Family and Space

While the ‘spatial turn’ within the social sciences has already nurtured a broad
discussion of the relation between society and space, little attention has so far been
paid to the question of what we can learn about families when exploring space in
its different facets. This book brings together international authors from the fields
of sociology, human geography, and anthropology to support the development of
space-sensitive and de-territorialised perspectives on the family that reach beyond
classical concepts such as the ‘household’ or the ‘nuclear family’. With close
attention to the implications of differing relations to space for the social fabric of
families, it presents studies of theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects
of late-modern family life. Examining the meaning of absence and presence for
parenting, the aesthetic, and sensual dimensions of everyday family life, and
its digital and media-related features aspects, Family and Space considers the
value of a range of approaches to researching the spatial elements of family life,
including ethnographic accounts, interviews, group discussions, mobile methods,
and network analyses.

Maya Halatcheva-Trapp is a postdoctoral fellow in the Faculty of Educational

Science, Psychology and Sociology at TU Dortmund University, Germany.

Giulia Montanari is an independent researcher based in Munich, Germany and

Puebla, Mexico.

Tino Schlinzig is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Humanities and Social

Sciences at the Technische Universität Dresden, Germany.
Routledge Studies in Family Sociology

This series presents the latest research on the sociology of the family, with
­particular attention to family dynamics, changing family forms, and the impact of
events in the life-course and societal transformation on family practices.
Mediated Kinship
Gender, Race and Sexuality in Donor Families
Rikke Andreassen
Family and Space
Rethinking Family Theory and Empirical Approaches
Edited by Maya Halatcheva-Trapp, Giulia Montanari and Tino Schlinzig
Family and Space
Rethinking Family Theory and
Empirical Approaches

Edited by Maya Halatcheva-Trapp,

Giulia Montanari and Tino Schlinzig
First published 2019
by Routledge
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© 2019 selection and editorial matter, Maya Halatcheva-Trapp, Giulia
Montanari and Tino Schlinzig; individual chapters, the contributors
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to be identified as the authors of the editorial material, and of the authors for
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Halatcheva-Trapp, Maya, editor. | Montanari, Giulia, editor. |
Schlinzig, Tino, editor.
Title: Family and space: rethinking family theory and empirical approaches /
edited by Maya Halatcheva-Trapp, Giulia Montanari and Tino Schlinzig.
Description: 1 Edition. | New York: Routledge, 2019. |
Series: Routledge studies in family sociology | Includes bibliographical
references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018056345 (print) | LCCN 2018057494 (ebook) |
ISBN 9781351017954 (ebk) | ISBN 9781351017947 (web pdf ) |
ISBN 9781351017930 (epub) | ISBN 9781351017923 (mobi/kindle) |
ISBN 9781138497757 (hbk)
Subjects: LCSH: Families. | Communication in families. | Parenting.
Classification: LCC HQ728 (ebook) | LCC HQ728 .F3116 2019 (print) |
DDC 306.85–dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018056345
ISBN: 978-1-138-49775-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-351-01795-4 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
by Deanta Global Publishing Services, Chennai, India
Contents

List of figures viii

List of tables ix
About the authors x

1 Introduction: Rethinking family and space in mobile times 1

MAYA HALATCHEVA-TRAPP, GIULIA MONTANARI AND TINO SCHLINZIG

PART I
Understanding family and space: Theories and concepts 9

2 Co-presence and family: A discussion of a sociological category

and conceptual considerations 11
MARIE-KRISTIN DÖBLER

3 Parenthood as a symbolic order: The perspective of the sociology

of knowledge and discourse theory 23
MAYA HALATCHEVA-TRAPP

4 Between things: Situating (post-)migration and material culture in

social space 35
FRIEDEMANN NEUMANN AND HANS PETER HAHN

5 Space and the intersection of gender, work and family:

Recent currents in US scholarship 46
MARINA A. ADLER
vi Contents
PART II
Space-sensitive research on family and identity:
Methodology and methods 59

6 Notions of space and family: The documentary method approach to

analyse communication about family life 61
GIULIA MONTANARI

7 Social relations, space, and place: Reconstructing family networks

in the context of multi-local living arrangements 73
KERSTIN HEIN, MICHAELA SCHIER AND TINO SCHLINZIG

8 Multi-local family life: Researching the commute between two

worlds using video-supported mobile participant observation 88
ANNA MONZ, DIANE NIMMO AND MICHAELA SCHIER

9 Sensory encounters and mobile technologies: Mundane intimacies

as a site for knowing 99
SARAH PINK, JOLYNNA SINANAN, HEATHER HORST AND LARISSA HJORTH

PART III
Space in family – family in space: Interrelations in the
focus of empirical research 109

10 Falling pregnant and space: The reconstruction of procreation from

a practice theory perspective 111
DIANE NIMMO

11 Mobile couple relationships: Arranging times of presence and

absence by means of mobile ICT 122
ANNA MONZ

12 Between convergence and divergence: Territorialisation practices

within multi-local post-separation families 134
TINO SCHLINZIG

13 Living in two homes: Spatial appropriation and spatial

constructions by children in post-separation multi-local families 147
DIANE NIMMO AND MICHAELA SCHIER
 Contents  vii
14 A room with a vacuum: Spatial perceptions and appropriations
of children’s rooms in the context of shared residence 159
BENOÎT HACHET

15 Fatherhood post-separation: Practicing fathering from a distance

and in brief co-present phases 170
MICHAELA SCHIER

16 ‘How can I be at home again?’: Family (dis)continuities

concerning Polish remigration in the context of digital
communication technologies 181
JAGODA MOTOWIDLO

17 The playground and the pub: About the merging of age-specific

urban domains into family spaces 192
LIA KARSTEN

18 The ‘authentic’ family: On the aesthetic representation of family

and living spaces in Mom lifestyle blogs 203
PETRA SCHMIDT

19 Conclusion: Opening space for family studies 215

MAYA HALATCHEVA-TRAPP, GIULIA MONTANARI AND TINO SCHLINZIG

Index 225
Figures

7.1 Ego-centred network map of Eva (10), living in a shared

residence family arrangement 79
7.2 Ego-centred network map of Louisa (9), living in a shared
residence family arrangement 80
7.3 Socio-spatial network structure of Sophie (8) 82
7.4 Socio-spatial network structure of Melanie (10) 82
9.1 Nancy showed us how she googles recipes 105
16.1 Observation protocol, Urbanski family, July 20, 2015 186
16.2 Transcript of a Skype conversation, Kowalski family 187
17.1 Intergenerational spaces 197
18.1 Family portrait of the Häussler family in the Littleyears blog 207
18.2 Photograph from the portrait series of the Häussler family,
Littleyears 2017 210
Tables

6.1 Two distinct ways of contextualising everyday family life 66

17.1 Connotations city/child 193
17.2 Number of cars and children in Amsterdam 1950–1975 196
About the authors

Marina A. Adler is Professor of Sociology and Graduate Program Director of

the Department of Sociology, Anthropology, and Health Administration and
Policy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, USA. Her most
recent book (with Karl Lenz) is Father Involvement in the Early Years: An
International Comparison of Policy and Practice (2016). She has also pub-
lished two German language books (with Karl Lenz), Gendered Relationships
(2011) and Gendered Structures (2010). Her research involves cross-national
gender, work, and family intersections, inequality (race, class, gender) and
social change, social policy, and community well-being.
Marie-Kristin Döbler studied sociology, social psychology, and philosophy
at the Open University (Milton Keynes/Newcastle, UK) and the Ludwig-
Maximilians-University (Munich, Germany). She was an assistant of research
staff at the Institute of Sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University and
DFG scholar for her PhD project. Currently she is a member of research staff at
the institute of sociology in Erlangen-Nürnberg (Germany). In present research
projects she deals with non-presence in intimate relationships and life-quality
of elderly in residential care. She recently co-edited a book about ‘social mem-
ory and media’ (Sebald/Döbler: (Digitale) Medien und soziale Gedächtnisse).
Research interests: close and intimate relationships (family, couples, friends);
presence, interactions and situations; sociology of knowledge and memory.
Benoît Hachet is a sociologist at Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales
in Paris and a member of the IRIS Research Centre (Institut de Recherche
Interdisciplinaire sur les enjeux Sociaux). He is completing a thesis on the tem-
poral experience of shared residence, as experienced by parents. His research
on conjugal separations is at the crossroads of family and time sociology. He
has published articles on the temporal organisation of shared custody, both in
the period of daily life and in the life course perspective, as well as on the con-
troversial psychological issues surrounding this practice in France. His recent
publications include:

Hachet, B. (forthcoming). L’alternance et ses moments. Age, genre et tempo-

ralités de la résidence alternée, Enfances, Familles, Générations, 27.
 About the authors  xi
Hachet, B. (forthcoming). Le travail du temps dans les familles contempo-
raines/The work of time in contemporary families, Introduction au Dossier:
Comment les familles construisent leurs temps? Comment le temps con-
struit les familles?, Enfances, Familles, Générations, 29.

Hans Peter Hahn is Professor for Anthropology with special focus on Africa at
Goethe-University of Frankfurt am Main. His research interests are oriented
towards material culture, consumption, and the impact of globalisation on non-
western societies. He edited a book on ‘Consumption in Africa’ (Lit, 2008),
focussing on household economies in Africa. He participated in a research
programme on globalisation in Africa (2000–2007), investigating the many
roles of ‘global goods’ in West Africa. He recently initiated a research project
dealing with the scientific benefits of digitised collections of objects. Other
ongoing research initiatives are linked with the semiotic concept of polyva-
lence in material culture studies. Hahn’s recent publications include an edited
volume on the ‘Obstinacy of Things’ (2015), on ‘Marcel Mauss’ writings on
money’ (2015), and on the history of ethnographic collections in Germany
(‘Ethnologie und Weltkulturenmuseum’, 2017).
Maya Halatcheva-Trapp is a current postdoctoral researcher at the TU Dortmund
University (Germany). She studied psychology at the Sofia University ‘St.
Kliment Ohridski’ (Bulgaria), sociology at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University
in Munich (Germany), and obtained a PhD in sociology from the Ludwig-
Maximilians-University. In her dissertation, she focuses on the methodological
connection between interpretive patterns and discourse. This link is empirically
elaborated through the example of post-separation family counselling. Research
interests: family studies, sociology of knowledge, discourse theory, sociology
of emotions, qualitative methodology, and methods of social research.
Kerstin Hein holds a PhD in Psychology and Sociology obtained at the Ludwig-
Maximilians-University in Munich and a degree in psychology obtained at the
University of Diego Portales in Santiago de Chile. Mrs. Hein was Lecturer in
Qualitative Research Methods at the University Diego Portales and Associate
Professor in Social Psychology and Qualitative Research Methods at the
University of Santiago de Chile. In Germany, she worked as research assistant
in several studies of the German Youth Institute in Munich. At present, she is
responsible for the Research Coordination at the Centre of Pediatric Palliative
Care at the University Children’s Hospital in Munich. Main research topics are
migration and cultural identity, social networks, family and family policies,
and pediatric palliative care.
Larissa Hjorth is a digital ethnographer, artist, Distinguished Professor and
Director of the Design & Creative Practice platform at RMIT University,
Australia. The research platform is committed to creative and design solutions
to health and social issues. Hjorth has a commitment to critical, ethnographic,
creative, and interdisciplinary understandings of the socio-cultural dimensions
of media practices in the Asia-Pacific region.
xii About the authors
Heather Horst is a sociocultural anthropologist whose research focuses upon
understanding how digital media, technology, and other forms of material cul-
ture mediate relationships, communication, learning, mobility, and our sense
of being human. Her current research explores transformations in the telecom-
munications industry and the emergence of new mobile media practices across
the Asia-Pacific region. Heather’s recent publications include:

Horst, H. A. and Miller, D. (Eds.) (2012). Digital Anthropology. London/

New York.
Foster, R. J., Horst, H. A. (Eds.) (2018). The Moral Economy of Mobile
Phones: Pacific Islands Perspectives. Acton.

