DO YOU MIND IF I SHARE THIS SPACE WITH YOU? HEY, MI CASA SU CASA

Abstract

Faced with the burgeoning phenomenon of permanent and temporal diaspora of its citizens, it is critical for Singapore, more so now than ever, to revisit what it really means to make the house a home for her urban millennials in today’s contemporary context. Having gained developed status, Singapore has come to embrace globalisation and its manifold effects on its society. In specificity, the shift from a nation-state to a transnational world attitude is of interest in this discourse. In this transition, the capitalist-driven economy must welcome a new player into the game – the sharing economy – in order to stay relevant. Here, the notion of being socially connected is also redefined. It is no longer only about sharing information (software) via the internet to the masses. In current times, the definition of being social has expanded to include sharing one’s physical assets and entities (hardware) either for free or at a fraction of the market fee. It is all about collaborative consumption. Despite its benefits, this economy of sharing, within the context of the digital era, has been criticised for re-purposing an unprecedented amount of housing around the world. This paper seeks to understand the above phenomena. Firstly, this paper begins to understand the concept of home within the context of Singapore. Thereafter, the effects of how the sharing economy challenges and influences the ideas of home in this island-state is investigated, through a case study of how the growing practice of the phenomena of home repurposing is appropriated, titled ‘mi casa’ to ‘mi casa es su casa’ is appropriated by Airbnb, a company that practices the sharing economy.