‘A Route to Home’ on feeling at home after refugee experience

Abstract

This gender studies master thesis studies answers the research question ‘How are home and belonging experienced and conceptualized by people in the Netherlands with a refugee background?’. Literature review of scholarly research, and in depth interviewing have been combined to conceptualise home. Four people aged between twenty and thirty, living in the Netherlands with a refugee background, have been interviewed. The theoretical framework of this study explores how home, identity and, belonging work together by analysing different writers in the academic field regarding migration. The used theory questions the existence of home as a concept. The interview analysis shows how for people with a refugee experience, home is conceptualised through the motivation of creating a home in a new context, as the home that they fled is not a place they can go back to. Four levels of home are conceptualised through the interview material: being at peace, othering and feeling Dutch, the journey between home and away, and becoming homely. This research and concludes that feeling people can feel at home and that home is depended on the steps that people make to be part of a society, the acceptance of the society around them, and on the social network that they create. Although all interviewees are prone to othering and loneliness, their stories gravitate towards the importance of creating a home and being displaced creates the need for feeling at home.