Homemaking and cohousing by postcolonial migrants in later life

Abstract

This chapter explores the homemaking process of Antillean and Hindustani Surinamese migrants living in cohousing communities in urban neighbourhoods in the Netherlands. In so doing, we foreground the communal aspects of post-colonial migrant homes and homemaking. The aspect of sharing, producing and reproducing spaces to create and feel a sense of home is central to our conceptualization of home as comprising a physical, socio-cultural and personal dimension. Both ageing and migration impact the homemaking process. With ageing, typically the home becomes more important as people spend increasing amounts of time there. With migration there emerges the transnational dimension of home, families and identities. We applied a qualitative research methodology and studied the experiences of around 30 older adults using in-depth interviews and photo-voice. Three key-themes emerged: 1) feeling (not) at home in a cohousing community, 2) neighbourhood spaces for home, and 3) multiple imaginations and multilocal belonging. Overall, our findings demonstrate how home can be fluid in terms of both space and time: it can be both here and there, in the present and intricately linked to the past. Furthermore, the experiences of participants with different backgrounds were remarkably similar, since a strong feeling of liminality or 'in-betweenness' emerges in their imagined senses of home and homeland. To overcome such feelings, it its key that older migrants have the agency to create a home that is conducive for their culture and lifestyle.