Lia Karsten is Associate Professor in Urban Geographies at the University of

Amsterdam. Her research interests include three interrelated topics: children’s
geographies, changing family life, and the in/exclusion in public space. She
published many articles and several books on changing childhoods and new
forms of inequality and segregation. Lia is the author of the most cited paper in
children’s geographies that traces historical changes in city children’s every-
day life (Karsten, 2005). Recent research focuses on the reclaiming of the city
by young middle-class families (Yupps), the rise of new urban consumption
spaces for children, and vertical family living in high density cities. She had
visiting professorships in Uppsala, New York, and Hong Kong. In 2013 Lia
received an honorary doctorate from the University of Uppsala.
Giulia Montanari studied human geography at the Ludwig-Maximilians-
University (Munich, Germany) and worked as a researcher at the Leibniz
Institute for Regional Geography until 2015. She finished her PhD in 2016 at
the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology with a thesis on grandparents’ commu-
nication about family life and space. She is currently also working on visual
discourses and visited the University of Puebla, Mexico in 2017 as a post-
doctoral fellow. Her main research interests are family discourses, documen-
tary methods, visual methods, and protest cultures. Her recent publications
include:

Montanari, G. (2015). Reden über den Familienalltag im multilokalen Raum –

Raumzeitpfade zur Analyse von Gesprächsstilen. Berichte, Geographie und
Landeskunde, 89(4), 355–373.
Schier, M., Schlinzig, T. and Montanari, G. (2015). The logic of multi-local
living arrangements: Methodological challenges and the potential of quali-
tative approaches. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie,
106(4), 425–438.

Anna Monz is a senior researcher and project manager at the Institute for Social
Science Research in Munich, Germany. She studied sociology of work and
family sociology in Munich and Kassel and obtained her doctoral degree in
 About the authors  xiii
2016. The main focus of her research lies on work and family relation, job
mobility, work and health and care work. Recent publications include:

Monz, A. (2018). Mobile Arbeit, mobile Eltern. Körperliche und virtuelle

Kopräsenz in der Paarbeziehung berufsmobiler Eltern [Mobile work,
mobile parents]. Wiesbaden.
Monz, A. (2017). Mobile Arbeit und Work-Life Balance [Mobile work and
work-life-balance]. In: Breisig et al. (Eds.). Mobile Arbeit gesund gestalten
[corporate health management for mobile workers], practice bulletin.

Jagoda Motowidlo gained her M.A. degree in sociology at the University of

Bielefeld. Between 2012–2016 she worked as a research assistant at the
University of Giessen, focusing her studies on media sociology and trans-
national migration. She also participated as an associated researcher in the
DFG-funded project ‘The mediatisation of parent-child-relationships in the
context of transnational migration’ between 2015–2017. In 2016 she joined
the Institute of Sociology at the University of Dresden where she is writing
her PhD on trans-state families’ appropriation of social media from a conflict
theory perspective. General research interests: transnational families, media
sociology, videography, microsociological theory of conflict, conversation
analysis, ethnomethodology. Her recent publications include:

Motowidlo, J., Trischler, R. (2018). Face to Screen. Eine techniksoziologis-

che Betrachtung videographischer Forschungspraxis in bildschirmbasi-
erten Situationen In: C. Moritz, C. Michael (Eds.). Handbuch Qualitative
Videoanalyse. Wiesbaden.
Greschke, H., Motowidlo, J. (forthcoming): Getrennt zusammenleben: Soziotech­
nische Konstellationen und Praktiken der Fürsorge und Erziehung im Kontext
von Transmigration. In: Soziale Welt, Sonderheft Digitale Soziologie.

Friedemann Neumann studied anthropology, sociology, and history at the

Goethe-University Frankfurt am Main. He is a research assistant at the
Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology, as a part of the BMBF
funded project ‘Mobile Worlds’. In this context, he currently studies material
cultures of migratory households (mainly) in Hamburg (Germany). Neumann
is also an associated member of the DFG Research Training Group 1576
‘Value and Equivalence’. His main research topics are material culture, (post-)
migration, social space, household, urban anthropology, and everyday life. His
recent publications include:

Hahn, H. P. and Neumann, F. (Eds.) (2018). Haushalte & Migration. Neue

Perspektiven auf die Alltäglichkeit kultureller Diversität. Frankfurt am
Main (in preparation).
Neumann, Fridemann (2016). Die Ausnahme als Alltag. Gender und Migration
in saharauischen Haushalten des algerischen Exils. Münster.
xiv About the authors
Diane Nimmo (Röhrner) studied Sociology at Ludwig-Maximilians-University
(LMU) in Munich, Germany, and has gone on to collaborate closely with the
German Youth Institute (DJI). She is a qualitative researcher focusing on the
sociology of the family, couple relationships and culture. Between 2009 and
2014 she was a member of the Schumpeter-Research Group ‘Multi-Locality
of Families’ funded by the Volkswagen Foundation (VolkswagenStiftung).
She then worked on the research project ‘Pathways to (biological) parenthood’
funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG). In 2017/18 she received a
fellowship to work on her qualitative oriented dissertation-project entitled ‘On
the interrelation of sexuality and conception – A micro-sociological analysis’.
Currently she is working on finishing her doctoral thesis in Australia.
Sarah Pink is Distinguished Professor in the School of Media and Communication
at RMIT University, Australia. Her most recent books include Making homes
(2017), Anthropologies and Futures (2017) and Uncertainty and Possibility
(2018). Her research is currently focused on design anthropological approaches
to emerging technologies and forms of well-being, and includes projects
about autonomous driving vehicles, screenless futures and self-tracking and
personal data.
Michaela Schier holds a doctorate in human geography and since 2009 has
headed the Schumpeter-Research Group ‘Multi-Local Families’, funded
by the Volkswagen Foundation. After her interim Professorship for Human
Geography at the Institute of Geography, University of Innsbruck, Austria,
she continues to work there as a lecturer and senior researcher. At the same
time, she is Managing Director of a civic association in Munich, Germany,
dealing with urban development issues. Recently she published, together with
colleagues, two special issues, ‘The sedentary in the mobile: residential multi-
locality as a way of life’ (2017, in German) and ‘Multi-locality Studies – A
Residential Perspective’ (2015). She has also published two German language
books (with colleagues), Gender Relations and Spatial Structures (2010) and
Blurring Work – Blurring Family. Border Management in Everyday Life as
a New Challenge (2009). Her research involves residential multi-locality and
mobility studies; children’s and family geography, fathering, everyday prac-
tices; post-separation families; gender, work and family intersections; qualita-
tive social research.
Tino Schlinzig is Sociologist in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences
at Technische Universität Dresden in Germany. His research interests are
currently focused on multi-local dwelling and mobility, identity theories,
interpretative family sociology, sociology of knowledge and architecture.
He studied in Dresden and Wellington/New Zealand and earned his Ph.D.
in 2016 with the work ‘Identity Politics of Multi-local Post-Separation
Families. Creating Cohesion and Belonging in Shared Residence Families’.
In 2013/2014 he was Visiting Researcher at the ETH Wohnforum/ETH Case
(Centre for Research on Architecture, Society & the Built Environment) at
 About the authors  xv
ETH Zurich, Department of Architecture. From 2010 to 2016 he was a mem-
ber of the Schumpeter research group ‘Multi-Local Families’, funded by the
Volkswagen Foundation, at the German Youth Institute in Munich/Germany
(DJI). His recent publications include:

Schier, M. and Schlinzig, T. (2016). Anwesenheit in Abwesenheit. Digitale

Elternschaft in mobilen Gegenwartsgesellschaften [Presence in Absence.
Digital Parenthood in Postmodern Mobile Societies]. In H. Friese et al.
(Eds.). Handbuch Soziale Praktiken und Digitale Alltagswelten. Wiesbaden.
Schier, M., Schlinzig, T. and Montanari, G. (2015). The Logic of Multi-
Local Living Arrangements: Methodological Challenges and the Potential
of Qualitative Approaches. Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale
Geografie/Journal of Economic and Social Geography, 106(4), 425–438.

Petra Schmidt has been a PhD Fellow in the Department of European Ethnology
at the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich, Germany since 2015. Her
PhD project with the preliminary title ‘Mom Lifestyle Blogs – Blogging as
Work’ focuses on the relevance of aesthetic practices in paid work and its
different characteristics using the example of blogging. Her research interests
currently include the areas of work, family, gender and creativity. In 2010,
she completed her Master in European Ethnology on the topic of motherhood
and care work and the demands on quality connected with these. Her recent
publications include:

Schmidt, P. (2014). Total Quality Mama. Mutterschaft aus der Perspektive

Arbeit [Motherhood from the Perspective of Work]. Munich.
Schmidt, P. (2017). Blog – Ästhetik – Arbeit. Ästhetische Arbeitspraxen in
einem Mütter-Lifestyleblog [Blog_Aesthetics_Work. Aesthetic work prac-
tices in a mom lifestyle blog]. In O. Sutter and V. Flor (Eds.). Ästhetisierung
der Arbeit. Empirische Kulturanalysen des kognitiven Kapitalismus.
Münster, pp. 193–212.

Jolynna Sinanan is a Research Fellow in Digital Media and Ethnography at the

University of Sydney. She is the author of Social Media in Trinidad (2017)
and co-author of Visualising Facebook (2017) and Webcam (2014) with Daniel
Miller. Her research interests are digital cultures, migration, non-resident
work, and family relationships.
1 Introduction
Rethinking family and space in mobile times
Maya Halatcheva-Trapp, Giulia Montanari
and Tino Schlinzig

‘The modern individual is, above all else, a mobile human being’, Richard Sennett
claims in his 1994 book Flesh and Stone (p. 255f.) – at that time this still meant
moving from one locality to another in a rather physical sense. More than 20 years
later mobility has changed and even expanded from physical means to others
including the virtual and imagined (see Büscher and Urry, 2009). These are parts
of an accelerating transformation process of societies adapting to the current use
of new transport systems, telecommunications, and information media that con-
vey what Harvey (1989) described as ‘time-space compression’.
The present volume itself can be read as a witness to this core idea. It was com-
piled in a social space beyond, between, and in changing geographical places. The
main editorial work has been done between the German cities of Berlin, Dortmund,
Dresden, and Munich as well as Burgas/Bulgaria, Puebla/Mexico, and Zurich/
Switzerland. As editors, we have almost never been in the same place and thus
physically co-present when working on the book project. At the same time, we
were intensively virtually co-present and connected in a ‘polymedia environment’
(see Madianou and Miller, 2012; Baldassar, 2008; Licoppe, 2004), using informa-
tion and communication technologies (ICT) such as email, video conferencing
via instant messenger, and cloud storage platforms. This enabled us to transcend
physical space and build up a network of colleagues spanning different localities
to contribute to the umbrella topic of Family and Space with current research and
theoretical considerations. Just as everyone’s everyday life stretches between dif-
ferent places of work and private life, our collaboration was also organised multi-
locally in the sense of being located, working, and living in more than one place
and being repeatedly and simultaneously mobile between them (see Hilti, 2016,
p. 468). That only three people are to be found in such numerous and international
places is the result of complex and demanding processes of negotiating personal
relationships, family, and work in times of increasingly required (if not enforced)
and desired spatial flexibility. Changing and diversifying mobility, space/place-
making processes, and ICT-mediated practices represent a selection of aspects
that come to the fore when focusing the manifold topic of family and space. This
will be part of what this book is about.
When reflecting on all this, we have been able to build on rich exchanges
with our colleagues from the Schumpeter project group ‘Multi-locality of family:
2 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 
The management of family life under spatial separation’, supported by the
Volkswagen Foundation, at the German Youth Institute (DJI) in Munich, as
well as the influential works of the invited authors, with whom the members of
the group have already collaborated. The book will showcase the current state
of research and discussions presented at two international workshops organised
by the research group: ‘The Everyday Life of Multi-local Families: Concepts,
Methods and the Example of Post-Separation Families’ in 2011 and ‘Family –
Space – Identity: Theoretical and Empirical Approaches after the Spatial Turn’ in
2016. However, with this volume we aim to go one step further. This book shall
contribute to the latest discourse on different lines of studies after the spatial turn
that vary not only in respect to the applied and developed concepts of space, co-
presence, and family life, but it also aims to grasp a broad spectrum of theoretical
and methodological approaches that can be found in the research fields of disci-
plines as sociology, geography, and cultural anthropology.

