Paper short abstract:

Unfamiliarity with the novel physical environment compounds everyday challenges of forced migration. This paper examines the difficulties refugees encounter when transitioning to new spaces, as well as the strategies they employ to foster a sense of home and belonging.

Paper long abstract:

In the liminal space between dreams and reality, migrants are forced to explore, rebuild, and confront the materiality of their newly discovered surroundings. Refugees arrive in Switzerland with high expectations of legal protection, safe accommodation, financial stability, free education, and state-sponsored health care. The material realities of migrant housing belie their idealised representations of Switzerland: in migrant homes, notions of Swiss beauty, cleanliness and protection contrast with the actual experiences of small, outlying uncertain spaces with an average standard of living.

Between August 2021 and October 2022, we conducted participant observation in several refugee residences that provide services for refugees and asylum-seekers in the Canton of Geneva; focus groups (2); and in-depth interviews (35) with refugees and asylum-seekers of various origins, mainly Syria, Afghanistan, and Iran.

Drawing on this research, this paper explores how migrants navigate the foreign material surroundings that structure their everyday life in Geneva. Physical buildings provide a sense of stability for migrants who have been uprooted from their homes, and provide a tangible reminder of the past. However, migrant housing is often located on the urban periphery, where migrants are confronted with a process of marginalisation; and must work to find reliable information and resources, or even support from the local community. We observe migrants as they traverse different transitional spaces seeking access to resources and a sense of belonging to their new homes while they are constantly in a state of material transition, uncertain of what the future holds.