“They say this is a home”: the challenge of “home” in residential care settings for old and young

In this article, we want to bolster a critical discussion of how the “home” is used in research on residential care, and additionally make sense of young and old residents’ feelings of resistance, through the lens of a critical geography of home. We illustrate how the home ideal might be provocative and frustrating for the residents, although previous studies point out that the ideal is used by staff and in policy to reassure residents of a sense of belonging and mastery. Examples from interviews with young unaccompanied boys as well as older residents living in residential care have been used and the analysis resulted in two themes: “Residents’ conflicting experiences of space” (shared space, restricted space and regulated space, and “Residents’ feelings of homelessness” (transitional space and encroached space). How the residents themselves understand the space that is called their home and why their home can stir ambivalent or negative feelings of isolation, exclusion, and homelessness, is relevant in order to avoid romanticizing home. Residents’ understanding of home can be different from the staff, a reminder that home is a much more complex notion than the rosy ideal.