CFP: Philosophical Perspectives on Homelessness, Home-making and Belonging

Call for abstracts:

The 4th Tromsø Conference in Ethics and Political Philosophy:

Philosophical Perspectives on Homelessness, Home-making and Belonging

UiT The Arctic University of Norway, Tromsø

December 8th-9th, 2026.

Keynote speakers:

•  Sarah Fine, University of Cambridge
•  Eirik Leivestad, author of Hjemløs: Mellom kulturkritikk og eksil (Dreyers forlag, 2026)

Homelessness and unbelonging are often cited as causes when one seeks to explain the rise of the political right or nationalist movements, both historical and contemporary. At the same time, not all responses to experiences of homelessness and unbelonging are totalitarian, conservative or nationalist, and one certainly does not have to be a nationalist to take the phenomenon of homelessness seriously. Philosophers working on migration and exile as well as on unhoused people have similarly underpinned the struggles and questions associated with what it means to “be at home” or to “have a home” somewhere. Feminist scholars have developed theories that advocate the reappropriation and resignification of “home”, or that embrace the tension-filled experiences of home-making “in-between” different cultures, languages and traditions.

Acknowledging at the outset the tension between possible political responses to the phenomenon of homelessness, this conference seeks to bring together scholars working on the problems and concepts of homelessness/ home and unbelonging/ belonging. Questions the conference will address include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How can we best understand the various perspectives on homelessness and unbelonging as describing a problem that is at once deeply personal and existential and deeply political, in different contexts marked by exile, migration, colonization, gender, poverty, and/or cultural diversity?
• How can we work towards homemaking and belonging as a lived, embodied, and socially situated practice? 
• How have questions related to homelessness, unbelonging and the question of home been addressed by different philosophical and intellectual traditions like analytic and continental political philosophy, feminist philosophy, critical theory, phenomenology, and others?
• How do and can these traditions relate and inform one another concerning questions of home, homelessness and belonging, and where are there tensions among them?

The organizing team welcome abstracts on any of these questions as well as related issues. We hope for a variety of theoretical and methodological approaches. We are especially interested in how different areas of scholarship can be bridged fruitfully around the topics of home, homelessness, and (un)belonging, and how critical, feminist and phenomenological perspectives on these topics can contribute to or supplement contemporary debates within analytic political philosophy and migration ethics.

Please send a 300 word abstract to Kaja Jenssen Rathe ([email protected]) by November 1st, 2026. You can expect a decision on your abstract by November 9th, 2026.