Undoing nothing, making relevance, and embracing ambivalence: home and place-making in migration contexts
Abstract
This paper is part of the review symposium of Paolo Boccagni’s Undoing Nothing: Waiting for Asylum, Struggling for Relevance (Oakland: University of California Press, 2025). I center my comment on the contribution of the three main concepts in the book: nothing, relevance and ambivalence, in relation to debates around integration, belonging, placemaking and temporality. I also consider how the focus on asylum seekers’ practices of placemaking in a context of racialization sheds light on the structural conditions of violence in host societies and how this book offers new perspectives to understand and respond to them.
Fields of Study & Subjects
Diaspora
migration
transnational identity
Migration
Aging
and Tourism Studies
Place Attachment and Urban Studies
Publication details
- Journal / source
- Ethnic and Racial Studies
- Publisher
- Informa UK Limited
- Volume
- 49
- Issue
- 13
- Pages
- 2795–2799
- Publication date
- 29 January 2026
- Language
- EN