Bringing space into the fore of family studies

Space as a category within social theory is nothing new; rather, it seems appro-
priate to think of a long-lasting and recurring space forgottenness within sociol-
ogy (Schroer, 2006). In fact, space has repeatedly stimulated sometimes heated
discussions within sociological discourse and the social sciences in general. As
Warf and Arias (2008) illustrate, the so-called ‘spatial turn’ has come in waves.
It began with the Chicago School in the 1920s, which introduced the physical
environment as a relevant social category. Lefebvre and Foucault opened up the
discussion of the production of space in the 1960s, which was followed by the
addition of David Harvey’s Marxist-geographical approach. The geographer
Edward Soja developed this account further with his ‘thirdspace’ concept. From
the 1990s on, Manuel Castells introduced the ‘spaces of flows’ (Warf and Arias,
2008, p. 3). Ultimately, German sociologist Martina Löw proposed a sociol-
ogy of space on the basis of Giddens’ practice-theory account. Here, space is
viewed as structuring the social as well being constantly socially produced (Löw,
2016). In reviewing the accounts of sociological classics such as Norbert Elias,
Georg Simmel, Emile Durkheim, Niklas Luhmann, Michel Foucault, and Henri
Lefebvre, alongside the geographical perspectives of Doreen Massey and David
Harvey, she brings together the already existing sociological discussion – which
goes far beyond an essentialistic concept of space as a mere physical substrate,
preceding the social – and focusses on the manifold cognitive, social, and cultural
processes of (re)production of space (Löw, 2016, p. 105ff.). A similar approach
was followed by Markus Schroer, who also stresses the necessity of taking the
multilevel character and plurality of spatial relationships into consideration, and
who takes thorough account of the dimension of time (Schroer, 2006).
While the ‘spatial turn’ within the social sciences has already given rise to a
broad discussion on the relation between society and space, little attention has
been paid to the question of what we can learn about families from exploring
space in its different facets. This is despite the fact that empirical findings hint
 Introduction 3
at a different social relation to space (Löw, 2016, p. 55ff.; Warf and Arias, 2008,
p. 4ff.) – or as Löw put it, a ‘changing practice of the organization of proximity’
(Löw, 2016, p. 226): one that brings with it consequences for the social fabric of
families. For instance, socioeconomic changes are inducing differentiated mobil-
ity patterns in the everyday lives of families. Higher divorce and separation rates,
as well as employment conditions that demand higher physical as well as tem-
poral flexibility, account in part for these developments. Furthermore, society’s
renegotiation of the relation between private and public spaces, stimulated by new
technological developments, also contributes to a complex social environment
that reflects on, and is reflected within, families.
It is salient that most contributions to date neglect the multifaceted phenom-
enon of spatially dispersed family arrangements, aiming at both the practical
implications of family life beyond multiple households and issues concerned with
the construction of personal and group identity from the children’s and parents’
perspectives. However, there is a noticeable tendency towards bringing both cat-
egories together to encompass the current transformations in the notion of fam-
ily, primarily through migration processes in the course of war and expulsion
and economic constraints, the increase in multi-local family arrangements after
separation and divorce, higher mobility demands in the context of employment,
and the growing labour force participation of women. The long-established con-
nection between family and household in sociological theory and research needs
to be reconsidered, and also recognised within teachings in sociology, geography,
and anthropology. The present book aims to make a substantial contribution in
this regard by intensifying the discourse in this interdisciplinary research field.
There is an extensive corpus of literature within a broad field of family and
space – focusing both on theoretical considerations as well as empirical stud-
ies (see e.g. Grassi and Ferreira, 2016; Kilkey and Palenga-Moolenbeck, 2016;
Brannen, 2015; Vanderbeck and Worth, 2015; Baldassar and Merla, 2014;
Holdsworth, 2013; Madianou and Miller, 2012; Rytter and Olwig, 2011; Hallmann
2010). The above-listed books place the relationship of family and space mainly
within the framework of transnational migration, examining globalisation pro-
cesses and their impact on intergenerational family life. Space is presumed to
be an analytical category, but is not systematically questioned and theorised. All
follow a rather open idea of space as relational, which seems to be the state of
the art conception that still lacks a more profound discussion (Löw, 2016, p. viii).
Family and space tend to be viewed in isolation and space is considered to be
something peripheral to the family and/or to affect family life from the outside.
Space and place, a well-established conceptual couple, at least within geogra-
phy (see e.g. Hallmann, 2010; Warf and Arias, 2008, p. 2), serve as an object
of study rather than a theoretical category when tackling themes such as migra-
tion and mobility (Baldassar and Merla, 2014; Holdsworth, 2013; Kilkey and
Palerga-Moolenbeck, 2016), family places like the zoo or home (Hallman, 2010),
mediated communication (Madianou and Miller, 2012), or sites of intergenera-
tional encounter (Vanderbeck and Worth, 2015). Contributions like Hallman’s,
which specifically aimed at the connection between family and space, opened
4 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 
up this broad field of family, also hoping for a deeper understanding of its link-
age that reaches beyond disciplinary boundaries: ‘There will also need to be new
theories applied, new concepts tested, and applications of new methodologies, as
well as productive collaboration between geographers and researchers in cognate
fields such as nursing, sociology, gerontology, native studies, and anthropology,
to name but a few, for a more mature family-geographies scholarship to develop.’
(Hallmann, 2010, p. 222).

The present volume

Our book presents various perspectives and current developments. The contribu-
tions are not limited to the presentation of empirical research, as they also dis-
cuss theoretical and methodological approaches to the sociological analysis and
understanding of the manifold phenomena in the context of family and space.
In consequence, the book suggests an integrative view of family and space not
as isolated but interwoven categories. What we are not aiming for, though, is to
propose a specific view on what space is ontologically – such as Löw’s proposed
Giddens-related reading of space as a duality that includes the production of space
as well as space as the condition of social action (Löw, 2016, e.g. pp. vii/xiv). In
our final remarks in the last chapter of the book, we will instead examine more
closely the different thematic and conceptual views on space and family that the
contributions reflect.
In this way we pursue a high level of abstraction on the one hand, and on the
other a differentiated picture of the social reality of contemporary family life.
Thus, our anthology addresses all analytical levels – theoretical, conceptual,
methodical, and empirical. It underlines the synergetic slurring of theory develop-
ment and empirical research for the production of sociological knowledge and
opens up new questions for future research.
The book Family and Space. Rethinking Family Theory and Empirical
Approaches brings together international authors from the fields of sociology,
human geography, and sociocultural anthropology to support the development of
space-sensitive and de-territorialised perspectives that reach beyond predominant
concepts such as the ‘household’ or the ‘nuclear family’. The book tackles theo-
retical, conceptual, empirical, and methodological aspects of late-modern family
life. While co-presence is a conceptual aspect of space that will be investigated
more deeply in several contributions, aesthetic and sensory dimensions in every-
day family life, media, and digital aspects are further topics of discussion. The
project explores the conceptual value of approaches such as discourse and com-
munication theory, the interpretative paradigm, practice theory, and the sociol-
ogy of knowledge, and examines methodological questions of different empirical
methods such as ethnographic accounts, interviews, group discussions, mobile
methods, and network analyses.
In the course of this, we aim for good reason to go beyond the disciplinary
boundaries of sociology, as the series in which the book appears at first glance
recommends. In essence, the resultant epistemological question is how can new
 Introduction 5
scientific knowledge be achieved if the research subject, with its many dimen-
sions, also challenges disciplinary boundaries? Although we are far from trivial-
ising the manifold challenges of interdisciplinary exchanges, such as in terms of
terminology and methodology, we suggest looking beyond disciplinary borders
and aim to align endeavours with the common subject, knowing this means charg-
ing at an already opening door. While preparing this publication we cooperated
across diverse fields of research and combined discussion on space, a core cat-
egory of social geography in particular, with theoretical and empirical findings
on family, with its long tradition from sociology. Our experience of conjoining
these partly overlapping categories demonstrates that cultural anthropology can
be brought together fruitfully and advance the respective research work.
The chapters in the book will be structured into three main chapters, framed by
this introduction and a concluding contribution.

Part I – Understanding family and space: Theories and concepts

The first part of the book is concerned with theoretical and conceptual approaches,
embedding family in an interpretative sociology and suggesting analytical con-
nections between the categories family and space. All contributions are empiri-
cally grounded, while most of the fieldwork is situated in Germany. Marie-Kristin
Döbler elaborates on the relationship between co-presence, family, and space,
illustrating her considerations on an empirical study of couples living apart
together. Maya Halatcheva-Trapp shows the analytical potential of a sociology of
knowledge and discourse theory for researching family and gendered space on the
basis of a study on discourses in post-separation family counselling. Friedemann
Neumann and Hans Peter Hahn draw attention to the material dimension of
migration processes, applying an anthropological perspective on everyday life in
migrant households, understood as transnational social spaces. Finally, Marina
Adler provides an overview of scholarship involving spatial concepts in American
sociology, using a gender, work, and family intersectional lens, and suggests pos-
sible ways to narrow the conceptual and research gap between the US and Europe.

Part II – Space-sensitive research on family and identity:

Methodology and methods
This part is concerned with both epistemological questions and empirical meth-
ods for the research on family, space, and their interplay. The contribution of
Giulia Montanari is empirically grounded in a German setting and highlights the
relationship between family and various semantic notions of space, stressing the
analytical potential of the documentary method within the framework of a soci-
ology of knowledge. Adding to this, Kerstin Hein and colleagues pay particular
attention to the relationship between family, social relationships, space, and place
by discussing different qualitative approaches in order to map and analyse social
networks. With an eye on mobility within German translocal family networks,
Anna Monz et al. ‘follow the people’ by suggesting an ethnographic approach
6 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 
to multi-local families after separation and divorce, discussing the strengths and
limitations of videography. Exploring the interrelation between transnational
families and digital technologies, Sarah Pink and colleagues examine the idea of
the sensory encounter as a route for researching everyday life, where the video
enables family members to share sensory and unspoken knowledge.

Part III – Space in family – family in space: Interrelations in the focus

of empirical research
In order to incorporate the diverse perspectives and the richness of possible
research objects, the third part gathers together empirical contributions that illu-
minate various connections between family and space beyond traditional fam-
ily arrangements. Diane Nimmo addresses sexuality and space, presenting the
results of a micro-sociological study on pregnancy with a focus on the interac-
tion of both physical and mental activities as well as of situational and spatial
conditions. Anna Monz focusses on the interface of family and labour studies,
examining the conduct of the everyday lives of German couples in multi-local
arrangements. Expanding the view of the family as a whole and linking family
and space sociology, Tino Schlinzig discusses identity politics and territorialisa-
tion practices of shared residence families living in Germany after separation and
divorce. Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier introduce the case of post-separation
families and portray the way children give meaning as well as congruence to their
two homes. In addition to the perspective on commuting children, and drawing
on the example of shared residence arrangements after separation, Benoît Hachet
analyses how French parents deal with the empty rooms of their children during
their absence emotionally, socially, and practically. Michaela Schier introduces
empirical findings on practices of doing fatherhood from a distance, referring to
practice theory and employing an ethnographical approach. Jagoda Motowidlo
pays special attention to emerging forms of conflict in multi-local arrangements,
exploring Polish-German transnational families. With special consideration for
space as a central category, Lia Karsten studies urban spaces in the Netherlands,
originally designed for age-specific use, which are currently being reinterpreted
by children and adults and thus becoming family domains. Finally, virtual social
spaces are the focus of cultural anthropologist Petra Schmidt, who provides us
with insights into the diversity of aestheticisation practices in the online blogs of
German mothers.
The concluding contribution by the editors will summarise the collected find-
ings and also discuss conceptual as well as methodical and methodological gaps
in research and potential future challenges for space-sensitive family research.

Acknowledgements
As mentioned before, this book is the result of a research collaboration that had its
home with the Schumpeter Research Group ‘Multi-locality of family: The man-
agement of family life under spatial separation’. We want to thank its founder
 Introduction 7
Dr. Michaela Schier for inviting us into this context and her efforts to open up a
scientific space of exchange and mutual appreciation. She has brought us together,
PhD students from different fields and universities. She supported our discussions
with her scientific expertise and strongly promoted us in the early academic phase.
We would also like to thank the authors of the book, who were engaged and reli-
able, and trusted the idea of the project from the beginning. We also thank the
publisher Routledge for being open to our idea and welcoming it to the series
‘Routledge Studies in Family Sociology’. The excellent support by the editor Neil
Jordan facilitated smooth cooperation and has made things easier in many ways.
In addition, we are very grateful to the two editors Richard Neal (Berlin) and
Michael Nimmo (Munich) for the careful editing of the manuscripts and numerous
valuable comments, without which the book would not be available in this quality.
We also want to thank the following for their generous financial support in the
preparation of this book: School of Humanities and Social Sciences at Technische
Universität Dresden, Association of Friends and Sponsors of TU Dresden e.V.,
and Association of Friends of TU Dortmund University e.V.

