1. The Politics of Home. Belonging and Nostalgia in Western Europe and the United States Global Civil Society? NYU, April 17th Jan Willem Duyvendak

2. Introduction How do concepts travel? Overcoming the European bias…? The two revolutions of our days: gender and globalization/migration – and how the two are intertwined; Two crises of not feeling at home; What a comparison of crises (and continents) may offer; How to research feeling at home? -a speechless emotion; -a multi-layered and multi-scalar emotion; -politics versus the people?

3. Conceptualizing Feeling at Home: the public, the private, the civil, the political Everybody wants to feel at home in one way or another; Nobody feels at home everywhere and with everyone (cosmopolitans are bad sociologists; solidarity is not the same as belonging); Not everybody needs a particular place to feel at home (generic places can evoke home feelings as well); Feeling at home is a selective, discriminating emotion; Are there shared characteristics in the various ways people feel at home? Yes, at least one: familiarity. But an important difference exist between a ‘haven’- and ‘heaven’-concept of feeling at home; What feeling at home means, varies according to social class but also to gender, race, culture, sexual preference, age, et cetera.

4. Why has home become so important? I. Nostalgia in the USA: Coming to terms with the gender revolution Time bind in the USA: Americans don’t feel home-at-home anymore but feel more at-home-at-work Stress at home: home is no safe ‘haven’ anymore since parents work long hours, don’t have time for kids, there are few day care services, et cetera; The emphasis on family values mirrors the crisis of the family in the US. (but what about unsolved gender problems in Western Europe?)

5. Why has home become so important? II. Dutch Nostalgia: How to deal with globalization and migration? Many native-born Dutch don’t feel at home anymore in the nation due to the minority of (Muslim) migrants (who do feel at home, though don’t feel Dutch); Politics and ‘feeling at home’: culturalization of citizenship, forced assimilation to ‘progressive’ values; progressive intolerance; The nation conceptualized as a ‘home’ where all inhabitants have to share ‘family’ norms and values, life styles: a ‘heaven’-concept; (but what about ‘homeland security’ in the US after 9/11?)

6. Types of Nostalgia Restaurative nostalgia (the Netherlands) and reflective nostalgia (the US) regarding the crisis of home ( Svetlana Boym ); The US: ‘we wanted this change’, no way back –> looking for the modernization of home. Alternatives coming from Europe? Hochschild versus Conley: what are the boundaries of home? The Netherlands: ‘we didn’t ask for this change’, a majority versus a minority -> looking for the restauration of home. Are there alternatives, e.g. from the US? Similarity: both revolutions are enlargements of people’s worlds, but the spatial get transformed into the temporal (nostalgia and nativism: ‘a familiar home has been lost’).

7. More Inclusive Ways of Feeling at Home? Feeling home-at-work and feeling home-at-home is not necessarily a zero-sum relation; A ‘heaven’-concept is more problematic: public manifestations of feeling at home of some might jeopardize home feelings of others; see the Netherlands (and look at the French); Home making practices from ‘below’: Beyond a nativist/temporal nation concept: about inconsistencies of the Left and the future of more inclusive home-making strategies; Can the ‘global’ be a home for all?