Session at the European Architectural History Network Sixth International Meeting

The theme of domesticity and displacement has become a central topic of architectural scholarship. This is manifest in EAHN’s 2019 themed conference on the subject as well as a growing number of publications that appear in academic and professional journals. Most of these studies address contemporary phenomena and events of recent history, with some scholars extending the discussion into the displacements of the twentieth century and the architectures that accompanied them. Earlier histories of domestic spaces in migration contexts are, however, still largely conspicuous by their absence.

The subject of home on the move, of home-making in the wake of displacement, of taking flight, coping and making do is without doubt sharply relevant in today’s world. Its actuality is precipitated partly by the discussions of the “refugee crisis” or “migration problem” – phenomena that, in the journalistic and political rhetoric, are often presented as novel challenges of the modern world. While this exposition is misleading (migration is as old as humankind), some aspects of population movement in its current form are clearly modern: the nation state with sharply imposed and policed boundaries, national belonging as a cornerstone of individual identity, and the idea of domesticity in the sense of inalienable rootedness. These notions, which now frame our understanding of “home” and “foreign,” were moulded to a great extent during the long nineteenth century.

This panel invites contributions on the subject of domestic space within nineteenth-century migration contexts broadly conceived. Possible subjects might include home-making in the context of forced and voluntary relocation of Europeans to the colonies, domestic spaces of displaced colonial populations, re-settlement of refugees from European wars, and co-opting of domestic space into national projects. We will be looking to examine the ways in which ideas of home and belonging were shaped in the context of the increasingly global world of the nineteenth century with a view to expose some of the assumptions that began to be made about the notion of home and the idea of migration during this period. With hope, historicising the origins of these assumptions might help us begin to investigate how the age-old phenomenon of migration became a problem in our times.

Elena Chestnova, Mendrisio Academy of Architecture, Università della Svizzera italiana

Contact : Elena Chestnova, Email : [email protected]