Homemaking in the Public. the Nexus between Home-Related Feelings and Majority-Minority Relations

Our paper makes a case for the study of homemaking and home-related feelings and claims in the public urban sphere, as they critically mirror and shape majority-minority relations. Who is entitled and legitimated to claim a public space as ‘home’, and what this implies for inter-group relations and categorizations, are questions that deserve original and comparative analysis, particularly in migration and ethnic studies. While the notion of home has traditionally been understood as a private and ‘domestic’ matter, it also has a major ‘public’ significance. In fact, it can be appreciated as a discursive and emotional resource for contentious politics, claims and counter-claims in the public realm. Processes of domestication of the public sphere, of mutual interaction between the public and private life realm, and of claims-making at neighbourhood level, can be fruitfully revisited along these lines. A research agenda is drawn out of these insights.