Governing homeless mothers: the unmaking of home and family

Abstract

The home is a central place where women's identity as 'mother' is socially constructed and negotiated. Social policy is inexorably implicated in (re)producing these dominant visions of mothers, mothering, home-making and home. Yet, we know very little about how these same social policies are also implicated in women's loss of home. The article begins to address this evidence-gap. It draws on biographical research with homeless women to explore the ways in which key governing frameworks (associated with child protection processes, housing allocation policy and temporary accommodation provision in England) interact with women's status as mother, to shape the spaces they inhabit as home or not-home, materially and emotionally. We present data that illustrates how women's capacity to retain, make or rebuild a family home in times of crisis is significantly hampered by the policies and procedures they encounter in housing and social welfare systems.

Homelessness in autistic women: Defining the research agenda

“…11,14 While estimates vary, a recent report showed that 20% who have experienced violence become homeless, compared with just 1% of women who have not experienced violence. 23 This risk may be enhanced for autistic women who are at heightened risk of abuse. 24 Autistic women may therefore be particularly vulnerable to becoming homeless due to the need to escape victimization.…”

Local Government Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic in the UK: A Thematic Review

“…Reports of increasing domestic abuse across the world demonstrate some of the most immediate risks to safety that have been worsened by government 'stay at home' directions during periods of lockdown (Davidge, 2020), and by lack of alternative housing options (Bimpson and Reeve, 2020). The experience of domestic abuse undermines assumptions of security that go with home, and exposes the need for more nuanced understandings of private space, safety and connection to place (Meth, 2003;McCarthy, 2018;Bimpson et al, 2020).…”

‘It Matters How They See You’: ‘Maternal Activation’ As a Strategy to Navigate Contradictory Discourses of Motherhood and Neoliberal Activism in the Welsh Homelessness System

“…The home is well-established as a locale of critical importance to the social value replicatory function of heteronormative, idealised motherhood, with good mothering reliant upon a safe, private, secure, and stable base (Cramer, 2005;Bimpson et al, 2020). To be without a home therefore produces immediate social anxiety over mothering (Cramer, 2005;Bimpson et al, 2020).…”

“…The home is well-established as a locale of critical importance to the social value replicatory function of heteronormative, idealised motherhood, with good mothering reliant upon a safe, private, secure, and stable base (Cramer, 2005;Bimpson et al, 2020). To be without a home therefore produces immediate social anxiety over mothering (Cramer, 2005;Bimpson et al, 2020). Becoming homeless brings poor families, especially those headed by a lone female, into the full view of the state, and renders their once-private activities public and subject to scrutiny (Cruikshank, 1999;Henderson et al, 2010;Bimpson et al, 2020).…”

“…To be without a home therefore produces immediate social anxiety over mothering (Cramer, 2005;Bimpson et al, 2020). Becoming homeless brings poor families, especially those headed by a lone female, into the full view of the state, and renders their once-private activities public and subject to scrutiny (Cruikshank, 1999;Henderson et al, 2010;Bimpson et al, 2020). Homelessness is also a location where forms of power enabled by maternal identity can manifest.…”