Rethinking Domicide: Towards an Expanded Critical Geography of Home

Domicide, the intentional destruction of home, is a concept first conceived by Canadian geographers Porteous and Smith in 2001. In the current global sociopolitical landscape, domicide and its impact is writ large, present in both the Global North and South, and spanning a variety of scales, from mass displacement through the Syrian civil war to controversial UK housing policy. However, it has been under-represented in critical geographies of home literature. This paper calls for a resurrection and recasting of the term, highlighting the multitude of contexts in which rethinking domicide provides an important contribution towards the expansion of critical geographies of home scholarship. The paper focuses on four areas of geography in which scholars have begun to explore and extend the term: emerging literature concerning home unmaking; socio-symbolic domicide in the geopolitical context; domicide and heteronormativity in post-disaster home loss; and agency and resistance to domicide through both political activism and banal resistances of the everyday. In sum, this fourfold exploration highlights both the current and potential contributions of domicide towards expanding critical geographies of home.