ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author look at both the meaning and utility of the concepts of home and family and how young migrants create, and are unable to create, home and family for themselves in the city of Brussels. The chapter gives an overview of the evolution of the concepts of home and family in the social sciences and introduces the 'home orbit' as a new way of understanding home and its relationship with family. It introduces two case studies and the analysis of participants' different experiences of 'home without family' and 'family without home'. The chapter uses fieldwork examples to illustrate how family factors into the home-making of young migrants in Brussels. It illuminates the complex relationship between family and home by proposing a new theoretical rendering of home, the home orbit and building upon recent conceptualisations of family in the social sciences.