References
Baldassar, L. and Merla, L. (Eds.) (2014). Transnational Families, Migration and the
Circulation of Care. Understanding Mobility and Absence in Family Life. London/New
York: Routledge.
Baldassar, L. (2008). Missing Kin and Longing to Be Together. Journal of Intercultural
Studies 29(3), 247–266.
Brannen, J. (2015). Fathers and Sons Generations, Families and Migration. Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan.
Büscher, M. and Urry, J. (2009). Mobile Methods and the Empirical. European Journal of
Social Theory 12(1), 99–116.
Grassi, M. and Ferreira, T. (Eds.) (2016). Mobility and Family in Transnational Space.
Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
Hallmann, B. C. (Ed.) (2010). Family Geographies. The Spatiality of Families and Family
Life. Ontario: Oxford University Press.
Harvey, D. (1989). The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the Origins of
Cultural Change. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Hilti, N. (2016). Multi-local Lifeworlds: Between Movement and Mooring.Cultural
Studies 30(3), 467–482.
Holdsworth, C. (2013). Family and Intimate Mobilities. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
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tion and Mobility. Global Perspectives through the Life Course. London: Palgrave
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Licoppe, C. (2004). ‘Connected’ Presence: The Emergence of a New Repertoire for Manag­
ing Social Relationships in a Changing Communication Technoscape. Environment
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Löw, M. (2016). The Sociology of Space. Materiality, Social Structures, and Action. New
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Madianou, M. and Miller, D. (2012). Migration and New Media. Transnational Families
and Polymedia. London/New York: Routledge.
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Rytter, M. and Olwig, K. (Eds.) (2011). Mobile Bodies, Mobile Souls. Family, Religion and
Migration in a Global World. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press.
Schroer, M. (2006). Räume, Orte, Grenzen. Auf dem Weg zu einer Soziologie des Raums.
Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp.
Sennett, R. (1994). Flesh and Stone. The Body and the City in Western Civilization. New
York/London: W. W. Norton & Company.
Vanderbeck, R. M. and Worth, N. (Eds.) (2015). Intergenerational Space. Routledge
Studies in Human Geography. London/New York: Routledge.
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Part I

Understanding family
and space
Theories and concepts
2 Co-presence and family
A discussion of a sociological category
and conceptual considerations
Marie-Kristin Döbler

Ideal types of family and the ‘Smith’ case study

Even though his mother was a stay-at-home mom, the Smiths had lots of h­ ousehold
staff and Sam was brought up by a nanny. Sam’s father worked long hours, thus
was hardly ever at home. Despite domestic separation (staff were confined to
different locations in the house that were not only specialised for certain duties
but also designed to limit encounters), Sam interacted with the staff far more
frequently than with his parents, made friends with them, and established an espe-
cially close relationship with his nanny. Sam felt that he could (emotionally) reach
his nanny, contrary to his cold-hearted and self-interested mother. By the time he
turned 20, he had graduated from high school and fallen in love with Susan, and
they moved in together in their own flat. Susan frequently made the journey to
meet up with her parents and bridged the time in between through regular phone
calls. Sam had relatively little contact with his parents and refused to take their
money, since that would have given them a constant presence in his new life.
Contact further decreased after Sam and Susan got married and the children Tina
and Tom were born; Sam wanted to shelter the nucleus – constituted by himself,
Susan, and the children – against his mother’s influence. When Susan was preg-
nant with their second child, Susan and Sam were earning quite well and could
buy a house in the suburbs. Consequently, Sam started commuting, while Susan
first stayed at home with Tina and Tom before she started working part-time again
close by; even if this work was below her qualification, the Smiths had decided
that at least one parent should be reliably present at home – Sam left before the
children got up and returned when they had already gone to bed. During the time
at home he was absent-minded, pondered problems encountered at work and often
had to make business calls. After some years, Sam was promoted; he was given
responsibility for a new site far away. He rented a flat at the place of work and
visited home every fourth week for a long weekend. Since he no longer lost time
by commuting and therefore had free evenings which he spent making lengthy
phone calls with Susan and the children, Sam paradoxically participated more
than ever in their respective lives. By now the children had moved out; while Tina
frequently met up with her mother and tried to be at home when her father visited,
Tom migrated to the other end of the world. At first, he called home only a couple
12 Marie-Kristin Döbler
of times a year – at birthdays and the like. However, since they started using other
telecommunication technology, especially Skype and instant messaging services,
the Smiths can and do interact more frequently and more regularly; perceived spa-
tial distance has shrunk, and experienced emotional closeness has grown. Susan
and Sam regularly see their relatives abroad, i.e. Tom, his boyfriend, and their
adopted grandchild. Susan now lives with Rita, her mother-in-law: Susan felt
obliged to take her in (although Rita and her son Sam had a serious dispute, are
estranged, and hardly ever talk a word with each other) after Rita got divorced and
could not manage living alone.
This ideal-type case study1 raises several questions: when or for how long are
the Smiths a family? What role does distance – spatial and emotional – play and
how do these two aspects interrelate? Who is a member of the Smith family?
According to a traditional version of the idea of nuclear family the answer is rela-
tively straightforward: a family consists of a married couple and their dependent
descendants who live together in one household (Schoeck, 1979, p. 107). Thus,
till Tom and Tina move out, Sam, Susan, and their children are a family. With
an even more rigid interpretation of the nuclear family, this becomes question-
able seeing that Sam is not present in person most of the time, and renting a flat
might be interpreted as starting another separate household. Henceforward, the
existence of a family could be denied; Susan might be viewed as a single mother
even if the contact with her husband and between Sam and his children increased.
The current dominance of the concept of the ‘nuclear family’, against which
all families are somehow still compared, obscures the fact that it is not only a
very recent notion but already an outdated one.2 Nuclear families first emerged in
the nineteenth century through processes of differentiation and spatial reorganisa-
tions. Till then, all people bodily copresent were thought to belong to the family,
which was – just as the Latin term ‘familia’ suggests – equated with the house-
hold, including all cohabitating people3 who cared reciprocally for each other and
worked together for the family’s, i.e. the household’s, subsistence (e.g. Schneider,
2012). However, the reorganisation of work and its relocation to places external to
the household caused work and family to be separated. Consequently, lines of dif-
ferentiation not only marked the outer borders of the household-family but began
to run through the household as well; physically being there, i.e. copresence, no
longer sufficed for qualifying as a family member, as this was subsequently iden-
tified primarily on legal and biological grounds.
Since the nuclear family’s golden age, things have altered again. Today, nei-
ther does simply being there bodily qualify someone as a family member nor
absence necessarily disqualify them – even if (normative) demands for physical
presence (directed especially at mothers) maintain their importance and influence
(e.g. in contexts of care). Instead, increasing numbers of people do not (contin-
uously) live together with their partner and/or children and are not physically
copresent non-stop. The reasons for and forms of absence are manifold. For
instance, people work as expatriates abroad, lead weekend relationships, or live
in varying patchwork and single-parent constellations. However, families do not
cease to exist simply due to spatial reasons; people may move out or away without
 Co-presence and family 13
experiencing or assuming the family’s end; families are no longer confined to
the household’s borders,4 but rather may stretch (for example due to external or
structural aspects such as labour markets’ demands for flexibility and mobility)
across space if people do something to maintain them. But, irrespective of spatial
closeness or distance, family members always need to work at families’ continued
existence; they need to perform ‘being a family’, understood as systems of person
who are emotionally attached and reciprocally take care for each other. Contrary
to traditional notions of families, these relations no longer need to encompass
people of different sex. Further, it is currently being debated whether different
generations are necessary or, rather, if it is sufficient to denote social systems
‘family’ if underlying relationships are characterised by solidarity, reciprocity,
and continuity (e.g. Schneider, 2012).5 Whereas these family-relationship charac-
teristics were formerly related to institutions (e.g. marriage, household), which in
turn defined family memberships, they are nowadays decreasingly fixed or deter-
mined. Therefore, people not only need to opt actively for becoming a family
(nowadays that is only one way of leading your life among several others), but
they also need to negotiate (with other members) the form of family lived as well
as – on a daily basis – the family’s appearance. Consequently, families’ ways of
existence are plural and matters of choice, as well as something dependent on the
(mundane as well as extraordinary) activities of their members. In short, fami-
lies are performative,6 families exist if something is (not necessarily consciously)
done, perceived, and experienced as familial praxis. Two aspects of performativ-
ity’s nature and appearance are important to note here:

•• It depends, among other things, on the phase of (family) life (e.g. sometimes
this means caring for children, sometimes for dependent elderly parents) and
(socioeconomic, cultural) contexts.
•• It intersects with other performative based phenomena.

Thus, ‘doing family’ sometimes presupposes ‘doing space’, and sometimes coin-
cides with ‘doing copresence’. Whether the doing is successful or not is subject
to evaluation both from a personal perspective within and from a social instance
outside the family (these evaluations do not need to be identical), while it is a mat-
ter of perception what counts as family and copresence and when.
The case study allows us to illustrate all these theoretical remarks: Rita believed
in the concept of the ‘nuclear family’; she regarded nannies, maids and servants as
replaceable staff rather than as part of the household, let alone family members.
Therefore, she disliked Sam making friends with them and detested his idea of
a ‘household family’: when he was young, Sam counted all people cohabitating
with him to his family, and thus saw his parents as being on the same level as staff,
especially his nanny. Then, there was a phase in Sam’s life when he also advo-
cated the nuclear family concept as he tried to construct a private realm, detached
from extended kin, where he sheltered the core family – his wife and children
– against the earlier generations of his family. Today Sam has departed from
this idea and instead believes in a network of relationships spread across space,
14 Marie-Kristin Döbler
characterised by a certain nature of reciprocal care, support, and emotional attach-
ment. Therefore, he excludes former family members – especially his mother and
the servants – due to the broken contact and despite the re-established physical
closeness. He does, however, still mention as family members his nanny along-
side his wife, children, Tom’s boyfriend and his grandchild, to whom Sam (still)
has close relations – even if legal or biological bonds, i.e. institutions traditionally
defining family, are lacking. This indicates that family is related to copresence.
Yet the appearances, forms and modes of copresence vary: sometimes it is tied
to places, defined through spatial components and being bodily present; at other
times it is related to processes of interaction and the perception of (emotionally
coined) bonds, or rather certain forms of ‘reachability’, and being sure about the
possibility of (re)establishing copresence. This hints at relations between copres-
ence and space as well as its physical and mental dimensions. All these matters
will now be discussed below.

Theorising copresence
Copresence is a complex phenomenon which has several appearances. Most
often, though, copresence is exclusively defined in terms of the body, confining
it to instances of physically being at the same time at the same place as some-
one else. This assumption does correctly hint at three dimensions that help to
specify forms of copresence (corporality, spatiality, temporality), and physical
copresence somehow ‘remains the gold standard’ because other people can then
be experienced or perceived ‘fully, with all five senses’ (Baldassar et al., 2016,
p. 137f.), and because certain familial tasks and duties (e.g. care) continue to be
mainly related to conditions of being present. However, this conception is prob-
lematic as:

•• It relies on too narrow ideas of spatiotemporal extensions.

•• It misleadingly suggests that physicality suffices.
•• It wrongly neglects other factors, such as attention or media which may ena-
ble copresence to be stretched across time and space and/or preclude experi-
ences of copresence, sometimes even despite physical proximity (see below).

