Lagos in London: Finding the Space of Home

Abstract

The term “home” is loaded with normative notions about insiderness, sociality, dwelling, spatiality, and tends generally to be associated with a particular architectural mode of dwelling, classically a house, and with a particular set of people related by blood and/or marriage. In keeping with the contemporary theoretical movements about what and where a home resides, this paper also questions the validity of limiting these modes of being and being among as the sole confine of the domestic sphere. It suggests that rather than searching for these only within the classic scenario, the elements of what constitutes a home can be found outside of that sphere, through particular social and spatial negotiations of public spaces. These practices and spatial negotiations in the public space can then be compared with similar ones in the domestic setting. Taken together they reveal much more about the process of home making than either one would individually. Thus what is proposed in this article is a definition of home that is seen less as a particular geographical and/or architectural entity, and more as a space where specific forms of sociality take place.