For many people, migration is not only about physical relocation — it’s also about losing the familiar sense of place and rebuilding it from scratch. The move often comes with emotional and practical challenges: a sense of rootlessness, nostalgia, and the struggle to create belonging in an unfamiliar cultural and urban environment.

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​This project asks the question: how do migrants recreate the sense of home after moving to a new city?

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The project mission

The project is designed as both a reflection of lived experiences and a practical resource. It highlights the diversity of adaptation journeys and offers insights and tips for newcomers who are just starting to find their place in the city.

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This project focused on women specifically because migration affects them in unique ways, shaping how they build home, maintain connections, and navigate everyday life in a new place. Their experiences reveal the emotional, social, and practical work that goes into creating belonging in a city that was once unfamiliar.

The project can also serve as a bridge between cultures — a way to see Kraków through the eyes of its new residents. It encourages dialogue, empathy, and curiosity about the city’s growing multicultural landscape.

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How the stories were collected

 

The stories in this project emerged from urban walks and in-depth interviews with women from different backgrounds. They speak about encounters with places that remind them of home, small rituals that bring comfort, and the unexpected moments when a foreign city starts to feel familiar.

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Home in Migration: Themes from the Stories of Women in Kraków

 

The interviews show that “home” is much more than a physical address. It’s a living process, layered with memories, emotions, and relationships. Several key themes stand out:

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1. The emotional and sensory cityscape

For many women, home is felt through the senses — not just seen, but heard, smelled, and touched. It lives in the rhythm of a tram route, the rustle of trees in a nearby park, or the smell of fresh pastry from a bakery.
As architect Juhani Pallasmaa (1996) once wrote, we inhabit cities with our entire bodies. When we start recognizing these small sensory details, the city slowly becomes familiar — and that’s when it begins to feel like home.

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2. Fragments of the past

Many participants described moments when a place in Kraków suddenly echoed memories of childhood or family — an old courtyard, a cozy café, a grandmother’s house.
This feeling of nostalgia connects the past and present, creating emotional stability in the midst of change.
A smell, a sound, or even the layout of a street can trigger that link — and suddenly, the “foreign” city feels a little less foreign.

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3. Home through human connections

For others, home began to take shape once they found people they could rely on — friends, colleagues, or neighbors.
Belonging and safety often come from relationships rather than spaces. In this sense, home is not just where you live, but with whom you share your experience.
Support networks and community ties provide the emotional grounding that allows women to adapt and feel at ease in their new environment.

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4. Home as a process of everyday creativity

Many women spoke about home not as a fixed place but as something they actively create.
They decorate rented apartments, bring familiar objects from their countries — postcards, plants, fabrics — or cook dishes that remind them of their roots.
These “everyday tactics,” as Michel de Certeau (1984) described them, are small but powerful acts of reclaiming comfort, identity, and control in a new space.

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5. Translocal belonging — living between worlds

A recurring theme was the sense of having more than one home.
Participants often spoke of belonging to several places at once — Poland, Belarus, Mexico, Ukraine, and beyond. Home, in this translocal sense, becomes mobile and flexible — a web of emotions, habits, and memories stretched across borders.
Belonging can exist simultaneously in multiple locations, shaped by memory and lived experience rather than geography.

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This project shows that home can exist in many forms and layers. It can be built even in an unfamiliar city — through sensory experience, relationships, and personal practices.
It invites us to think of “home” not as a fixed state but as an evolving process — a collection of connections, emotions, and actions that require care and creativity.

The city itself plays a crucial role: its walkability, human-scale architecture, and opportunities for community involvement can either nurture or hinder this process of home-making.

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Recommendations: How to Work with the Concept of Home-Making in Migration

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Based on the findings, several ideas can help community and cultural organizations engage with the theme of home and belonging among migrant women.

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1. Use creative formats to explore home-making

Women often express their sense of home through visual and material elements — décor, plants, photographs, textiles, small personal items.
Cultural organizations can use creative and participatory methods — photo essays, exhibitions, collaborative design of community spaces, or collective city maps.
Such projects encourage reflection and also help others see the city through diverse perspectives.

 

 

 

 

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2. Create platforms for sharing experiences

Since social ties are key to building home, organizations can foster horizontal exchange — spaces where women share adaptation stories, recipes, memories, and advice.
This could take the form of informal gatherings, workshops, or neighborhood walks that encourage mutual support and friendship.

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3. Use creative city guides as tools for adaptation

Alternative, experience-based city guides — such as scavenger hunts, sensory maps, or story-based routes — can help newcomers explore Kraków in a personal way.
These guides go beyond orientation; they turn navigation into connection, weaving together the stories of those who have already walked the same paths.

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References

 

1. Ahmed, S. (1999). Home and away: Narratives of migration and estrangement. International Journal of Cultural Studies, 2(3), 329-347.

2. Ahmed, S., Castañeda, C., Fortier, A. M., & Sheller, M. (Eds.). (2003). Uprootings/regroundings: Questions of home and migration. Berg.

3. Al-Ali, N., & Koser, K. (Eds.). (2003). New approaches to migration? Transnational communities and the transformation of home. Routledge.

4. Bachelard, G. (1958). The poetics of space. Beacon Press.

5. Blunt, A., & Dowling, R. (2006). Home. Routledge.

6. Boccagni, P. (2017). Migration and the search for home: Mapping domestic space in migrants' everyday lives. Palgrave Macmillan.

7. Boym, S. (2001). The future of nostalgia. Basic Books.

8. Brickell, K., & Datta, A. (Eds.). (2011). Translocal geographies: Spaces, places, connections. Ashgate.

9. Cresswell, T., & Uteng, T. P. (2012). Gendered mobilities: Towards an holistic understanding. In T. P. Uteng & T. Cresswell (Eds.), Gendered mobilities (pp. 1-12). Ashgate.

10. de Certeau, M. (1984). The practice of everyday life. University of California Press.

11. Fathi, B. (2021). Home as a sensory experience: Exploring the sensory dimensions of home-making among forced migrants. Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, 47(20), 4706-4723.

12. Hatfield, M. E. (2010). Children moving 'home'? Everyday experiences of return migration in highly skilled households. Childhood, 17(2), 243-257.

13. Lloyd, J., & Vasta, E. (2017). Reimagining home: Gender and transformative urban regeneration. Gender, Place & Culture, 24(11), 1556-1573.

14. Mahler, S. J., & Pessar, P. R. (2006). Gender matters: Ethnographers bring gender from the periphery toward the core of migration studies. International Migration Review, 40(1), 27-63.

15. Muñoz, S. A. (2018). Home-making practices among Latin American migrant women in Paris. Gender, Place & Culture, 25(5), 717-732.

16. Pallasmaa, J. (2005). The eyes of the skin: Architecture and the senses. Wiley.

17. Yeoh, B. S. A., & Ramdas, K. (2014). Gender, migration, mobility and transnationalism. Gender, Place & Culture, 21(10), 1197-1213.

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Photo sources: project participants' private archives 

Julia Karnavusha, Rafael Guajardo, Anastasia  Ilina-Makarova, Yana Gorbunova, Ostap Senyuk Ivette Delogado  Tima Miroshnichenko, Fernanda W. Corso,  Pavel Danilyuk,   Svitlana on Unsplash, Grégory ROOSE from Pixabay