Multispecies home (un)making: Dogs and lifestyle migrants in Lijiang Ancient Town, China

Abstract This study advances scholarship in animal geography by examining how dogs participate in the processual and relational making and unmaking of home within the context of global lifestyle migration. Drawing on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork with 36 participants in Lijiang Ancient Town, China, this study traces the spatial‐affective entanglements between lifestyle migrants and their companion dogs. It reveals how dogs co‐construct multispecies domesticities through embodied practices—such as scent‐marking, route repetition and place attachment—that extend beyond the boundaries of human‐centred home imaginaries. However, these fragile multispecies arrangements are destabilised when migration results in abandonment. In such moments, dogs are forced to navigate disrupted relational geographies and shifting territorialities, marked by anxiety, behavioural change and dislocation. To conceptualise these experiences, the study introduces the notion of ‘trans‐species traumatic geographies’, capturing the spatial and emotional consequences of rupture for non‐human companions. By foregrounding canine perspectives and embodied vulnerabilities, this study challenges the anthropocentric focus of migration narratives and underscores the co‐constitutive nature of homemaking across species. It contributes to critical conversations on multispecies mobility and displacement, and the ethics of human–animal domesticity in an era of global movement.