir lieu, le second temps d’échange a mis en évidence le caractère non figé des arbitrages : ces derniers évoluent en effet en fonction des transformations des contextes dans lesquels les habitants résident, de leurs évolutions biographiques, des rapports que les individus entretiennent avec le lieu (Authier et Lévy, 2021 : 136). Et plus la durée de séjour s’allonge, plus un sentiment de familiarité peut émerger, avec une meilleure connaissance voire une maîtrise de l’environnement, et des liens sociaux qui se tissent (Boccagni et Duyvendak, 2021 ; Lynnebakke, 2021).…”

International Students and Homemaking in Transition: Locating Home on the Threshold between Ascription and Achievement

“…The dorm itself affords them to advance in their own definition of the places and conditions to call home. Their situated sense of home may well exceed the dormitory as such, involving also the city or the receiving country (Boccagni & Duyvendak 2021). What matters is the possibility to enjoy greater freedom and independence in a particular place, regardless of its characteristics.…”

Exposing the private, engaging in the public. Asylum seekers, intimate publics and normative performances of public participation

“…Asylum seekers' integration projects have much to say about the differential access to "the public" of marginalised subjects, as well as about broader ideals of public engagement and desirable (non)citizenship. Interestingly, within these contexts the boundaries between "public" and "private" seem to undergo fundamental negotiations and re-adjustments (Boccagni and Duyvendak, 2021). Asylum seekers are then confronted with changing patterns of obligations and dependency in both their public and private lives.…”