Towards a More-Than-Human Perspective

Ethnographic reflections on homing with animals

Abstract

In Denmark it is generally believed that something akin to "social export" is taking place, pushing socioeconomically marginalized people from larger cities to rural areas. The push is perceived to come from housing- and labor structures, making it difficult for people with limited financial resources to uphold a living in the city, or from specific administrative practices in urban municipalities. The limited research existing within this field tends to be preoccupied with this migration as an expression of economic rationalities.
There are, however, indications that several other circumstances play a role when socioeconomically vulnerable people move and settle in new places, not least animals, often referred to as pets. When I conducted qualitative interviews with newcomers in the context of a research project exploring migration to a Danish rural area, pets constantly appeared, both in memories and imaginings of home and in actual practices of doing home. While this led my attention toward the significance of animals, and an inter-species perspective, it did not substantially change my methodological approach, which remained primarily phenomenologically inspired. In this article, I, partly reflexively and partly speculatively, explore how I ethnographically could have engaged migration and home as an interspecies phenomenon. Moreover, I indicate what kind of political and ethical concerns such a more-than-human approach implies. The article is inspired by interspecies and posthuman perspectives, especially by Donna Haraway.