DIY and the emergent materiality of home-making on a holiday caravan site

In this article, we discuss a particular example of quasi-permanent recreational caravanning at a holiday camp on a reservoir in north-west Bohemia. While campsites, including those with caravans such as the one examined here, are usually places for short-term recreation, part of this campsite has been transformed into a quasi-permanent recreational settlement. Drawing on the notion of “spacing,” we pay close attention to the materiality of quasi-permanent caravanning and consider the DIY practises of building and maintaining the caravans and their surroundings as particular expressions of the ongoing creation of space. We show that through such ongoing practises an attachment to place is created and the quasi-permanent caravans become part of the home (of the campers). Examining the materiality of such caravans leads us to consider place attachment and home and the ways in which they are materially emergent. We describe the tensions that underlie the emergence of the spaces of quasi-permanent caravanning, the place attachment formed, and the home created there. As a result, we suggest to conceptualize home as constantly emerging in the tension between being and becoming on the one hand and multi-sited (multilocal) on the other.