Sharing domestic space in home accommodation of asylum seekers in Finland: intimacy, boundaries and identity work

In Finland, a grassroots initiative for accommodating asylum-seeking migrants in local homes took off in 2015. This hospitable initiative is about offering asylum seekers the chance to live with locals during the asylum process rather than in a reception centre. Drawing on the voices of local hosts, the article investigates how the racialised and gendered public discourses on asylum-seekers are challenged and reproduced in home accommodation. Moreover, it examines the identity work undertaken by hosts in the context of home, here conceptualised as contested and meaning laden space between the political and the intimate. Empirically, the article is based on qualitative interviews conducted with local hosts who accommodated asylum seekers in Southern Finland. The analysis shows how intersectional power relations structure the hosts’ expectations and the relationships formed in complex ways, as they narrate the cohabitation experience in relation to gender, sexuality, class, and cultural differences and in relation to broader societal discourses.