-Tactics and Concepts for Highly Mobile People

A summary of the characteristics of home that I build upon in this dissertation concerns
the experiences that define a sense of home: Home is from where we form our
experiences of other places and where we form our identity. It is often referred to with
nostalgia and dreams. The home is where we learn to dwell. We curl up. Home is
experienced as continuity, to where we can return. It is a private place where we control
the things that takes place. It is also a personalized place where we express ourselves
through possessions and creativity. It is an emotional environment with a welcoming
atmosphere, where we regenerate. Home is a physical place that is experienced with the
body through routines and repetitions of everyday life.
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2.1.2. When home is not a house
“Human beings, like other animals, feel at home on the earth.” –Yi-­‐Fu Tuan, (Tuan,
2007, P. 199)
Home, as we traditionally saw it, is being challenged by the rise of mobility and diverse
family structures. In this section I provide an overview of the state of the mobile world
and how it influences our everyday home life.
The globalized world has led to a basic change in our way of being in the world, as
mobility has become a condition for all of us (Urry, 2007). This raises a lot of questions in
relation to how this influences the way we make sense of the world. Globalization and
mobility has been closely investigated over the past couple of decades by a large number
of researchers (Burns & Novelli, 2008; Giddens & Pierson, 1998; A. D. King, 1991; Urry,
2007) as transportation has become faster and communication technologies have
developed in a similarly rising speed, at the same time as countries have become even
more interrelated and distances seem shorter and shorter.
The term mobility is widely used in many research fields as it covers a large range of
areas. John Urry (Urry, 2007) divides it into 4 categories:
1. Mobile as a property of things or people, where they are either moved or capable
of movement itself.
2. Mobile as a mob
3. Social mobility, from social science, which is the movement between social
classes.
4. Longer term mobility, being a geographical movement in a semi-­‐permanent state,
such as migration.