Spatial traces of trauma: changes in home perception in young individuals after the twin earthquakes

This study examines how the meaning of "home" changed for young individuals residing in Malatya after the twin earthquakes centered on Kahramanmaraş on February 6, 2023. Designed as a phenomenological study, the research explores how perceptions of home shifted across spatial, emotional, and social dimensions before and after the disaster using a thematic analysis. The findings show that, before the earthquake, home was associated with comfort, trust, belonging, and sharing. After the earthquake, these meanings were replaced by anxiety, fear, uncertainty, loneliness, and loss. Home was no longer experienced as a secure and taken-for-granted space, but as a trauma-marked environment shaped by disrupted routines, broken trust, and memory-laden absence. The findings further suggest that the earthquake did not simply weaken attachment to place. It transformed the lived meaning of home and reconfigured place attachment as a fragile, trauma-inflected, and ambivalent experience of belonging. A clear rupture was particularly visible in the emotional process dimension of the tripartite place attachment model. Overall, the study highlights the need for recovery efforts that go beyond housing repair and include community-based social and psychological support aimed at restoring collective memory, everyday continuity, and a renewed sense of belonging.