Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the dwelling and home-making problems faced by national, local and international aid workers along their work-life trajectories.

Paper long abstract:

On a worldwide scale, the aid workers are the operators of the aid machineries. They manage a complex industry that is operating globally by heterogeneous aid organizations fuelled by different donors and objectives. Their global practices have changed following breaking events, as some failure responses —Rwanda, Somalia, Balkans, etc.— or because of violent attacks on aid staff. It has driven the aid sector to more professionalization, securitization and bunkerization, increasing the distance to the people in need and pushing the industry to remote management practices. While the specific context and organization rules are shaping dwelling and home-making needs, practices and imaginaries, new technologies and innovative methods to mobilize information, people and things have been adopted rapidly by the aid sector. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Goma (RD Congo) and Gaziantep (Turkey), it analyses every day practices that are shaped, constrained and limited by aid work.