‘My life is on hold’: examining home, belonging and temporality among migrant men in Ireland

Based on a recent study in Ireland with young male migrants, this paper discusses how narratives of home in migration and sense of belonging in domestic spaces for male migrants are linked. Using photovoice method, the paper focuses on the temporal aspects of the relationship between home and belonging: the present ‘real’ home which constitutes the lived spaces of migrants and the ‘aspired’ home that is postponed to a future time when families of one’s own are formed. The main argument of this paper is that migrant masculinities are reproduced in relation to current structural inequalities and the absence of significant others that prohibit a meaningful home in present time in these young migrant men’s lives.