Home in Roma

Artem Frolov, Anouk Fluit and Manon Schipper

Home in Roma 

The concept of home can be understood in many ways by its functions and perspectives. It is not only a physical space where people live but also something connected to emotions, relationships and behavior. Because of this home is a flexible concept that can be examined in different aspects and in various disciplines, including social, cultural, gender and film studies.

In this Key Concept project we analyze the idea of home in Alfonso Cuáron’s Roma (2018). The action of the film is set during the political upheaval of the 1970s in Mexico City and follows Cleo, a hired domestic worker in a middle-class family. Even though hiring a live-in maid was common in this context, their role in the household is often overlooked. Cuarón’s movie therefore offers insight into both the working conditions and the personal lives of domestic workers like Cleo. Through her personal story, the movie also shows how home is not just a house, but something that is created through work, care and relationships between people. The aim of this project is to explore how the concept of home is represented in the film and how it is connected to reproductive and emotional labour, family and social differences.

The etymology of home

Before diving into home as a concept, the meaning of home as a concept also has its roots in the definition and origin of the word among languages. To further explore this observation, etymologies of the word in Russian, Dutch and Italian. 

Russian

In Russian language the word дом [dom] refers not only to a physical building where people live, but also to a wider idea of belonging and shared life. It can mean “a house or place of residence, a family and household” (Ozhegov, 270), or the daily life people share under one roof. Russian dictionaries also define дом [dom] as the people living together as one household, the management of family life and domestic work, and even institutions created for social or cultural purposes, such as a children’s home or house of culture.The Russian proverb “Дом вести, не лапти плести” [Dom vesti, ne lapti plesti], which in English means “Running a household is not as easy as weaving bast shoes”. also reflects how дом [dom] includes the labour, responsibilities, and social organisation of family life, not only the physical space of a house. In a broader sense, it can describe a community with common interests, a dynasty, or an institution that serves social needs. Overall, дом [dom] combines both a physical space for living and a social space of connection, care, responsibility, and belonging. This meaning is reflected in Russian literature as well. As Valentin Rasputin writes in his novel Fire: “For a person to feel reasonably well in life, they need to be at home. That is: at home. First of all — at home, not as a guest, but within themselves, in their own inner household, where everything has its fixed, long-established place and function. Then — at home in a house or apartment, from which you go to work on one side and into yourself on the other. And finally — at home on one’s native land.” (Rasputin, 16). This quote illustrates that the concept of home in Russian literature extends beyond physical space and includes emotional security, personal identity and belonging to one’s native land.

Dutch

For Dutch, the word home has two different, but related, connotations: huis and thuis. Huis in Dutch refers to a residency in which people (can) live (“Huis.”). Thuis, on the other hand, usually signifies someone’s (owned) home (“Thuis.”). Their etymology reflects this difference in meaning. Whereas they both stem from the Germanic husi, which means shelter or place of residency, (Khodorvsky; “Betekenis van: House.”) the word thuis also consists of the preposition ‘te’. This preposition in combination with a noun usually signifies being at a place. In Middle Dutch thuis was therefore also referred to as ‘te huys’ (‘te huis’ or ‘at home’). The combination of these words can, on the other hand, also refer to a shelter of people in need. A home for orphaned children is for example referred to as a ‘(kinder)tehuis’. Huis, however, is not only used in the context of a building of people or in which people live. There are also a great deal of expressions in Dutch in which (t)huis refers to other things. For example, the expression ‘houd je handen thuis’ (keep your hands to yourself) refers to the body of someone else as their house. Another example is the expression ‘niet thuis geven’ which means not reacting when someone calls you up, not giving up during a contest or not being available (“Thuis.”). In all these definitions, ‘thuis’ symbolizes a part of yourself which is chosen not to be given away. In contrast, the Dutch vocabulary also consists of sayings like ‘doe alsof je thuis bent’ en ‘ik voel me thuis’ (“Thuis.”). In both sayings, the word ‘thuis’ refers to a feeling of comfort instead of the literal house or the body in its whole. All in all, home in Dutch can thus refer to the literal meaning of a shelter, the emotional meaning of comfort and the figurative meaning of the body as a home.

