Home as concept is profoundly symbolic and imbued with positive desires. Therefore, it needs to be discussed in relation to issues of power, hierarchies and control. In this presentation the migration-home nexus will be discussed, why also location/dislocation, home and away are important matters to grasp the relationship between humans, space, mobility, integration and feelings of home.

In migrating practices the processes of homing is accentuated, since migration entails leaving one(s) home behind, searching for a new place called home. The connection between identity and a specific geographical place can however be ambiguous, since we are becoming more and more mobile – physically and virtual. Connections and relations to other places and people ranging over geographical borders can be as important for sense of belonging and togetherness, as connections to places and people in the neighborhood. Home-making processes and feelings of home, in relation to the use of different media for these purposes, are therefore important perspectives to bring into studies of migration and integration.

In this paper, the relation between home-making, belonging, integration and media use will be discussed, based on an ongoing qualitative study on immigrants/refugees feelings of home and belonging in a small Swedish town.

The preliminary results indicate that the very opposition between home and away can be questioned. Rather they are enacted in affective, material and symbolic relation to each other and the homing is practiced through different medias to make away present in home, to feel at home.