Thus, copresence can exist in several ways with or without physical proximity,
while simply being bodily at the same time at the same place does not (any longer)
always necessarily qualify as copresence. Rather, just as with families, copres-
ence is often related to performance and perception or experience, and interrelated
with other performative dimensions, e.g. doing space.
Yet what exactly is constitutive for copresence? Under which circumstances
develop experiences of copresence? To answer these questions, it is useful to
draw upon Goffman, Giddens, and Castells, Schütz, and Baldassar. There is insuf-
ficient room here for a lengthy reconstruction of their respective theories. Instead
the reader will only find elaborations about aspects directly related to copresence
which are applied – by me – to families.
 Co-presence and family 15
Effects of media
Goffman (1971; 2003) proposes that copresence equates to conditions where
­people come together immediately, and thus connects copresence with social situ-
ations determined by physical proximity as well as a kind of synchronicity. In
detail, he analyses face-to-face encounters: at least two people are simultaneously
physically at the same place, therefore directly accessible and available for each
other, so that interactions are not only possible but also necessary. Because of
the setting, there is necessarily reciprocal influence, since people perceive and
are perceived by others in ‘whatever they are doing, including their experiencing
of others, and close enough to be perceived in this sensing of being perceived’
(Goffman, 1963, p. 17). Accordingly, the spatial extensions of copresence are lim-
ited by the body’s capacities; social situations only qualify as such if copresence
occurs through people being within direct reach of each other. That is not only the
necessary, but also the sufficient condition of copresence, which emerges simply
through at least two individuals’ bodily presence. Yet, as indicated above, copres-
ence may be experienced beyond spatial boundaries defined by bodies’ capacities,
and copresence might need to be actively established. Applied to the previously
introduced case study, these differences become more concrete: Susan and the
children were tangible for and attended to each other; there were countless social
situations of copresence. Since the children were still or already asleep when Sam
was at home, and he was absent-minded when they were awake (e.g. during the
weekends), Sam’s presence contrasted significantly with Susan’s. This shows that
copresence is sometimes less a condition of being physically somewhere; instead,
action, attention, and the like are necessary (too). ‘Doing family’ should thus be
paralleled and supplemented by the concept of ‘doing (co)presence’.
Putting perception and experience, instead of objective physicality, at the cen-
tre of considerations about copresence allows us – with Giddens – to acknowledge
media-based time-space distanciation (Giddens, 1984). We can leave traces and
we can communicate with people via letters and e-mails or interact with people,
perhaps even see them, at the other end of the world. Consequently, social sys-
tems may stretch across space and time so that interaction with (from a traditional
perspective) ‘absent’ people is possible – questioning their absence, suggesting a
kind of presence disconnected from the ‘same’ where and when to which social
situations are confined in Goffman’s theory. That explains the somewhat para-
doxical perception of the Smiths. Accordingly, Sam’s copresence increased when
he started working somewhere else, because he had lively chats with Susan and
the children on the phone and focussed his attention on them during visits home.
Similarly, media-aided copresence is central for maintaining or even for creating
familial relations with Tom, his boyfriend, and his child: because they see each
other (via Skype), because the (media-based) communication is somehow contin-
uous and immediate, the absent people can be integrated into the respective fami-
lies through doing copresence – despite spatial distance. Consequently, despite
remaining bodily bound in their respective here and now, copresence may emerge
when using media. People somehow enter the (spatially and/or temporally) distant
16 Marie-Kristin Döbler
presence of the other communication partner and/or probably create a common
here and now by melting together different situations and creating a common
synthetic (social) situation and through having ‘response presence’, a presence
defined by ‘reachability’ (see, e.g. Knorr-Cetina, 2012, p. 96).
However, Goffman and Giddens both fail to explicate the performative ele-
ments involved. Thus, even if Giddens does theorise how media (those available at
the time of his writings) impact conditions of copresence and, with the concept of
‘presence availability’ (Giddens, 1984, p. 122), for instance, hints at the relevance
of perception, he details neither the doing involved in copresence, nor its presen-
tistic, dynamic, and somehow ephemeral nature, nor the requirements necessarily
met to establish it (see below). Still, considerations about copresence in families
can profit from Giddens’ concept of time-space distanciations. If his elaborations
about social systems – understood as constantly and recursively reproduced rela-
tions between actors organised as regular social practise – are transferred to fami-
lies, it is possible to recognise that they may be extended, stretched, dislocated
(Giddens, 1984, p. 25). Adding the necessity for continuity of performativity, it
is possible to conclude that families are neither bound and restricted by national
or households’ borders, nor are they sufficiently constituted through spatial and
institutional factors (alone); instead they are based on ‘doing family’, which
requires doing copresence – both in physical proximity and remoteness.
With Castells (2000), the effects of media upon space and time, and the con-
sequences for families (and copresence within families) can be concretised fur-
ther. Castells postulates that, based on the use of information and communication
technologies, time becomes ‘timeless’. First, time is compressed because infor-
mation can be exchanged in ‘no time’ between spatially dislocated people, so
that synchronisation and real-time communication are possible. Second, time
is ‘de-sequenced’ (Castells, 2000) since the past, present, and future of differ-
ent people can and do coincide in the here and now of one person. What this
means becomes more concrete in relation to families when considering ordinary
incidents in the Smith family: time compression is experienced thanks to Skype
and instant messaging, which enable real-time exchange of information and the
synchronisations of the lives or even lifeworlds (see below) of Tom and the fam-
ily back home. They thereby not only get to know each other (again/better) and
readjust knowledge stocks, but also perceive space as shrinking and feel close and
copresent due to ‘immediate’ responses. Time is de-sequenced, for instance, when
Sam leaves a note for Susan before departing for work, and copresence is created
through Sam’s future directed and anticipating action and Susan’s perceptions;
Sam becomes present in Susan’s future presence through a note left in the past.
The same technical instruments which create timeless and/or de-sequenced
time, lead to the emergence of the ‘space of flows’ which ‘refers to the technologi-
cal and organizational possibility of organizing the simultaneity of social practices
without geographical contiguity’ (Castells, 2000, p. 14). That is increasingly true
for all kinds of social practices, including personal interactions. Thus, this notion
helps to detail the concept of copresence proposed in this paper. While copres-
ence in Goffman’s sense depends – in Castells’ terms – on the ‘space of places,
 Co-presence and family 17
in which meaning, function, and locality are closely interrelated’ (Castells, 2000,
p. 14), performative and perception-based copresence depends on the people who
constitute and reproduce it through their (inter)actions, which in turn (re)pro-
duce the family, because the ‘meaning and function of the space of flows depend
on the flows processed within the networks’ (Castells, 2000, p. 14). Certainly,
this does not totally free presence from place and territorial dimensions, as it
still relies on bodies and technological infrastructure located in specific places
(Castells, 2000, p. 14). It does, however, indicate that space is something done
and using media can make time and space negligible in some respect, since they
are appropriated and bridged so that copresence in one or other form is possibly
performatively established.7
In addition to ‘doing family’ and doing presence it is thus wise to speak of
doing space. This too refers to processual productions – of space itself and of
space’s relevance, perception, and experience. With Thomas and Thomas (1928),
we can say that we live in the world as we define and perceive it. ‘Doing space’
thus allows for an understanding of various things:

•• How geographical space is appropriated and why it is necessary.

•• How places are moulded and the relevance of leaving an imprint on them
through rearranging things and leaving marks and traces.
•• How important it is to know places (e.g. appresentations of lifeworlds, ideas,
and representations of concrete places) as well as to create an image and
mental map (e.g. having travelled there; being aware of the time and bodily
investment it takes to get there).
•• Modes or strategies for and success in bridging distances through the use of
technologies (transportation, media).

All that impacts (doing) copresence as well as (doing) family. Practices produce
or inscribe meaning and significance (in)to space, or even produce space through
arranging, positioning, and placing people and things so that copresence and fam-
ily can be done.

Cognition, materiality, and temporality

Just like Goffman, Schütz deals with people’s here and now. For him, however, it
is a matter of experience and not a given, concrete spatiotemporal context; lived
durée and practiced spatial extension, rather than measurable, objectified time
and space, are constitutive for perceptions of copresence. From this perspective,
copresence may extend the conditions of physical presence, since not only media
but also traces in various perceptible forms (visible, tangible, etc.) and memo-
ries may make others present in such a way that they influence the perceiving
or remembering person (cf. appresentation8) and thereby create ‘togetherness’,
a feeling of belonging (e.g. Schütz, 2003; 2004a). Contrary to Goffman, Schütz
further stresses a different factor (which is, in my eyes, constitutive for fami-
ly’s copresence). Instead of bodily presence, Schütz highlights the importance
18 Marie-Kristin Döbler
of shared knowledge and an overlap of lifeworlds, i.e. the background on which
things and people appear as themselves, the horizon of experiences, and the con-
text within which things become meaningful (Schütz, 2004a). While people in
physical copresence, especially in face-to-face situations, are accessible to each
other while they are immersed in the very process of living within a world truly
experienced by both, and almost automatically share knowledge (based on com-
mon experiences) and a lifeworld, people at distant do not. This can be(come) a
problem, as knowledge and lifeworlds are dynamic, constantly changing through
experiences and therefore need to be continually (re)constituted as common
knowledge and lifeworld through communication. Consequently, people may
become estranged from each other if instances of experiencing together and of
experiencing the other immersed in the very process of living decrease. This may
complicate the creation or maintenance of copresence, as the here and now may
be experienced so differently that synthetic social situations are hard to create.
That is why Susan and Sam could neither enter Tom’s current here nor create a
common here at first; rather, they felt the spatial distance (which started to have
impacts upon their emotional closeness as well). Tom’s parents could not imagine
his (new cultural, social and spatial) living conditions, which they had never seen
for themselves. Once they had obtained first-hand experience of Tom’s new sur-
rounding when visiting him, and thanks to using different media (instant messag-
ing/Skype and starting to exchange mundane things too), things became easier.
They re-established common knowledge, which is kept up to date through con-
tinuous communication and interaction; they perceive a shared lifeworld despite
spatial distance. By appropriating and adjusting lifeworlds and related stocks of
knowledge, space is experienced differently and it becomes possible to create
copresence more easily. Through actively including distant, ‘absent’ others within
their own life – via the mediated exchange of photos, regular Skype-calls and
thinking about the other – situations of copresence are brought into being, allow-
ing for interactions and reciprocal influence, or they become copresent in a lived
durée, creating specific forms of togetherness.
Just like Schütz, Baldassar deals with matters of ‘keeping in touch’ and ‘stay-
ing in contact’ (2008, p. 253) beyond physical proximity. She distinguishes four
forms of copresence. Physical and virtual copresence involve two sides, though
the latter is constituted via communication technologies. Thus, like me, Baldassar
acknowledges that there are forms of ‘being with each other’ beyond body’s
direct reach. The other two forms Baldassar deals with involve only one per-
son who creates copresence through perception; this could also be interpreted in
Schütz’s terms as appresentation. In the case of imagined copresence, someone
thinks about distant others, ponders about them and wallows in memories; copres-
ence by proxy is mediated through materialities of various kinds, such as objects
or tokens that remind of others (Baldassar, 2008).
While Baldassar declares that imagined copresence refers to a dimension
involved in all forms of copresence, she does not emphasise (enough) that atten-
tion (i.e. mental presence) is always required to constitute copresence, especially
 Co-presence and family 19
in cases where copresence is indirect9 and not physical; her account rather seems
to suggest that imagination is an add-on. From my perspective, that underestimates
the centrality of mental presence, which is an essential constituting factor for all
conditions of copresence; if mental presence is lacking, people do not necessarily
perceive copresence, as elaborations about the Smiths illustrate (absent-minded
Sam was perceived as body, not as copresent father) and, in the end, it is the per-
ception that matters, as this guides actions and instructs praxis (see the Thomas
Theorem; Thomas and Thomas, 1928). Admittedly, Baldassar hints at the role
of perception, though does so only with a focus upon emotions of ‘longing’ and
‘missing’. Baldassar indeed may be right in contending that ‘family life […] is a
topic that is full of emotion’ (Baldassar, 2008, p. 247), and that emotions of ‘long-
ing’ and ‘missing’ may be an important driving force for establishing copresence
in the face of absence (Baldassar, 2008, pp. 247ff.). However, neither are missing
and longing the only emotions involved within families or in respect to matters
of absence/copresence,10 nor can copresence be reduced to its emotional qualities.
Instead, the emotional infrastructure of copresence is more complex and diverse.
Susan, for instance, accepted Rita in her house, consequently her physical and
often interactive copresence as well, neither because of longing or missing her nor
because Rita increased Sam’s presence by proxy through ‘embod[ying] the spirit
of the longed for absent person [i.e. Sam]’ (Baldassar, 2008, p. 252), but because
she felt guilty, obliged, and responsible. Likewise, Sam, being happy to have
distanced himself from his mother, did not long for or miss her; instead he was
thankful when he succeeded in excluding her from his thoughts so that she was
not mentally copresent.11 Further, even if Baldassar does mention the relevance
of ‘kin-work’ (Baldassar, 2008; a term originally coined by Di Leonardo, 1987)
as a second important aspect in the discussion about copresence, she connects it
again primarily to emotions and media-related tasks; for Baldassar, ‘longing for
and missing people […] appears to be an integral […] feature of the kin-work’
and related activity evidenced in ‘letters and cards that travelled to and fro as well
as the often impressive collection of photos’ (Baldassar, 2008, p. 250f.). Thus,
she does not pay sufficient attention to the relevance of mundane, probably non-
mediated performativity, and the role of perception for doing both copresence and
family remains vague. For me, kin-work or ‘doing family’ encompass a wider
spectrum of actions and tasks which, however, only have ‘family-constitutive’
effects if they are perceived as kin-work. Finally, compatibility of knowledge and
lifeworlds matter too – something Baldassar deals with only superficially in later
publications and only in respect of ‘doing family’, yet not in relation to constitut-
ing copresence (e.g. Baldassar, 2016). However, ‘doing family’ as well as doing
copresence requires connection, understanding, the perception of synchronicity,
and/or of having a common here – even if this is ‘only’ virtual or imagined, or
based on traces and appresentations. That was illustrated by the initial difficulties
Susan/Sam and Tom had with staying in touch and close, as well as the impact
altered knowledge and real time communication (about a broad spectrum of
issues, even mundane matters) had.
20 Marie-Kristin Döbler
Copresence and family: Multitude of doings
While none of the mentioned theorists alone sufficiently grasps the complexity
of copresence, each helps in clarifying the concept of copresence proposed by
this paper. This rests primarily on three assumptions. First, something needs to
qualify as an instance of copresence from an experiencing individual’s perspec-
tive. Second, copresence is less simply a state or condition than it is something
actively (not necessarily reflexively) constituted by at least one person – through
attention, memories, (mediated) contact, and (the initiation of) interaction. Third,
knowledge and lifeworlds are constitutive for perceptions of (successfully done)
copresence. The relevance of these multi-layered ‘mental’ and ‘performative
dimensions’, however, have been neglected or underestimated in the theories so
far. That is why core elements of doing copresence and constitutive elements
of ‘doing family’ are overlooked. Overcoming this shortcoming was this chap-
ter’s aim, which has tried to acknowledge diverse appearances of copresence
and family in the context of changing spatial patterns and technologies, with-
out delegitimising the role of physical copresence (in relation to certain tasks) in
general. However, I have tried to ‘demystify […] physical presence as an ines-
capable condition for social relationships to exist’ (Baldassar et al., 2016, p. 135),
by highlighting, as exemplified by the case study, a dynamic interdependence
of ‘doing family’, doing space, and doing copresence which is closely linked to
perceptions, performance, and knowledge. Finally, an up to date view of family
requires acknowledging the interconnectedness of multiple doings. Sometimes
being physical present is necessary and sufficient for ‘doing family’ (e.g. caring
practices); sometimes doing space is a prerequisite for establishing copresence
and for ‘doing family’; sometimes mere physical presence is neither necessary nor
sufficient (e.g. mental presence is also required for giving emotional support) for
doing copresence and ‘doing family’; and, finally, sometimes all forms of doing
can be done without the other.

