Migrant Habitat: Movement and Rest

Since 2011, the Josefa Foundation has been striving to share its vision of "All of us, migrants" as the foundation of our Human-History...

As a reminder, we are not saying that we are all "migrants" in the image of a discrimination traditionally maintained up until now around a category called "migrants".

On the contrary, for Josefa, "All of us, migrants" means that our migrations (physical, psycho-intellectual, spiritual) are foundation and movement; while preserving that each migration is unique, because each human being is unique.

After creating in 2015 the Josefa House, in Brussels, the Josefa Foundation, since 2020, has tried to think of Habitat as Migrant. What does this mean?

It is about inviting us to question ourselves about our modes of housing, about our housing cultures, sometimes forgotten, often thwarted or even constrained, or even imagined, while the lack of or poor housing continues, particularly in Europe. Would there not be an ontology, or even an ethic, in any case, an economy of habitat to be rethought, or even created, in the sense that Habitat in itself can be seen as an existence, between movement and rest?

In fact, the habitat is no longer 'static' (sometimes a refuge where I withdraw, sometimes a place from which I extract myself towards the 'social'), but dynamic, understood as a way, in itself, of being in the world: migrant.

The question then becomes: how best to compose, singularly or collectively, these two living entities that are my being-migrant (as a living, human, migrant being) and a migrant habitat that would inhabit me, temporarily or permanently, according to their own relationships of movement or rest?

Thinking of the habitat as a possible trans-hospitality (within oneself) certainly gives us the opportunity to think about our human condition as a creator or host of habitats, in their living expressions, conjugated in the singular as well as in the plural.