Case study reveals how sedentarism and nomadism shape the idea of home for formerly homeless individuals.
The article focusses on the discursive construction of the home after homelessness, through the co-presence of two discourses: sedentarism and nomadism. The analysis of twenty videos from the Kadir's Eye (Kadirin Gözü) YouTube channel is supported by Laclau & Mouffe's discourse theory, accompanied by a discourse-theoretical re-reading of the home literature. As a method, Discourse-Theoretical Analysis (DTA) is deployed. The videos were selected on the basis of their relevance to our research question, and the presence of six individuals who transitioned from the streets to apartment housing. The analysis shows how sedentarism is articulated with the materiality of the house, stability, and togetherness, while nomadism is articulated with nomadic materialities, mobility, freedom, and togetherness. This analysis highlights the complex co-existence and structural similarities of sedentarism and nomadism, with the limits to the desirability of the sedentary home becoming visible, and the nomadic home escaping from a purely negative articulation.
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Dokumacı et al. (2025) studied this question.
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