How do young people such as international students understand home, and “where” do they locate it, upon their transition into adulthood? Building on in-depth interviews with forty students in a dorm in Northern Italy, we explore their home-university transition, and the attendant relocations of home, at two levels: in everyday life environments, related to their material and dwelling circumstances, and in their self-narratives, which reveal a fundamental translation of home from spatial into temporal terms. We understand these spatial and temporal relocations of home in terms of continuity, situatedness, in-betweenness and open-endedness. By unpacking the students’ balancing acts between “ascribed” and “achieved” homes, we contribute to the debate on homemaking as a combination between fixed references and temporary or portable affordances, and on the routines and tactics whereby young people mediate the contrasting pressures of family expectations and individual self-realization. Even in transiency, the narrated and lived experience of home illuminates the students’ aspirations and concerns as they struggle to position themselves between different countries, social roles and biographical stages, from a particular accommodation in the here-and-now.

Despite a sizable literature on home and “place” in later life, few works have specifically focused on the intersection of home, “place,” ageism, and racism. Here, we therefore explore this intersection through a case study of Mr. M., a 69-year-old African American man living in Baltimore, Maryland. Mr. M described a lifetime of experiences with racism and later, ageism, that affected his everyday experiences with home and place. In his earlier life, he described being viewed as less capable by others because of his race. Later, he experienced ageism in his age-segregated public housing complex, where staff exerted control over his day-to-day life and often treated in childlike manner. Although the city provided Mr. M. with some important freedoms (e.g., choice of restaurants, attending a concert), racism and ageism were still present. Overall, the case offers important insight into some of the complexities of home and place and provides some early groundwork for future research.