Italian

In the Italian language, the most common word for home is casa, which can mean both house and home. The etymological origin of the word casa derives from the Late Latin casa/casae, originally meaning a simple hut. Over time, casa developed beyond its purely physical meaning and came to represent family, intimacy, and belonging as well.

The Italian dictionary Treccani shows that casa can refer simultaneously to a building, a family unit, or a household. The diminutives of casa in its physical sense are casetta, casina and casettina. Expressions such as essere a casa can mean both ‘to be at home’ and ‘to feel at home’. Other expressions, such as casa mia (‘my home’), emphasize familiarity and emotional attachment. Similarly, the expression sentirsi a casa means ‘to feel at home’. These examples demonstrate how the Italian word for home carries both material and emotional meanings.

Another Italian expression related to home is focolare domestico, meaning ‘hearth and home’ or ‘domestic hearth’. Treccani (“Home”) explains that this expression refers to the house not as a physical building, but as a dwelling and therefore as a place of memories and family affection. Focolare derives etymologically from the Late Latin word foculare, which itself comes from focus (fuoco in Italian), meaning ‘fire’ or ‘fireplace’. Historically, the fireplace symbolized the centre of domestic and family life. The expression focolare domestico is therefore closely connected to family intimacy and the emotional core of the household.

The concept of home

Following the etymology of the English word home, it becomes clear that the concept can have different meanings beyond the idea of a purely physical space. Home can also work as a concept in which it can represent safety, comfort and emotional belonging, or symbolize a place of inequality, abuse and violence. In some cultures home is connected to specific family roles and gender expectations. For example, women are often associated with reproductive and emotional labour, maintaining the household. The concept of  home is also linked to “migration and mobility” (Kowal, XI) . It demonstrates that relocation and/or a loss of home can affect the personality, changing identity and emotional state. As a consequence, home appears not as a fixed place, but as a social and emotional concept, shaped by labour, gender and mobility. 

Home versus house

In Roma (2018) there is an important difference between home and house. The house is a physical space where the family lives, but home is also created through emotions, care and everyday relationships. Cleo’s domestic labour (in combination with reproductive and emotional labour) – cleaning, cooking, taking care of children – helps to turn the house into a home. But at the same time the film also demonstrates inequality inside home: while Cleo is emotionally close to the family due to the emotional labour she executes within the household, she is socially distant from them.   

One of the key scenes in Roma (2018) shows the family returning to the house after their father removed furniture and left the place (02:06:00- 02:08:37). The space became emptier and quieter, and this absence of objects reflected the emotional breakdown within the family. The house no longer felt comfortable, complete and stable then. Instead, it looked unfinished and chaotic as a “home” that was broken. 

This scene is important because it connects the value of material space with emotional damage. The removal of furniture is not only a practical action, but the manifesto of mental separation. It highlights the departure of their father not just from the household, but from the family itself. As a result, home relates to a space of absence and damage rather than belonging. 

In contrast, Cleo’s presence in the scene demonstrates the imbalance of emotional and domestic labour within the household. While the family experiences emotional shock, Cleo remains the only one who attempts to keep the household functioning as it was before. Her role emphasizes that care and domestic responsibilities remain necessary even during the moments of family issues. As a fact, it shows that home in Roma (2018) is very fragile and depends on the efforts of maintaining everyday reproductive and domestic labour.

Domesticity and domestic labour

Domesticity can be described as the social, emotional, and cultural dimension of the concept of home associated with intimacy, comfort, privacy, belonging, and family life. Domesticity is historically and socially constructed rather than natural or universal. It developed particularly within bourgeois European culture and became strongly associated with femininity and women’s labour inside the home. Women were traditionally expected to create comfort, order, and emotional stability through domestic work, which linked the concept of home closely to gender roles and patriarchal family structures (Kowal, xiii-xviii). Because of this, there are also critical perspectives on domesticity. Feminist scholars argue that idealised notions of home often ignore inequality, power relations, oppression, and unpaid labour within domestic spaces (Kowal, xvi-xvii). Home can therefore function both as a place of belonging and comfort and as a space of control or exclusion, especially for women. Domesticity can thus be understood as a complex and gendered concept of home that combines emotional attachment, family structures, and material space.

