Home-making practices and social protection across borders: an example of Turkish migrants living in Germany

This article explores how Turkish migrants in Germany turn their physical houses into homes through actual day-to-day practices. It does so by drawing on participant observation and qualitative interviews. Rather than referring to home merely as a physical place, this article investigates in detail migrants' home-making practices, particularly those activities related to social protection. In making their homes, migrants simultaneously make reference to multiple locales, material artifacts, and social relationships in countries of emigration and immigration. Through the examination of home-making practices, this article is an attempt to portray the symbolic and material expressions with transnational elements of the home unfolding in migrants' everyday life.