At Home In A Changing City: Particular And Generic Places In Home Making-Strategies of Movers

• In Event: 435 - Section on Community and Urban Sociology Paper Session. Home and Belonging

Abstract

In the literature, it is often suggested that mobile people, like their non-mobile counterparts, look for particular places to connect with. It is assumed that nobody can feel at home in generic places, since belonging is about the deep connection between ‘habitus’ and a particular ‘habitat’. However, our extensive field-work amongst Mexican professionals in Madrid, such as students, IT professionals, journalists, and CEO´s point towards the opposite direction: for the very mobile and the recently arrived particular places matter little (Duyvendak, 2011; Ley-Cervantes, 2012). Instead they rely on generic places, such as airports, chain restaurants or hotels to feel at home. This result is important since it establishes a huge difference between the resource-rich and the resource-poor: while the rich can retreat in highly selective generic places, the poor are locked up in specific, particular places. This polarization has recently increased due to the economic and financial crisis. Madrid provides a window to see how particular and generic places play in the home-feelings of various groups, more or less affected by the crisis.

Authors

• Melissa Ley-Cervantes, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

• Jan Willem Duyvendak, Universiteit van Amsterdam