Paper short abstract:

This paper explores caravans as expressions of alternative visions of home. With an ethnographic focus on British caravanners that have chosen to leave behind houses in change for a home on wheels, the paper places caravan-life within a context of turbulent working-class economy in times of crisis.

Paper long abstract:

Leading life in a caravan has historically been connected to cultural images of the poor loner, the "trailer trash" or the mobile gypsy. And indeed, for many working class Europeans, caravans and motorhomes have become means in a quest for the good life elsewhere. Ethnographically focusing on British caravanners on the Spanish Costa Blanca, this paper deals with the conflicts and ambivalence embedded in the process of creating a home on wheels. By examining individual itineraries that carry stories of moving and house sales, caravan life is discussed within a context of the European economic recession. Among the British caravanners introduced in this paper, the expressed motives for choosing a caravan as a primary home are however not exclusively economical, but rather intertwined with complex aspects of family, age and class. Placed on a continuum between leisure and everyday working life, blurring static dichotomies, the practice of caravanning become part of an ongoing construction of alternative meanings of home. Through such (re)constructions, I argue, the caravanners challenge traditional middle-class imageries of home and dwelling based on safety and stability. Caravans and motorhomes are regarded as emancipation from the stabile routines and material order of daily life carried out in apartments and houses, but also from the insecurities and unstableness that mortgages and loans carry with them. I argue that such tensions between stability on the one hand, and insecurity and uncertainty on the other, nevertheless form an essential part of how also caravans appear as ambiguous domestic spaces.