In Roma (2018), domesticity is closely connected to the concept of home through the everyday routines, emotional relationships, and gendered labour that structure life within the household. The character of Cleo, an Indigenous domestic worker, embodies this connection between domesticity and home. Much of the film focuses on her daily domestic labour: cooking, cleaning, childcare, and maintaining order within the middle-class family home. Through these repetitive activities, the house becomes a space of emotional attachment and belonging, yet also one of inequality and servitude. Cleo is emotionally integrated into the family, mainly through her caregiving role, but at the same time she remains socially excluded, revealing the unequal power relations underlying domesticity. A clear example of this occurs when the whole family is watching television and Cleo joins them, but the mother almost immediately asks her to bring tea to her husband, forcing Cleo back into her servant role (00:16:44).

The film also reflects feminist critiques of domesticity by showing how the home, often idealised as a safe and nurturing space, is structured through unequal gender roles and emotional labour. While the household appears intimate and caring, the responsibility for maintaining this stability is carried primarily by women. Sofía, the mother of the family, is abandoned by her husband and, together with Cleo, is forced to maintain both the household and the emotional wellbeing of the family. Even before leaving, the father contributes little to domestic life, highlighting how domesticity depends on invisible and feminised labour.
The function of home as a form of domesticity is also visible in Roma (2018). In the movie, the nurturing role is mostly shown to be fulfilled by Cleo. However, in one scene both aspects of domesticity come to light. In this scene (01:26:12-01:27:22), the mom is calling in the bathroom about the where-abouts of her husband. Although the door is shut, the phone call is clearly hearable in the main living area of the home. Initially only Cleo is there, but due to the tracking shot, you can eventually see the son coming downstairs and walking up to the bathroom door where he sits down to hear his mom’s conversation. Cleo tries to get the boy away from the door to protect him (both mentally and physically), but he does not listen to her. When the mom opens the bathroom door after the conversation and sees that her son was listening, she slaps him in the face. Both him and her are shocked from the incident and thus the mom immediately consoles her son while she takes out her emotions on Cleo. Cleo then leaves the room for the kitchen and shuts the door after her while the mom takes pity on the boy.
The film therefore complicates nostalgic ideas of home by revealing how domesticity depends on female labour and unequal labour structures, particularly the labour of Indigenous women.

Domestication in Roma (2018) can be interpreted as the process through which the idea of home is actively represented and maintained through different forms of labour. It is not only about cleaning and organizing the space, but also about emotional support and “care tasks relating to the nurturing, tending and assistance of children” (Marchetti, 3), making a house function as home. In the film Cleo performs most of this labour, demonstrating how domestic work is essential for creating safety, comfort and stability. At the same time this process highlights clear social and gender inequalities – Cleo’s work is important but never fully recognized or valued. Constructing the family’s sense of home, she constantly remains socially and emotionally outside of it. As a result, domestication in Roma (2018) shows that home is not natural or given space, but something that is created and sustained only through unequal labour and care. 

House as an embodiment

Despite being both a physical and sensual concept, the house can also embody a feeling or situation. Physical objects like houses can, in other words, reflect current circumstances. For Roma (2018), this is visualized by the decay of the family home as the relationship between the mother, and essentially the whole family, and the father declines. An example in which this physical embodiment of the family dynamics is visualised, is when an object goes through the window while the children are fighting and creates a hole (1:27:32-1:29:17). This hole thus occurs after an event in which both chaos and disobedience reign and therefore could symbolise this part of the family dynamics. However, the hole in the window does not get fixed in the timespan of the movie. Throughout the movie, the hole remains present: initially it is shown through a depth of field (1:29:04), but later on, the hole is still present in the background just without being focused on (e.g. 2:06:02). In addition to the former depicted observation that the hole can be an embodiment of the family dynamics concerning the children, the hole could also be seen as a visual representative of the impact the fathers leaving has on the household. The omitting of the fixing of the hole would therefore also be emotionally impossible: the departure of the dad will always have an impact on the household. 

