Making home? Permitted and prohibited place-making in youth homeless accommodation

Abstract

Based on the premise that ‘home’ is more than bricks and mortar, a growing body of literature has considered how the concept might be applied to homelessness. Aligned with ‘home’, home-making refers to the construction of living spaces so that their sensory features and the practices that occur there create a pleasant environment that enhances wellbeing. However, the instability and structural constraints within which homeless people live can limit their ability to home-make. Hence, in this article, ‘place-making’ proved a useful alternative concept. This article draws on an ethnographic study in Scotland involving 22 young people and 27 staff who lived and worked respectively in a supported accommodation hostel. It demonstrates how the residents engaged in sensory practices within the tightly regulated confines of the hostel. A distinction is made between ‘permitted’ and ‘prohibited’ practices to argue that home-making is not a morally-neutral concept. Rather there are ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways for homeless people to personalise their living spaces.

Keywords:

• Homelessness
• home-making
• hostel
• material culture
• decorate
• youth

Acknowledgements

Many thanks to the young people and staff who participated in this research. Also, thanks go to Dr Sophie Hallett for our lengthy discussions that helped to inform the arguments proposed in this article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This is in contrast to the more common usage of ‘place-making’ in the discipline of planning and urban development in which ‘place’ is typically used at the scale of a neighbourhood or city.

2 The hostel and all participants have been given pseudonyms to protect their identities.

3 Buckfast is a brand of wine that is popular in Scotland

4 In other English-speaking countries, ‘menshies’ are the equivalent to ‘tags’.

5 A ‘fag’ is a slang word for a cigarette.

6 It is recognised that not all people (children for example) in owner-occupied or rental housing are able to have full privacy and control but arguably these tenures offer these qualities more than homeless situations do.

Additional information

Funding

This work was based on a Doctoral studentship award funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (award reference: 1014011).

Notes on contributors

Jennifer Hoolachan

Jennifer Hoolachan is a Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University. Her research interests are in the areas of homelessness and housing, youth studies, constructions of home and place, marginalised groups and precarity, and the sociology of deviance (with a focus on drug use). She is an ethnographer and qualitative researcher and her work is influenced by symbolic interactionism.