Paper long abstract:

Though contemporary material culture and migration studies constitute two of the most dynamic fields of study in present-day social sciences, its intersections need to be further explored. Resulting from an ethnography conducted in Lisbon with two groups of adolescents with a migrant background and a framework that elects everyday material culture and consumption practices as a significant field to the study of contemporary migration processes and experiences, this paper aims to contribute to the discussion of its analytical potentials. It will be argued that everyday consumption practices of food, music, or media and ordinary objects such as clothes, shoes, mobile phones or books play central parts in the processes of home making, evaluation, and reconfiguration that necessarily take part in all migrations and therefore should be addressed not only as an expression of those processes but also as a constitutive activity, i.e., the (re)production of identity and belonging.