(Re)conceptualising the boundaries between home and homelessness: the unheimlich

Abstract

A burgeoning cross-disciplinary literature signifies a move towards diversifying understandings of the meanings of ‘home’. Homelessness is inextricably bound up in these definitions. While earlier work has considered meanings of homelessness, attempts to advance understandings of the relationship between home and homelessness have been sporadic. This article attempts to reinvigorate discussion around the home–homelessness relationship by problematizing the binaries in current understandings and poses a different way of theorizing the interplay between the two concepts. Drawing on interviews with women accessing homelessness services in the North of England, discussion interweaves women’s meanings of home and homelessness with the Freudian notion of the ‘unheimlich’. The ‘unheimlich’ captures the uncanny process of inversion whereby the familiar domestic sphere of the house turns into a frightening place; and a typical space of homelessness—the hostel—is considered home. The article seeks to contribute more adequate theoretical tools for future research to better understand and articulate the complexities of home and homelessness.

Keywords:

• Home
• un-homely
• homeless women
• homelessness
• social theory

Acknowledgements

The author wishes to thank Kesia Reeve, Ian Cole and the three anonymous peer reviewers for their time spent reading and commenting on earlier drafts of this paper. The author is indebted to the women who took part in this research; for their honesty, courage and trust in sharing their lives and stories.

Notes

1. While a tendency towards a narrower definition of homelessness may be true in the case of the public imagination, the legal definition of homelessness in England and Wales is broad in international standards. Everybody without permanent housing is considered homeless, including those who are ‘roofless’ as well as those who cannot be ‘reasonably expected’ to live in their current accommodation.

2. Reflected in the idiom, ‘An Englishman's home is his [sic] castle’.

3. Derived from the Latin ‘domesticus’, meaning ‘belonging to the house’ (Mallett, 2004).

4. Feminist research on the domestic has its own silences; historically, it is dominated by middle-class white women's experiences (Wilson, 1977). For women who take pride, satisfaction, and sanctuary in the home, the contention that it can only be experienced as an oppressive space is equally exclusionary.

5. The first point of contact was an email setting out who I was, what my research was about and what it would involve. I approached services in the nearest city first, sending out thirteen emails to thirteen organizations. Seven organizations responded, five arranging a further meeting, and two declining due to not fitting the remit of the study (not having many women accessing their services). After the meetings, one more organization was deemed unsuitable due to its main user group being street drinkers, who might have struggled to give informed consent, and whose lives, it was thought, might have been too chaotic to dedicate time and effort to a participatory photography task. This contact was carried out in two waves—one at the beginning of the fieldwork year, and another half-way through, when it was felt more participants were needed.

6. Although a greater number of participants may have yielded a greater diversity of experiences to explore whether findings held true across different forms of homelessness.

7. Frankie was the research participant I spent the most time with and welcomed me into her flat to conduct interviews, cooked meals for me, and asked me questions about my life.

8. Confidence at handling the camera varied so the level of guidance differed on a person-to-person basis.

9. With the exception of Packard who noted how ‘these interviews proceeded very rapidly, with the participant providing as short an answer as possible’ (2008, p. 73).