Research & Community Engagement
Events
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UPCOMING
Spencer Cahill Annual Lecture Series Presents
Dr. Paolo Boccagni - "Rooms with Little View: Reluctant Homemaking in an Asylum Center" - April 16, 2025, 10:30am-12:00pm, ISA 5020, Tampa Campus
His lecture unpacks the racialized and gendered tensions, dilemmas, and inequalities that inform everyday life in a forced waiting modus among young Black men who have "made it" to Europe but remain potentially deportable. He argues that everyday life in an apparently meaningless and empty time-space is made up of continuous boundary-making among residents and with service providers. In the rooms and shared kitchens that operate as proxies of domestic spaces, residents do not simply “wait”. They engage in forms of space appropriation (and occasionally form attachments) that illustrate the ubiquity of homemaking even in temporary and unhomely settings. As long as someone is stuck in it, a refugee room offers little of an external view, however, it provides a unique internal window into its occupant's everyday life experience, practices, and future prospects.