Home as temporary unless owned: migrant homemaking in contexts of legal absence

Amidst the rise of the private rental market worldwide, this paper explores how “home” is constructed and experienced in relation to the presence and absence of legal regulations. Focusing on migrant renters, it examines how senses of home are formed in contexts where legal mechanisms governing tenancy are virtually absent. Situated within the fields of legal geography and critical perspectives of homemaking, the analyses draw on ethnographic research complemented by survey data. We show that when the law fails to acknowledge “renters” as a meaningful legal category, or when owner-renter relations are effectively unregulated, legal precarity becomes a defining condition of the everyday life of renters. We focus on the rapidly urbanizing city of Kathmandu, where approximately half of its population comprises migrant renters from rural areas. We argue that the migrant renters of Kathmandu are a particularly vulnerable group as they face a constant struggle to secure legal and stable living arrangements in the city. In response to these conditions, migrant renters construct “home” as a short-term, unstable place, while they view themselves as temporary residents of the city, dependent on unstable, uneven, and unpredictable relations with owners.