Paper short abstract:

The paper proposes 'affective integration' as a notion that captures migrants' material and corporeal experiences that tend to be overlooked in migration research although they underlie the often invoked but vaguely defined 'feeling at home'.

Paper long abstract:

My former research on migrants and objects (Povrzanovic Frykman 2019, 2018, 2016) suggests that an exploration of habitus, affect and materiality as closely connected can be productive in understanding some subjective aspects of processes of migrant integration. Building on insights gained in a recent project on museums as arenas of refugee integration in Sweden, I propose and discuss the notion of 'affective integration'.

While habitus refers to the capacity of the body of deploying itself in a particular environment (Hage 2013), habitual uses of places, material surroundings, objects, food - being in touch with people and things in a familiar context - are practices at the intersection of sociality and materiality that facilitate familiar senses. On the other hand, affects are a central factor in the process of subject formation; they increase or diminish people's agentive and existential capacities in relation to their surroundings, and establish and subsequently modulate individual capacities and dispositions (Slaby & Mühlhoff 2019). I therefore claim that the lens of affect can facilitate an understanding of the often invoked but vaguely defined 'feeling at home' and the related migrants' well-being, that is not linked to access to rights and formal inclusions, but rests on material and corporeal experiences that tend to be overlooked in migration research.