29
name and number, but hesitated when asked what the neighborhood was like or if he
liked the building. Whether the home and the area were comfortable or aesthetically
pleasing was not important to him, or, as I would discover, to others within the
community. These homes are not secret places; in fact I visited many undocumented
migrants in their homes to conduct interviews. Some of these homes were located in
rented apartments (from Greeks or established legal immigrants), and others were visible
to the public (in abandoned buildings, makeshift housing in alleys, etc.). Most of the
homes I visited were known to the larger community as friendly sites and community
members often move among them. Jigo and his friends were very content to move from
home to home and even to move around within the space of the home (trade sleeping
areas, shift piles of expanding stock, etc.30). Permanence was not an issue for this group,
as it seems not to be for the larger community; instead, safety and access to wages (which
could also mean minimizing rent) seemed to be the primary criteria for choosing a home.
The seemingly universal moral-practical and aesthetic-expressive similarities among
undocumented migrants evident in this common disregard for the look∕feel and use of
space stems from their subjective experiences of∕with global flows contributing to the
dispositions that create consensus among the collectivity. When asked about their homes
in Africa or their ideal homes in the future, both aesthetics and space were described as
not only important, but vital to their happiness - notably, more so among Muslim
immigrants. As I came to understand it, this temporary disregard, or willing suspension
of subjective aesthetic bias, is part of the cost of living in a Iiminal place and of relying
on, or investing in, the collective to provide protection and an eventual escape.
30 This arrangement of homes will reappear in chapter 4 in the exploration of Romani houses. In fact, the
broad concept of moving from home to home within friendly areas is another concept that will reoccur in
that chapter and which the reader should note.