One of the images from #lockdowndiary series by Ken Kajoranta https://www.kenkajorantaphotography.com
In March 2020, just at the beginning of the first lockdown in the UK, I read Paolo Boccagni’s very interesting analysis of how the COVID-19 pandemic, #stayhome and forced domesticity affected practices and experiences of home. The pandemic has certainly highlighted the significance of home as well as the need to rethink more deeply what home means and how it is experienced/lived by different groups of people.
A few months later, in Summer 2020, as I was packing my bags (or rather identical in size and look removal boxes) to move from the UK to Sweden I was struck by the ambiguity of the situation - we were moving home while being expected to #stayhome.
As people continue to move and migrate for various reasons and as a result of different circumstances, in times of lockdowns, changing border regimes and quarantine regulations - there may be new implications for research of homes in movement. Below are some quick thoughts and reflections about potential topics for future work - including more general ones and some more specifically linked to my own interests.
Materiality of home and removal boxes. The process of sorting out possessions and packing things is an important part of migration and it is interesting to see how the pandemic may contextualise it in a new light. Objects get invested with symbolic meaning over time and recent changes and reorganisation of life and work at home may show that some objects can take on new meanings and significance which is more closely linked to the pandemic. In a situation when domesticity is forced and prolonged the ambivalent meanings of home become more pronounced. Thus, home may not always mean a welcoming place and the role of domestic objects can reflect this - while some offer comfort, others may enforce a sense of non-home, or of a place where one would rather not be. And if one moves home during this time, what objects would be taken and how they would mark those moments and experiences? What will get packed in the boxes?
One of the important points that did come up in my previous research, but which perhaps I didn’t highlight sufficiently, is that the current point of residence is not necessarily a final one and it’s not the only one. Materiality of homes represents layers of experiences which can be linked to different countries of residence and origin. People’s backgrounds are complex and rich and the way the context of the pandemic may intertwine with other experiences and memories would certainly be a point to explore more.
Moving day after several months of packing and waiting
Home, non-home and time. Another thought brought by the experience of the move is about its relation to time and waiting. Preparation, packing and waiting for the moving date may take time and be characterised by uncertainty, for instance when the journey is dependent on whether flights will be operating, or certain documents processed in time. So, over this period the practices of homemaking gradually change, while boxes get packed, furniture dismantled, pictures are taken from the walls and home is changing into a non-home. And while the actual journey hasn’t been taken yet there are definitely changes that indicate the beginning of the departure. The situation of transient and precarious homemaking has been documented by research into vulnerable groups and perhaps this is where I’ll be turning more to think about the time of home-in-between, when the distinction between home and non-home gets somewhat blurred, or at least when non-home has a growing presence in one’s everyday life.
“New Life” (c) Ken Kajoranta
Finally, while there seems to be a lot of focus on things that one takes or accumulates as a result of migration the aspect of unpacking and allocating things at a new place does not seem to be that prominent. In fact, unpacking boxes is equally, if not more, laborious, time-consuming, challenging and emotional as packing. Once again I am thinking here of the time taken to develop that home-to-be, what one does to make it work, to feel at home in this place, room, street, building - with the added elements of working from home, social distancing, isolation and immobility. In terms of actual unpacking, one of the metaphors of this process that I used in my previous work was to compare it with trying to attach the flowers on the walls, or literally stick them up with black tape, which would represent the idea of reconstructing domesticity and sense of home in a new place (see photo). Ironically, our new flat in Sweden was absolutely empty, and there were the empty white walls again. Interestingly, as the boxes got gradually unpacked and the house started to “come together” the walls remained empty for a while - as if there was some kind of expectation for the right moment to add that final touch, or maybe as if there was a need to live in this not-a home-yet a bit longer, to keep it unfinished, open, not quite there. In any case, there is certainly a lot to think about how we unpack and why, and is it really possible to ever get it right? There is resourcefulness of this “nothing on the walls” (and here I think about Susie Scott’s brilliant work on a Sociology of Nothing); with a promise of the blank page, which is equally inviting and slightly terrifying.