No One At Home
From the footloose networker to the exiled migrant, home has been displaced by an idea that’s both elusive and contested.
We are in the midst of an intensifying search for belonging, one that makes the idea of home as important to politics as the idea of class or rights – especially now, when so many people feel displaced, both literally and figuratively, by life in innovation-driven, high-tech, networked capitalism. The contest over where home is and who is entitled to live there, is – in the form of the current apparent crisis over migration – driving global political debate. Few philosophers have thought much about the idea of home. The only one of note is controversial: Martin Heidegger. This essay explores what we could learn from his analysis of why home matters so much to us.