What makes you feel at home? Constructing senses of home in two border cities

Abstract

In times of global mobility, home must be understood as a multiscalar and context-dependent concept, which is socially constructed through experiences and imagination. While most research on home is based on qualitative case studies in the context of international migration, there is a lack of systematic analyses based on larger samples of how people draw on different resources in developing a sense of home and how this differs in different places. This paper studies crossborder mobile people in Hong Kong and Shenzhen to empirically compare the strength of their sense of home in both places and to analyse the factors contributing to this sense of home at the city-scale. It is found that social contacts are most influential, followed by functional aspects such as home ownership and (to a lesser degree) nostalgic factors. While the strong impact of social contacts confirms previous research, the other aspects highlight the need to consider the local context. Our data discloses city-specific patterns of home construction, differing between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, and impacts of the border and border-crossing on senses of home.A transborder sense of home is emerging, but mainly in those residents who cross the border frequently, and based more on functional than on emotional properties. The study contributes to the literature on home by focussing on the city scale rather than the residence or the nation, by proposing a quantitative and analytical methodology, and by applying this methodology in a border setting.

Spatial patterns of the variability of native residentsin a transitional society: The case of the Czech Republic

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The Happy Home: Ageing, Migration, and Housing in Relation to Older Migrants’ Subjective Wellbeing

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