Homely mobilities: between ‘immobility’ and ‘mobility’ through tiny homes

Abstract

This paper seeks to contribute to current discourse at the intersection of mobility and architecture studies, by examining the divide between immobility and mobility through the lens of tiny homes. While home is the archetypal image of stasis, belonging, and rootedness, recent mobility studies have considered the potential of architecture as mobilizing, rather than purely permanent, animated through mobility. Our focus on tiny homes highlights the shifting relations between ‘immobility’ and ‘mobility’ as ‘homely mobility’ to create a sense of homeyness and happiness. We examine this homely mobility through an analysis of the YouTube channel Living Big in Tiny Homes, which challenges static conceptions of the home and allows us to emphasize the multi-scalar and multiple forms of homely mobility, spatially and temporally, through micro and macro movements. This paper has a particular interest in how bodies-with-tiny-homes transform and are entangled in movements and flows, but also how the ideas of tiny homes, or ideals of homes generally, stay, are sticky or get stuck.