Notes
1 The case study is a generalisation of a family’s life course which can be (with one
exception: none of them had servants) found across the 20 narrative interviews I have
conducted with couples confronted with temporary physical non-presence.
2 Except during the 1950s/1960s, in the world we call the West there was always
­plurality.
3 That is an oversimplified depiction, since family was partly interpreted more rigidly
(focussing on blood and legal grounds), even when ‘household families’ were domi-
nant, e.g. when marriages and legacies were concerned.
4 Similarly, they were (partly) separated from other institutions such as marriage or other
forms of legal recognition.
5 These general characteristics are valid for all three ideal-typical forms of family dis-
cussed here, just as the following features apply to all of them: First, familial relation-
ships are flexible and dynamic; relations cannot only change, but necessarily do so
in the course of life. Second, families are central for societies’ structure and social
order: Families reproduce societies’ personnel (birth, socialisation, recovery), inte-
grate individuals into societies (socialisation, producing solidarity, assigning social
 Co-presence and family 21
positions), are lifeworlds or realms for a multitude of learning processes (factual/
practical knowledge) and the places where personality and identity are formed (e.g.
Jurczyk, 2014).
6 It is open for debate if the underlying process of ‘doing family’ (Jurczyk, 2014) is
something new or if this was always necessary for families’ maintenance; undoubtedly,
however, performativity’s relevance has increased. It is also without question, though,
that the concept of ‘doing family’ was established considerably recently.
7 Qualitative differences between Goffman’s social situations (face-to-face), Giddens’
spatiotemporally stretched conditions, and the network-based relations Castells
acknowledges are undeniable. The range and extent of perceivable elements vary, dif-
ferent senses are addressed, experiences require diverse translations and transforma-
tions. Nevertheless, all may be regarded as copresence.
8 Borrowing Husserl’s term ‘appresentation’, Schütz establishes it as a concept for deal-
ing with questions of intersubjectivity based on empathy and experiences of transcend-
ence of time and space which divides the lifeworld into parts of ‘actual reach’ and
‘potential reach’ (see e.g. Schütz, 2004a, 2004b) and possibly disconnects copresence
from corporality.
9 Contrary to Baldassar’s assumption, not only copresence by proxy is indirect; rather,
all copresence involves mediation and some kind of (Durkheimenian or material) thing
‘in between’ (language, computer/telephone, photo, etc.).
10 The limited variety of reported emotions may result from Baldassar’s biased sample
which almost exclusively included positive, well-working, emotional close relation-
ships where the wish to be together (more often) was given (Baldassar, 2008, p. 249).
11 Actively trying to forget can be seen as doing copresence/family as well.

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16(2), 145–163.
Baldassar, L., Nedelcu, M., Merla, L. and Wilding, R. (2016). ICT-based Co-presence in
Transnational Families and Communities. Global Networks 16(2), 133–144.
Castells, M. (2000). Materials for an Exploratory Theory of the Network Society. British
Journal of Sociology 51(3), 5–24.
Di Leonardo, M. (1987). The Female World of Cards and Holidays. Women, families, and
the Work of Kinship. Signs 12(3), 440–453.
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Goffman, E. (2003). Wir alle spielen Theater. Munich: Piper.
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(Eds.). Doing Family. Warum Familienleben heute nicht mehr selbstverständlich ist.
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3 Parenthood as a symbolic order
The perspective of the sociology of
knowledge and discourse theory1
Maya Halatcheva-Trapp

‘We speak of families as though we all knew what families are,’ the British
­psychiatrist Ronald D. Laing wrote (1974, p. 13) in a plea advocating to take
multiple definitions of the situation seriously when the family becomes the sub-
ject of professional treatment. This principle is meant to ensure that subjective
definitions of families, as well as those derived from professionals’ specialised
knowledge and informing possible interventions, are included in any assessment
of family life. In addition to the multiplicity of perspectives, Laing calls attention
to the inherent vagueness of the concept of family. Family is the object of constant
social processes of interpretation and negotiation, conducted in cultural, religious,
political, and economic arenas, and permeated by power and authority (Lüscher,
2003, p. 539). At the same time, the family is considered an area of privacy and
autonomy. Approaches in the sociology of knowledge and in discourse analysis
take this idea, that the family is simultaneously embedded in private and public
spheres, as a point of departure for their assumption that sociopolitical notions of
order constitute attempts to ‘paraphrase ways of living together2 (Lüscher, 2003,
p. 540). Therefore, the family in everyday life cannot be conceptualised without
its moral and political evaluations. Historian Stephanie Coontz (1992, p. 146) calls
the autonomous nuclear family a myth, rather seeing it as the creation of various
forces from outside the familial private sphere. Personified examples for these
forces across time are the priest in the early modern era, the poet during nineteenth
century romanticism, and the psychotherapist in later modernity (Tänzler, 1997,
p. 126). Following these sociological and historical considerations, the family
can be analysed as a historically pre-formed, adaptable, and normatively charged
construction, as a symbolic order, constantly produced through interpretation and
simultaneously available for interpretation. In short, the existence of family is
subject to an ‘obligation of being continuously interpreted, explained, and talked
about’ (Soeffner, 2000, p. 27).
This contribution focuses on the concept of family as a symbolic order. First, it
will outline relevant interpretive approaches in the sociology of the family. Using
the example of an empirical study on the discursive construction of parenthood
in post-separation family counselling, I will explore theoretical and methodologi-
cal premises and the potential advantages of a combined sociology of knowledge
and discourse theory approach to the family. The results presented emphasise the
24 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp
correlation between parenthood, gender, and co-presence and show which knowl-
edge issues are formulated and answered in the context of separation and divorce.
In correspondence with this accentuation, this contribution sees itself as a plea for
strengthening interpretive research and analyses inspired by cultural theory within
the sociology of the family.

