Generic Places, the Construction of Home and the Lived Experience of Cosmopolitanization

Abstract

The chapter explores the way in which people under conditions of movement and change deal with plurality in contemporary urban settings by tracing the home-making experiences of a group of Mexican professionals in Madrid (postgraduate students, academics, IT professionals, journalists, and others). While their idea of home aligns discursively within an ideal version of cosmopolitanism (“at home everywhere”), in practice their strategies to feel at home in Madrid show that these privileged movers tend to rely on specific though generic places characterized by their homogenizing tendencies, such as hotel chains, generic coffee places and airports, to achieve a feeling of home.