On (not) belonging: Affective encounters in suburban everyday

This presentation is based on longitudinal, affective autoethnographic observation which has taken place as a part of a research project “Stories from Korkalovaara”. The project explores Lappish suburb as home region and Lappish suburban culture. Korkalovaara is a suburb in the city of Rovaniemi, Lapland. It is a typical Finnish suburb, in a miniature size: an after WW II built, blockhouse intensive area separated from the city centre where there are around 6 000 residents. The remaining services in the area are to be found from the shopping centre. Following the national development currents of the suburbs, Korkalovaara has been on the path of decline during the recent decade(s). One of the biggest influences affecting this development has been the closing of the school because of the indoor air problems in 2016.

The purpose of this presentation is to reflect my position as a researcher but the questions asked here are also fundamentally present in my everyday as well as in the resident activism I’m involved in. In this presentation I ask: how living in the “wrong place”, namely a middle-class resident in a socio-economically disadvantaged area (see Vilkama & Vaattovaara, 2015), manifests as affective and embodied experience in different everyday spaces. And to what kind of actions these affectivities; feelings of difference and sameness, (dis)comfort and (not) belonging; result to.