Returning to My Roots: Hometown Housing and Ontological Security Amid China's Circular Migration
2026-01-19
Home is the locale where individuals seek ontological security against external threats and unpredictability – a condition difficult to sustain under uncertain mobility patterns such as circular migration. Current scholarship predominantly focuses on how migrants' ontological security is shaped by their dwellings in destinations, while the connection with housing in their places of origin remains underexamined. Through interviews with 24 employer‐housed migrants – a highly mobile segment particularly prone to circular migration in China ‐ this study investigates the potential linkage between hometown housing and ontological security within China's internal circular migration. These connections are unpacked through three narratives: The first examines how migrants perceive ontological security through hometown housing security and its associated guarantee of life quality. The second reveals that, among migrants of rural origin, urban housing tenure without land ownership is often viewed as incredible, whereas rural land‐use rights function as a stabilizing anchor. The third uncovers the experience of a divorced, less‐skilled rural‐to‐urban migrant woman whose ontological security is compromised by dual housing insecurity in both the host city and her hometown stemming from her intersectional identities. Across these narratives, the study interprets how ontological security is sustained through four dimensions of “home”: constancy, routine, no surveillance, and identity. The findings suggest that, within the interplay of China's institutional structures and socioeconomic contexts, hometown housing can contribute meaningfully to the ontological security amid circular migration. By doing so, the study challenges the prevailing scholarly emphasis on destination‐based housing within linear migration paradigms and extends the predominantly Western‐centric discourse on ontological security into contexts of China's circular human mobility and spatially fragmented imaginaries of “home”.