Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on the changing manifestations of domestic spaces, from temporary roadside dwellings to permanent housing structures, in Ireland. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, it explores the intersections of folklore, memory and modernity in ways of dwelling and meanings of home

Paper long abstract:

Diverse ways of dwelling in the landscape, transient versus permanent structures, nomadism as opposed to settlement, and competing interpretations of 'home' have particular resonance in modern Ireland where issues surrounding homelessness are prominent in social and political discourses.

Based on ethnographic fieldwork and folklore studies, this paper explores the concept of home from a nomadic perspective. It details the design and building of such 'temporary' structures and the conceptual constructions of home, public space and landscape. This study also examines the transition from temporary to permanent dwellings and how issues of marginalisation and ideologies of progress impact on different communities' representations of home.

It will be argued that these temporary dwellings were not, in fact, temporary in the minds of those who inhabited them but resonated with history, familial and community relationships, cultural continuity and attachment to particular landscapes. The control and restriction of geographic living space, economic developments and the socio-political drive to modernity have impacted on both the physical dwellings themselves and the ideological representations of home. Yet, for some marginalised communities the ongoing construction of a narrative of home on the road provides a challenge to those dominant discourses which privilege permanence over transience and settlement over mobility.