Family as a symbolic order: Contours of an interpretive

sociology of the family
The concept of family as a symbolic order is closely connected to an interpretive
variant of the sociology of the family which is rooted in symbolic-interactionist
family research performed by members of the Chicago School (see Waller, 1938;
Thomas and Thomas, 1928; Burgess, 1926). Symbolic interactionism is regarded
as groundbreaking in that it established understanding the family as a socio-his-
torically situated and dynamic phenomenon, forging a new path for conducting
empirical, interpretive inquiry (see Klein and White, 1996; LaRossa and Reitzes,
1993). Here, family is understood as an action context, as a group of collectively
interacting individuals who form personal identity through interaction and simul-
taneously develop family identity. The sense of self of the family is in the centre
of theorisation and empirical analysis, ‘a reality constructed through symbols,
meanings, and social rules’ (Bösel, 1980, p. 111). This perspective paves the way
for research questions that illuminate family life in its manifold versions, such as
questions about the communication of intimacy, the negotiation and orchestration
of family roles, the relation of the family to categories such as age, gender, time,
and space, or the construction of the family as a symbolic reality, (ideal-typically)
with shared values, imaginations, and norms (LaRossa and Reitzes, 1993, p. 136).
Symbolic interactionism predominantly focuses on the familial micro-cosmos,
but also looks at how it is embedded in public settings. Family life occurs within
cultural structuration, situational, institutional, and historical contexts: ‘[…] the
family is the ideal “place” to not only observe, but also see the importance of the
nexus between the “subjective” and “objective,” between the interpersonal and
the institutional.’ (LaRossa and Reitzes, 1993, p. 154) Symbolic systems vary,
and accordingly, the phenomena they bring forth vary – including the family with
its entire repertoire of roles, interaction patterns, and ‘vocabularies of motive’
(Stryker, 1970, p. 66). The symbolic-interactionist emphasis on processes and
variation overcome the ‘methodological fiction’ (Stryker, 1970, p. 49) of the fam-
ily as an isolated social structure, allow the connections between biography and
history to unfold, and highlight the need to socio-historically contextualise the
investigation and theorisation of the family (LaRossa and Reitzes, 1993, p. 138).
The perspective on the family as a symbolic order is also prominently rep-
resented in phenomenological sociology of knowledge. In their treatise, ‘Die
Ehe und die Konstruktion der Wirklichkeit’ (‘Marriage and the Construction of
Reality’), Peter L. Berger and Hansfried Kellner (1965) described the spousal
relationship as an ideal type, which they assigned a privileged – nomos-­making –
status. Marriage, in their view, generates a protective horizon of meaning, an
 Parenthood as a symbolic order 25
own objectivated order with rules developing in the continuous conversation
between the partners. Individual constructions of reality are reciprocally modi-
fied in accordance with each other, temporal horizons would be reinterpreted and
integrated into a biographical continuum of the couple, and new images of the
own and the other’s Self would be produced (Berger and Kellner, 1965, p. 222ff.).
Berger and Kellner’s idea of nomos-making, i.e., generation of a common world-
view, through the constitution of marriage and family is not situated solely in the
micro-sociological sphere. These procedures are understood as effects of, which
in turn stabilise, a predominant ‘familialistic ideology’ (Berger and Kellner, 1965,
p. 232). The culturally shared expectations, as fixated in the ideals of the romantic
love and self-fulfilment, find a legitimate space to be realised within the family
(Berger and Kellner, 1965, p. 223). This phenomenological conception of build-
ing a matrimonial reality can be transferred to the analysis of judicial separation,
as Stryker (1970) presents with reference to the symbolic-interactionist analy-
sis of Waller (1938). The separation is described as the result of a gradual dis-
sociation between the partners, which would evoke ‘subsequent redefinition of
the matrimonial relationship towards greater alienation and instability’ (Stryker,
1970, p. 61). Situational changes are anticipated, and this anticipation changes the
situation, consequently leading to the formation of new habits and goals (see also
Halatcheva-Trapp, 2018).
In the tradition of Berger and Kellner, isolated steps have been taken to
imbed a phenomenological programme into sociology of the family theory (e.g.
see Hildenbrand and Jahn, 1988; Hildenbrand, 1983; Bösel, 1980; McLain and
Weigert, 1979). Recent conceptual extensions are directed at the theoretical
integration of non-verbal interaction and of the dyad as a special form of social
relationship (see Hohenester, 2000). Following the concepts of ‘Doing Family’
(Jurczyk et al., 2014) and ‘Displaying Families’ (Finch, 2007), praxeological
perspectives are under development in interpretive variants of sociology of the
family which analyse daily activities of family members and how individual life-
styles intertwine, construction of family identities, and outward (representation as
a family) as well as inward (reassurance as a family) performances.
Overall, the interpretive approaches I have outlined emphasise the dynam-
ics and self-definitions of the family. They are primarily interested in ‘the daily
drama of the family events’ (Bösel, 1980, p. 66) and in the intersubjective con-
stitution of family from the experiences and intentions of its members. Instead of
the family as a monolithic institution, meanings of family and their contingency
form the sociological subject matter: ‘family can be seen as a way of attaching
meaning to interpersonal relations and, of course, detaching it, too.’ (Gubrium and
Holstein, 1993, p. 654).
While the micro-sociological focus targets the actions of individuals and the
subjective creation of meaning contexts within the family, discourse theories
assume a meso-analytical perspective, enquiring about the collective production
and regulation of the meanings of family and their institutionalisation. By pairing
discourse and family, attention is directed to the relation between words, mean-
ings, and materialities in and surrounding family life; toward institutionalised
26 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp
ways of speaking about family; to arenas, organisation, and progress of societal
discourses; in short, to the processes and effects of constituting family in public and
semi-public speaking and writing. Who claims to have ‘true’ knowledge about the
family? Which stocks of knowledge are realised and updated in political debates
and educational contexts, in medical consultation appointments, court hearings, or
in science performed on the family? Which typical problem definitions and action
repertoires related to family life are established as legitimate? Which social phe-
nomena are addressed as being ‘family’ and, thereby recognised as such, how are
they enabled or prevented? In this context, the micro-sociological key question
of subjectivity regains relevance, e.g., regarding which discursive templates for
interpreting these phenomena are actually received by individuals and are either
adopted or wilfully denied, how they enter individual life plans, and how they
shape the organisation of everyday family life (McCarthy and Edwards, 2011, p.
60; Gubrium and Holstein, 1993, p. 656f.). For the family can be regarded as both
effect and producer of discourses. As an effect of societal ‘orders and politics of
knowledge’ (Keller, 2008, p. 275), the family integrates various ideals, guiding
principles, and interpretations of the everyday practice and emotional configura-
tion of personal relationships, e.g., by semantically linking different terms like
‘house, home, family, domesticity, caring, sharing’ (Gubrium and Holstein, 1993,
p. 662). At the same time, a context-sensitive articulation of ideals, guiding prin-
ciples, and interpretations of everyday practice in families occurs, leading to the
families’ active discourse production as social actors. Hence, what is considered
as family can come in different versions, diverse manners of speaking, and sym-
bolisms. Discourse approaches to the family pursue the question, ‘how family
as discourse is expressed and understood, the ways which it is intertwined with
issues of power, and the implications for how social lives occur’ (McCarthy and
Edwards, 2011, p. 61). The goal is to uncover the discursive mechanisms that
establish family as a historically pre-formed, normatively charged, and versatile
social construct. The assumption of the historicity and transformability of sym-
bolic orders is central for a sociology of knowledge and discourse-theoretical per-
spective. Herein, they are conceived as ‘historically contingent manifestations of
meaning structures […] produced through discourses, practices, and dispositifs’
(Keller, 2008, p. 290). The qualities and dynamics of symbolic orders – whether
they are uniform and consistent, appear throughout society or are institutionalised
in manageable collectives, whether and how they become hegemonic, what trans-
formations they undergo – are not to be presupposed, but investigated empirically.
Through discourses, symbolic orders can be triggered and accelerated; they can
be challenged and redefined (Keller, 2008, p. 290ff.). To analyse the family as a
symbolic order from a combined sociology of knowledge and discourse theory
perspective means to examine interpretive patterns and discursive structurations
closely, to observe their formation in the interplay of arguments and resources,
and study with which means and in which arenas they are conventionalised or
prevented from continuing to exist unhindered. The potential of this approach
lies in its sensitivity for aspects of power in the knowledge, for the historicity of
experience, and the variation of meanings.
 Parenthood as a symbolic order 27
Discursive construction of parenthood in post-separation
family counselling
In the following, I will present findings from my completed dissertation study
as an example for a combined sociology of knowledge and discourse analysis
approach to the family as a symbolic order. In it, I focus on the discourse of par-
enthood in post-separation family counselling (see Halatcheva-Trapp, 2018). The
socio-historical background for this study is the legal foundation for joint cus-
tody after separation and divorce, after the children’s law reform act in Germany,
which came into effect in 1998. The reform focuses on the child as a legal subject
and on its welfare. By establishing joint custody as the rule, it is intended for the
child to be able to maintain contact with both parents. At the same time, the legis-
lator assumes that both parents will share responsibility for the mutual child after
the separation. Families undergoing this transition obtain the legal right to coun-
selling afforded by child and youth welfare services (§17, Code of Social Law
VIII). Professionals are intended to support them in the process of negotiating the
best possible regulations of guardianship geared towards the child’s best inter-
ests. From now on, counselling is recognised as an alternative model to decisions
by the court and as a form of family-oriented problem solving with precedence
over legal processes. The children’s law reform act constitutes a historical turn-
ing point for post-separation family counselling. It sets the scene for consulting
activities and becomes immediately relevant for parenthood as the object of pro-
fessional treatment. Counselling in the context of separation and divorce simul-
taneously shapes and normalises family relationships, and does this with special
emphasis placed on the child.
From a sociology of knowledge and discourse-analytical perspective, counsel-
ling can be conceived as a space in which discourse is produced and, therefore, a
space where specialised knowledge about parenthood is negotiated and enforced.
Qua professional qualification and institutional-organisational affiliation to child
and youth welfare services, counselling professionals partake in the production,
diffusion, and reproduction of family and parenthood discourses. As legitimate
speakers, they have the competency and resources to generate, conventionalise,
and purposely model meanings of parenthood. The concept of discourse used
here comes from the Sociology of Knowledge Approach to Discourse (SKAD)
theory and research programme, established by the German sociologist Reiner
Keller (2008). The programme links theoretical and methodological premises of
the social-constructivist sociology of knowledge by Peter L. Berger and Thomas
Luckmann (1966), the discourse theory of Michel Foucault, and the interpretive
paradigm. Discourses are understood as an ‘aggregate of discursive events and
the practices embedded therein, connected by a reconstructible structural context
and processing specific orders of knowledge in reality’ (Keller, 2008, p. 235).
As collective, historically generated, and situated statement practices, discourses
can be investigated with regards to their rules and resources and to their struc-
tural patterns for the production and reproduction of meaning. SKAD conceives
the actions of (professional) actors as a form of politics to activate and enforce
28 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp
knowledge, thereby responding to problems of interpretation and action (Keller,
2012, p. 95). The professional casework in post-separation counselling can thus
be understood as a form of politics, practiced by counsellors, as representatives
of their subject area and as speakers of their organisation, with families during/
after separation and divorce as the addressees. Case trials activate psychological
and socio-pedagogical problematisations that become practicable in consultation
sessions with mothers and fathers, and both generate and objectivate parenthood
as a symbolic order, according to SKAD (Keller, 1997, p. 329).

Parenthood, gender, and co-presence. Discursive templates for

interpretation in the context of separation and divorce
In the following, I will describe how parenthood, gender, and co-presence are
interpreted and discussed in the discourse of post-separation counselling. The
data material in the study consists of 22 transcribed expert interviews with social
pedagogy and psychology experts in counselling, conducted all over Germany
in independent consulting institutions.3 Each expert interview relates to its own
case, i.e., its subject is the case of a family during/after separation or divorce and
the professional work of the experts responsible for the consultation. All cases
deal with heterosexual parent couples. Almost all families practice the residence
model, except for one with shared residence. The detailed data analysis is con-
ducted using techniques of coding, contrasting, and writing theoretical memos in
the style of grounded theory methodology. The expert interviews are analysed as
documents of a special discourse of parenthood.4
The results of the study show that gender assumes a central role for the con-
tent of the consultation discourse on parenthood after separation and divorce.
Parenthood manifests as a discursive phenomenon solely in conjunction with
the gender distinctions of ‘father-mother’ and ‘man-woman’. The consultation
conversation on parenthood is a conversation about motherhood and parenthood,
about femininity and masculinity. In the following, this finding will be explained
with a focus on parental care and co-presence. Care describes one of the dis-
course’s interpretive patterns that have been reconstructed within the scope of
this study.5 Central to this interpretive pattern is a gendered typology of care that
formulates different expectations of co-presence for mothers and fathers respec-
tively. Care refers to a capacity for being involved in everyday life in the context
of discourse investigated, an attribute typically ascribed to mothers. The figure
of the mother intimately involved in everyday aspects of life emerges in contrast
to the figure of the father who is withdrawn from the everyday life of the child.
This delimitation is performed by means of diverse discursive strategies, such as
contrasting descriptions of mothers and fathers, the vocabulary employed, and
the connection between fatherly care and socio-structural categories, such as age,
professional activity, and employment status. The mother’s being involved in
everyday life and the father’s being removed from everyday life form the discur-
sive axes of parental care as a knowledge problem in post-separation counselling.
However, being involved in everyday life and being removed from everyday life
 Parenthood as a symbolic order 29
as distinct orientations do not constitute a fundamental polarisation regarding the
quality of parental care; instead, these are gradual differences regarding how the
care of mothers and fathers is taken to be self-evident by the discourse. These
different stances toward care expected from parents in the discourse, one for each
gender, imply different concepts of co-presence. Empirically, this manifests in
how mothers and fathers are addressed differently in relation to their children
and practicing the parental role. The display of protectiveness, sensitivity, and
attentiveness towards the child, be it in regard to school, health, or other aspects
of upbringing, is explicitly attributed to mothers. Protectiveness and attentive-
ness are regarded to be universal and reliable displays of emotion. The discourse
positions the mothers at the centre of the children’s daily lives, which they organ-
ise responsibly for and with the children. They are seen as the parent who is
‘very close to the children,’ who is ‘in the loop,’ who maintains ‘a tight-knit
relationship’ with them and who serves as their ‘primary contact’. The statements
about the mothers in the data convey the imagination of physical co-presence
and socio-emotional intimacy between mothers and children, practiced perma-
nently and continually in everyday life. This finding is not only based on what
the discourse renders expressible, but also on what manifests as being unsayable.
Professional activity or occupational absence is not a relevant topic for the con-
struction of maternal care, nor is recourse to additional support in providing care,
e.g., through grandparents.6
The construction of paternal care is different. Assertions about fathers draw
an inconsistent and sceptical picture. For one thing, paternal care is challenged
by fundamentally positioning fathers at a distance in regard to the daily lives of
the children. The discourse attributes them an observational role and assumes
an underlying ineptitude in social interaction with the child. Furthermore, the
paternal ability to find the right measure for educational boundaries is questioned.
It is affirmed that fathers tend to be ‘overprotective,’ desire ‘to be in control as
much as possible,’ and to be ‘overly responsible’ in relation to the children. At
the same time, however, it is indicated that they are ‘pushovers’, make ‘con-
cessions’, and are often ‘over the top’ when it comes to showing emotion. The
father’s being removed from everyday life refers to the creation of intimacy and
distance regarding the child. It shows the ‘weaknesses’ of paternal care the dis-
course describes, namely fathers’ physical absence in children’s daily lives and
their specific (lack of) sensitivity toward children as a form of socio-emotional
(in)competence. However, the discursive interpretation of paternal care is not
exclusively based on scepticism. Fathers are also appreciated in the counselling
discourse as providing joint father-child leisure activities. Moreover, the inter-
pretation of an emotional attentiveness from the fathers towards their children
emerges. Less dominant than in the expressions about motherhood, it is still dis-
cussed by characterising the relation between father and child as ‘affectionate,’
or ‘sympathetic,’ and ‘heartfelt’. This implies that the counselling discourse does
not exclude paternal care, but sets limitations for when and how it comes into
play. Paternal care is discursively enabled in a very specific frame, namely the
frame of leisure time.
30 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp
Overall, the counselling discourse attributes distinct competencies to moth-
ers and fathers, thus producing gender-typical concepts of parental care and
co-­presence. Maternal care manifests itself through physical presence and socio-­
emotional closeness as universal in the children’s daily lives. It would, however,
fall short to arrive at the reverse conclusion that fathers are denied the fundamental
capability of providing high-quality care, although this is partly suggested by the
continuous creation of contrasts between mothers and fathers found in the data
material. Paternal care, though removed from the child’s everyday life, constitutes
a form of care in its own right, for which the counselling discourse determines that
different conditions and especially forms of co-presence apply. The difference
between maternal being involved in everyday life and paternal being removed from
everyday life lies in the former being accepted as a self-evident fact, while the latter
indicates that actively practiced fatherhood is made possible or restricted depend-
ing on the degree to which certain expectations are conventionalised, and may or
may not be a self-evident assumption to a varying extent. More specifically, this
means that the discourse’s interpretation of motherhood expects mothers to be
intimately involved in providing unlimited care in everyday life. The interpreta-
tion of fatherhood is, by contrast, bound to instructions that intend for care to be
practiced actively in selected areas of life while being impeded in others. Paternal
care practiced as joint recreational time with the child in the context of regular vis-
its is much more conventionalised than paternal care in the form of ­cohabitation –
and therefore co-presence in everyday life – after parental separation.

