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Employer-provided housing constitutes a significant source of accommodation for internal and international migrant workers globally, which is characterized by work-home spillovers. However, the lived experiences and homemaking practices of tenants in such housing remain underexplored. Drawing on interviews with employer housing tenants (N = 24) in Guangzhou and Shenzhen, China, this article explores how individuals engage in homemaking under varying conditions of work-home spillovers to maintain ontological security. The study identifies three scenarios: (1) Workers actively engage in proactive self-expressive homemaking under positive work-home spillovers; (2) workers create material and social boundaries to manage moderately negative work-home spillovers; (3) workers’ homemaking fails under extremely negative work-home spillovers. Situated at the intersection of homemaking, work-home spillover, and migration, this research contributes to discussions on “making a rental property home” and underscores the need for external support to ensure adequate housing provision and effective housing management, thereby preventing homemaking failures and enhancing workers’ well-being.
Zhang et al. (Mon,) studied this question.