Worn Housing: Migration, infrastructure, and repair in Lolland

Worn houses in the rural Danish municipality of Lolland are often considered signs of the marginality ascribed to the area. However, this tends to obscure important aspects of the lives lived in them and their local significance. In this article, drawing on literature on infrastructure, repair, and migration studies, we consider worn housing as ruinous, profitable, promising, and uncanny, and relate these four perspectives to the migration of people from other parts of Denmark who are on social benefits. While we argue that decay and repair underpin all four perspectives, what exactly is being repaired and how varies significantly, calling for a more nuanced view of the sociomaterial complexity of internal migration and housing.