A Material Culture Ethnography of Home-Making in Asylum Reception

Crafting Refuge
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-3-031-84970-1
Verlag: Springer Nature Switzerland

Buch, Englisch, 276 Seiten, Format (B × H): 153 mm x 216 mm, Gewicht: 496 g

Reihe: Global Diversities

This book explores what it takes to create a sense of home while in exile, drawing on ethnographic research conducted in German asylum reception facilities from 2016-2020. From a material culture perspective, it examines how asylum seekers and migrants with precarious legal status ‘translate’ aspects of home into challenging environments. Through these translations—processual shifts of objects, habits, and ideas across borders—migrants work to reassemble a sense of belonging. The book delves into the material, social, and individual efforts involved in this homing process, while highlighting the ongoing impact of dispossession and loss. By focusing on personal attachments to objects and the broader context of migration, this work offers a unique perspective on forced migration, home cultures, and the quest for ontological security. The book will be of interest to scholars, researchers, and students in disciplines such as anthropology, sociology, and human geography as well as other research interested in ethnographic perspectives on the respective topics.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Yi-Neumann, Friedemann

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Soziologie von Migranten und Minderheiten
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1 BEGINNING THE JOURNEY.- 2 MEETING OTHER TRAVELLERS.- 3 LOOSENING THE THREADS ALONG THE WAY 1.- 4 LOOSENING THE THREADS ALONG THE WAY 2.- 5 LOOSENING THE THREADS ALONG THE WAY 3.- 6 LOOSENING THE THREADS ALONG THE WAY 4.- 7 ARRIVING SOMEWHERE.
 

Über Autor(innen)

Friedemann Yi-Neumann is a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Helsinki, Finland, and a visiting researcher at UC Irvine, USA. His work explores social and environmental inequalities in the San Francisco Bay Area, focusing on the material and environmental legacies humans leave behind. Previously, he conducted ethnographic research on migration and materiality as a research fellow at the University of Göttingen, Germany and at Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. His research interests span material culture, migration, home, dispossession and social and environmental justice.