This talk will illustrate some patterns in the homology of the configuration space Fk(M), the space of ordered k-tuples of distinct points in a manifold M. For a fixed manifold M, as k increases, we might expectthe topology of these configuration spaces to become increasingly complicated. Church and others showed, however, that when M is connected and open, there is a representation-theoretic sense in which the homology groups of these spaces stabilize. In this talk I will explain these stability patterns, and describe higher-order stability phenomena -- relationships between unstable homology classes in different degrees -- establishedin recent work joint with Jeremy Miller. This project was inspired by work-in-progress of Galatius--Kupers--Randal-Williams.