Not a home: Shelter families living in Canadian motels

Abstract

Given the precarity and mobility of neoliberalism, there has been increasing interest into constructs of ‘home’. In this article, the author defines ‘home’ as an active and relational process encompassing interactions between materiality and immateriality. Participant observation research conducted amongst shelter families in Toronto, Canada, living in motels can shed light on some of these larger global conversations about what ‘home’ is, and particularly, what it is not. These motels are utilized as part of the City of Toronto Shelter, Support and Housing Administration providing free shelter to impoverished families in need. Social workers, shelter managers and local faith group volunteers assert that the motels should be considered ‘home’ and the problem is that the women living in the motels with their children treat the physical space as transitory. In contrast, the women assert that the motel space is not a home and can never be made into one. The author argues that for these women, there are three critical elements missing in the motel: control over space, safety/security and privacy. The assertion that the motel space is not a home is a significant form of resistance to the regulatory bureaucratic structuring of daily life. However, despite this absence of home, the women feel strong identification as mothers and have formed systems of informal shared networks. This research helps to further illuminate not only our understandings of ‘home’, but also deepen and complicate normative associations equating ‘home’ with physical structure, domesticity and family.