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Paper short abstract:

This paper presents an ethnographic account of how temporalities of management of housing for migrants, and in particular temporary solutions of housing, become entangled with migrants' homemaking practices, and how this relationship creates frictions, tensions and vulnerabilities.

Paper long abstract:

This paper examines the impact of temporary homes on migrants' lives. The research object is the temporary modular homes which are emerging adjacent to more permanent structures in suburban and urban environments in Stockholm. A more overarching aim of my doctoral research project is to examine how temporariness becomes an important temporal dimension in migrants lives and to study how politics using temporary solutions actually materialises. In the wake of the so-called "refugee crisis", housing for the asylum seekers who have been granted permanent or temporary permits of residency, has become an issue due to housing shortages. In March 2016, a coercive law entered into force with the objective of creating an effective and coherent integration system, dividing the dwelling responsibility to all Swedish municipalities. Temporary solutions as modular homes, have then, become a strategy to organise dwelling spaces, which also have come to affect migrants' experiences and practices of making themselves at home. A kind of logistical organisation of dwellings and management of human beings is taking shape, which on the one hand structures the built environment and creates a visible division between temporary and more permanent structures, and on the other and more importantly, creates precarious living conditions for migrants. In this paper, I will present an ethnographic account of how temporalities of management and in particular temporary solutions, become entangled with migrants' homemaking practices, and how this relationship creates frictions, tensions and vulnerabilities.