How do migrants feel “at home” in their houses? Literature on the migrant
house and its role in the migrant experience of home-building is inadequate.
This book offers a theoretical framework based on the notion of homebuilding and the concepts of home and house embedded within it. It presents innovative research on four groups of migrants who have settled in
two metropolitan cities in two periods: migrants from Italy (migrated in the
1950s and 1960s) and from mainland China (migrated in the 1990s and
2000s) in Melbourne, Australia, and migrants from Morocco (migrated in
the 1950s and 1960s) and from the former Soviet Union (migrated in the
1990s and 2000s) in Tel Aviv, Israel. The analysis draws on qualitative data
gathered from forty-six in-depth interviews with migrants in their homeenvironments, including extensive visual data. Levin argues that the physical form of the house is meaningful in a range of diverse ways during the
process of home-building, and that each migrant group constructs a distinct
form of home-building in their homes/houses, according to their specifi c
circumstances of migration, namely the origin country, country of destination, and period of migration, as well as the historical, economic, and social
contexts around migration.