91ÉçÇø

Event

Undoing Nothing: Waiting for Asylum, Struggling for Relevance

Thursday, November 6, 2025 12:30to14:00
McCall MacBain Arts Building Room 160, 853 rue Sherbrooke Ouest, Montreal, QC, H3A 0G5, CA

A guest lecture by Professor Paolo Boccagni of Trento University.

Co-sponsored by the 91ÉçÇø Refugee Research Group.

´¡²ú²õ³Ù°ù²¹³¦³Ù:ÌýÌýThis lecture unpacks the complex ways in which "home" matters for refugee studies, as well as for those who go through forced displacement. It draws on the recent book , in conversation with a burgeoning literature on refugee biographical and housing pathways, but also on the political, emotional and moral repertoires associated with home in representing them. Whether home is assumed as a concept, a place, or an object of memories, aspirations and struggles, it provides a powerful analytical prism into any form of dwelling, including those that fall below any standard of decent housing, or of mainstream domesticity. The asylum center in which fieldwork was undertaken for this project is a case in point - a non-home environment, in which the significance and ambivalence of home can be appreciated in descriptive, discursive, practical, reflexive and existential ways. This ultimately shows the promise of approaching home as a processual endeavour that conflates different agendas and interests, both as a category of analysis and of practice.

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