Feeling at home: Korean Americans in senior public housing

What are older Korean immigrants' cultural conceptions of home arrangements and environments? Does aging affect their family relationships? Why do they decide to move to public housing? How do they adapt to and re-create a feeling of home in public housing? This research in the field of aging-and-environment focuses on these questions. Based on a naturalistic field research of older Korean immigrants to the USA this paper details the transitions from loss of feeling of home in their pre-move life, the decision to move to senior public housing, to settling into the new apartment. The themes delineated are: 1) shifting roles in multigenerational households, 2) altered conceptualizations and changing environments, becoming dut-bang no-in (guest in own home), 3) detachment from prized objects, and 4) re-creation of meaningful environment. Revealed are the complex and interwoven nature of the decision to move involving experiences, events, and nested mini-decisions, as well as the emotional disruptions, loss of sense of self, and detachments that occur. The adjustments made by these older adults to the culturally inappropriate design in order to regain feeling at home are described. Several socio-physical phenomena and concepts identified are: a) spatial oblation, b) environmental and object detachment, c) object meaning linked to persons, and d) planned surrender or disposal of cherished objects.