Exploring the lifeworlds of Halima, Omar and Mohamed, three middle-aged Somalis living in Melbourne, Australia, the author discusses the interrelated meanings of emplacement and displacement as experienced in people’s everyday lives. Through their experiences of displacement and placemaking, examines the figure of the refugee as a metaphor for societal alienation and estrangement, and moves anthropological theory towards a new understanding of the crucial existential links between (Being) and (Here).