Cultural adaptations 

The concept of home is also shaped by cultural and historical context; the idea of inclusion and exclusion. In the 1970s in Mexico City, high and middle class households often included domestic workers – it reflected a special social hierarchy where class and labour were clearly divided (as depicted in Roma, 2018). “Roma conveys the intricate dynamics of power and affection behind the fact that domestic workers are both employees and members of bourgeois families.” (Ledesma) 

At that time the concept of home was not only private or personal, but strongly connected to social differentiation and cultural norms. The representation of Cleo’s role inside the household in the movie shows it clearly: she is physically present in the house, but socially separated from the family she works for. 

Conclusion

Home is a complex concept which has proven to be multidimensional. Since its meaning changes across languages, cultures, and contexts, its significance can represent both a physical place and an emotional sense of belonging. The movie Roma (2018) demonstrates that all aspects of this concept are related through an interdisciplinary as well as an intercultural lens. In other words, these different meanings of home are connected through everyday life of the household and personal experience of Cleo.

The movie shows that home in Roma (2018) is closely shaped by daily routines, shared practices and human relationships. Moments of care, conflict, ignorance and loss shape the way characters experience their personal “home”. Through the interactions between the family and the domestic workers, Roma (2018) represents home as a constantly changing place influenced by emotions, social differences and the reality. 

Bibliography

(Alphabetical and per language)

General

1) Cuáron, Alfonso, Roma. Netflix, 2018. Accessed 12 May 2026

2) Cuéllar Ledesma, Diana, “Rome Leads to All Roads: Power, Affection and Modernity in Alfonso Cuarón’s Roma”, Third Text, 26 March 2019. Accessed 12 May 2026
http://www.thirdtext.org/cuellar-roma

3) Kowal, Ewa. “Under Construction. A Brief Introduction to Housing Studies”, in: Ewa Kowal, Izabella Curyłło-Klag (Eds.), “The Many Meanings of Home: Cultural Representations of Housing across Media”, Leiden: Brill, 2022

4) Marchetti, Sabrina, “Introduction”, in: “Migration and Domestic Work”, IMISCOE Short Reader, Cham, Springer, 2022

Russian

1) Ozhegov, Sergey, “Explanatory Dictionary of the Russian Language.100,000 Words, Terms and Phraseological Expressions. New Edition”. The World and Education, Moscow, 2019

2) Rasputin, Valentin, “Fire”, 16 chapter, Soviet Reader, Moscow, 1990. Accessed 12 May 2026
https://lib.ru/PROZA/RASPUTIN/pozhar.txt 

Dutch

1) “Betekenis van de voornaam: House.”, ancestry, ancestry.com/first-name-meaning/House. Accessed 11 May 2026.

2) “Huis.” Van Dale Online, Van Dale Uitgevers, vandale.nl. Accessed 11 May 2026.

3) Khodorkovsky, Maria. “Naming House and Home: Word Origins”. ALTA Language services, 12 October 2009, altalang.com/beyond-words/naming-house-and-home-word-origins.

4) “Thuis.” Van Dale Online, Van Dale Uitgevers, vandale.nl. Accessed 11 May 2026.

Italian

1) ‘Casa’. Dizionario Etimologico Online. https://www.etimo.it/?term=casa. Accessed 12 May 2026.

2)  ‘Casa’. Treccani.it. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/ricerca/casa/. Accessed 12 May 2026.

3) ‘Focolare’. Treccani.it. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/focolare/. Accessed 12 May 2026.

4) ‘Home’. Treccani.it. https://www.treccani.it/vocabolario/home/. Accessed 12 May 2026.