ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the homemaking process by favela women in Rio who were domestic migrants or descendants of forced migrants during slavery. It analyses the self-made houses of the respondents as familial and personal heritage sites, adding the bottom-up perspective to the literature on houses as cultural heritage objects and contributing to the discussion on the role of houses and homemaking in the issues of belonging and identity within the mobility studies. The contribution of this chapter to the broader cultural heritage-mobility nexus regards the development of a concept of heritage homing defined as the making oneself home in the houses that are considered a part of the individual/familial heritage and the everyday practices of heritage-making that are unfolded through the homing. It builds on the processual conceptualisations of the homemaking practices within mobility studies, and performative approaches to cultural heritage popularised within Critical Heritage Discourse. The chapter discusses the strategies undertaken to materialise individual aspirations of homes that rely heavily on mobility and include collecting money through migration, building, choosing aesthetics, and performing embodied practices to make the houses into the homes. By doing so it studies how heritage homing is enacted through the multisensory practices of people.
