ABSTRACT
Literature on the home largely focuses on the physically defined space of the nuclear family home. Anthropologist Mary Douglas has however argued that the home is primarily characterised by a regularity of practices, people, and things within a fundamentally not-for-profit space. In a distinct approach, black feminist bell hooks suggests that home is ‘no longer just one place’ but a multiplicity of places. For bell hooks, the home-place is furthermore a site of radical potential, regardless of material scarcities. This contribution draws out the tensions between these alternative conceptions of home by reading them across the everyday architectures of home-making among African refugees in Cape Town. This project employs ethnographic research, interviews, and drawings undertaken in Cape Town with Fatima, a Somali refugee who runs a small shop within an informal shopping arcade. The informal arcade where Fatima is based is one of many similar such arcades in the city, and is primarily inhabited by African refugees and asylum seekers. These markets are simultaneously safe spaces of opportunity in a violent urban context and highly contested sites. I argue that despite the transactional and economic nature of these spaces, they act as a fragile home for migrant groups in the city. This is partially because these markets are characterised by regular familial and domestic practices, many of which would otherwise take place behind the closed doors of nuclear family homes. Yet this is also due to the nature of the trade itself and the goods obtained, both of which contribute to home-making within these spaces. This project is represented through drawings and writing, as a contribution to debates on the home, with a focus on female migrant traders and parallel economies.