Conclusion: Joint custody after parental separation as a knowledge

problem and mothers’ presence as a solution
Which gender knowledge is conveyed by the counselling discourse? Which
action and interpretation problems does it formulate and answer? In the context
of joint custody becoming the standard case after parental separation, these ques-
tions become all the more important. This discourse produces unequal responsi-
bilities for mothers and fathers by reproducing culturally established concepts of
femininity and masculinity. For one thing, a mother figure is reproduced who, as a
woman, is expected to assume responsibility for the children as a matter of course
and who is positioned as the family’s main protagonist. Likewise, the figure of a
father is reproduced who, as a man, ‘naturally’ should take more time and com-
mitment for his career and is more of a playmate and co-educator for his children.
Thus, the counselling discourse reproduces the middle-class gender and family
model. While family in this model is considered to be the domain of women, it
holds a relative functionality for men and forms an ‘individual space’ in contrast
to the various masculine collective spaces that exist in public life (Schmale, 2003,
p. 204). Everyday activity in feminine and masculine spaces are, respectively,
subject to different temporal rhythms (Schmale, 2003, p. 205). In this context, cur-
rent sociological studies speak of ‘Gender Politics of Family Time’ (Daly, 1996,
p. 144, see also Daly, 2002), which are closely linked to concepts of ­co-presence
(see Döbler in this volume).
 Parenthood as a symbolic order 31
This means that separation of the parents gives rise to a discursive
r­ e-­traditionalisation of gender relations. The problem this defines, and provides
an answer for, is how joint care should continue after dissolution of the parents’
romantic relationship and extension of the core family to two physically separated
cores between which the child’s life alternates periodically. This situation is a
very recent phenomenon, historically speaking, and brings forth a new quality of
family relations (Sieder, 2003, p. 131) which, in turn, increases the complexity of
parental activity (Stein-Hilbers, 1994, p. 63). The counselling discourse responds
by conceptualising mother and father as complementary figures and assigning
them different zones of responsibility. In regard to the child and its best interests,
the discourse articulates ‘the need for a reliable order’ (Hausen, 2012, p. 608) of
and between genders. The ideal of one core family serves as an interpretive tem-
plate, reducing the complexity of the situation, as a model for configuring parent-
hood after separation and divorce. The question is: who is supposed to inhabit this
single family core? According to the discourse investigated in the German con-
text, it is populated by the mother and the child(ren). As it turns out, the counsel-
ling discourse on parenthood places all its expectations and confidence in women,
as mothers. Through pragmatic attributions as well as discursive-symbolic codi-
fications, a specific mother figure is reinforced. In the sociology of knowledge,
this finding is indicative of the cultural effectiveness of the mythos of the mother
who belongs to her child – a mythos that ‘reproduced, stabilised and bolstered
with ever new interpretive patterns adapted to the respective epoch’ (Knaut, 2016,
p. 567). Pointedly, the question arises why the discourse continues to attribute
only partial co-presence to the fathers, despite the reformed custody regulations,
while protecting the conventionalisation of the social figure of the father removed
from everyday life. Why is absence associated with fathers, rather than mothers
(Thomä, 2010, p. 7)? The answer lies in the complex relation of fatherhood as an
institution with fathering and masculinity as social constructs. The ‘contradictory
nature of fatherhood’ (Bereswill et al., 2006, p. 7) is a result of the fact that father-
ing in the sense of emotional, physical, and attentive caring for the child has no
established place in social ideals of masculinity. Moreover, fatherhood constitutes
one of the central features of hegemonic masculinity and is as such connoted
with the aspect of being the family provider (Meuser, 2009, p. 87). The socially
established figure of the family provider is itself, however, situated outside of
the family, and therefore does not invoke the semantics of fathering. Intra-family
relationships are not a defining feature of this figure. Through his occupation, the
man fulfils his role as a father by spending time for the family without spending
time with the family. The position of fathers within their families is not culturally
fixed and is apparently contradictory to masculinity (Meuser, 2009, p. 82f.). This
contradiction is reproduced in the counselling discourse by emphasising the issue
of the goal-oriented dimension of fatherhood, interconnecting professional and
parental roles, more strongly than aspects of (co-present) fathering.
An interpretive sociology of the family, theoretically and methodologically
capable of considering the inherent vagueness of the family and understanding
it as a symbolic order – by way of conclusion – coincides with the analysis of
32 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp
collective processes of meaning-making that create, modify, and reinterpret fami-
lies and family as an institution. Approaches that draw from the sociology of
knowledge and discourse theory are able to establish an appropriate analytical
space in which the ‘recognizability of the family’ (Donzelot, 1980, p. 15) may be
better understood and made accessible for sociological purposes.

Notes
1 Translated by Simone Lackerbauer. Parts of this chapter are taken from Halatcheva-
Trapp (2018).
2 Quotes from German-language sources have been translated into English for
­convenience.
3 Expert interviews were conducted for the research project ‘Kinderschutz bei hoch-
strittiger Elternschaft’ (2007– 2010; ‘Child welfare in high-conflict divorce’), in
which the author worked as a research associate. The project was supported by the
Federal Ministry of Family Affairs, Senior Citizens, Women and Youth, and con-
ducted in cooperation with the German Youth Institute e.V., the Bundeskonferenz
für Erziehungsberatung and the Institut für angewandte Familien-, Kindheits- und
Jugendforschung e.V. at the University of Potsdam. The expert interviews have been
re-analysed for the present study.
4 Methodological reasoning and reflection on the use of expert interviews as documents
of a special discourse can be found in Halatcheva-Trapp (2018).
5 As a result of the data analysis, two interpretive patterns in the discourse were
reconstructed in the study. I regard the first, partnership, as a regulator of paren-
tal post-separation relationships, and the second, care, as a regulator of the parent-
child-relationship. For more details on these interpretive patterns and the methodical
approach, see Halatcheva-Trapp (2018).
6 On the communicative construction of family from the grandparents’ perspective, see
Montanari in this volume.

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4 Between things
Situating (post-)migration and material
culture in social space
Friedemann Neumann and Hans Peter Hahn

Introduction
If we aim at gaining an understanding of (post-)migration and everyday life, what
is of relevance concerning social space and the material world in the domestic
sphere? It is a widespread though problematic concept to analyse material pos-
sessions as representations of migrants’ specificity. It is often assumed that ‘these
people’ have particular needs which are identifiable based on objects originat-
ing from their home countries. The present contribution positions itself critically
against such approaches, as they involve an untenable simplification in their ref-
erence to the ‘meaning’ and ‘significance’ of the material (Hahn, 2017; 2016;
2015). Instead, we suggest a broader phenomenological framework. We thereby
expect to approach migration as an intrinsic cultural and societal process, includ-
ing multiple dimensions and different constellations of things in social space.

Situations and orientations

What is the best way to approach the topic of materiality, migration, and social
space? Before we embark on the theoretical framework of this chapter, we will
first give a short insight into the ethnographic research on the material culture of
households that underlines this chapter’s theoretical considerations. We found
this example interesting because, in the first place, it casts doubt on established
ideas of ‘migrants’. Furthermore, this case tells us much about orientations, social
relations, and perceptions of material culture, and how they are established,
maintained, or interrupted. The significance or value of an object derives from
its embeddedness and the point of view from which things of the everyday are
perceived, used, and evaluated.

Ilkay lives in Hamburg. She possesses a kitchen cabinet from the fifties plus
some cupboards, which blend in very well into the various styles of the fur-
nishings assembled in the flat. Ilkay came to Germany from Turkey when she
was a child and was heavily pregnant when the ethnographer1 first met her
at her apartment. Here, there are no ‘cultural markers’ in sight that simply
can be identified as ‘Turkish’. However, it turned out that the kitchenette for
36 Friedemann Neumann and Hans Peter Hahn
her, surprisingly, emerged as a ‘matter’ of conflict concerning gender-related
obligations, family life, and more general lifestyle.
As a prospective single mother, Ilkay was aware that, from her kinfolks’
point of view, she lives a reprehensible life, not being married and expect-
ing an illegitimate child. However, she was completely taken by surprise,
when during a visit of her family, the mentioned piece of kitchen furniture
became a case of dispute. This was a quarrel over a thing’s aesthetics yet also
one over representation and expectations. How could she be so irrational,
she was asked, to spend a considerable amount of money on such an old
kitchen cabinet? The perception and evaluation of the kitchenette could not
be more contradictory than by the divergent ways of being directed (fac-
ing) and taking direction towards the object of concern, by evaluation. While
Ilkay loves her kitchen furnishing because it is used and therefore provides
a homely, cozy, retro, and fancy atmosphere, for her family the purchase of
this worn out and so ‘non-presentable’ moveable is nothing more than proof
of another absurdity.
(Summary of interview, carried out in Hamburg, May 13, 2016)

On the one hand, this can be regarded as an intergenerational conflict yet, on the
other, it is also one in which the migratory history of Ilkay’s family emerges, as
she explains. These different cultural aspects of aesthetics, especially the notion
of what it means to be and how to fulfil the role of a good and well-considered
mother, i.e., via furnishings, play a part in terms of the relationship to her fam-
ily and their expectations. Ilkay decided to opt for a complex set of differing
transcultural norms. She positions herself with her ‘specific’ way of living and her
creativity in combining different styles of furniture, but also by purchasing this
specific kitchen cabinet. This, though, meant cutting relations with large parts of
her family, which, particularly as a single mother (the Ghanaian father of her child
went back to West Africa), is no easy endeavour.
Obviously, this empirical example is associated with a dispute about differing
perceptions and valuations of a piece of furniture. The question is where to start
describing the spatial relations between people and things? From a phenomeno-
logical perspective, these relations are a crucial starting point for conceptualis-
ing space as emerging from interactions between the human body and material
objects. In his Phenomenology of Perception, the French Philosopher Maurice
Merleau-Ponty (2002, p. 16) puts it this way: ‘our perceptual field is made up
of “things” and “spaces between things”’. How one perceives an apartment or
a city street is very much a result of being situated in a specific social space
and its material world (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 114f.). These ‘situations’ can
be understood as movements and experiences embedded in a specific locality
(Waldenfels, 2016, p. 115). In more general terms, we can assume that migration
should be understood to include experiences of unfamiliarity and estrangement.
People must constantly navigate between changing orders, objects, and dimen-
sions of space. This is what Vilem Flusser appropriately labelled as the ‘freedom’
of migrants (Flusser, 2003).
 Between things 37
Being situated basically constitutes the emergence of consciousness, which
is always oriented toward objects in space (Ahmed, 2006; Merleau-Ponty, 2002,
p. 115ff.). How people manage to find their way in familiar or unfamiliar con-
texts between different scales of social space, in neighbourhoods, within or amidst
nation-states and contradictory spatial practices or conceptualisations (Lefebvre,
1991, p. 423); how people locate themselves and manage to not ‘get lost’; all these
issues are deeply related to the ability to orient oneself and to appropriate the spa-
tial environment (Seamon, 2015, p. 34). This may become crucial, for example,
when faced with a lack of familiarity, communication difficulties or with over-
flows of opaque things and information.
(Post-)migratory orientation in social space means steering oneself amid peo-
ple and things, between housings, districts, cities, and countries. On an initial,
quite basic level, this requires skills of ‘wayfinding’ (Ingold, 2000, p. 219), some-
times on highly uncertain or heteronomous ground. A second aspect concerns
the unfolding of oneself, away from the ‘tyranny of home’ (Douglas, 1991).
The dispute around Ilkay’s kitchen cabinets is a vivid example. Some leeway
emerges here due to changing individual evolvement, and this also allows for
creative expression in terms of new arrangements and as a grounded aesthetic
(Willis, 1990).
Following Alfred Gell (1998, p. 223), (post-)migration can likewise be appre-
hended as a (new) way of how ‘personhood [is] being spread around in time and
space’, i. e. by dwelling. As has been shown in the previous section, place-making
can entail hardship and quarrels. Nonetheless, these processes are open-ended and
entail manifold dimensions and aspects. For one thing, it has to be asked: in what
way is the inhabitance of space defined by social conditions, especially with regard
to gender and class issues (Ahmed, 2006, pp. 15, 43ff.; Miller, 2010). Secondly,
we can ask how much contingency inheres in this process. Taking a look at social
space and how people enliven and appropriate it, e.g., by making a house a home,
can do justice to the opportunities as well as the obstacles of inhabiting (see
Boccagni, 2017; Levin, 2016; Ahmed, 2006). As shown here, this processual prac-
tice can entail negotiations of diverging norms and aesthetics but also deal with
constraints and established and national borders interwoven with material culture.

Phenomenology and the production of space

Space as dynamic dimensions
Phenomenological concepts of how to perceive spatial situatedness and its mate-
riality are an important focus of research in current ethnographic studies (Knibbe
and Versteeg, 2008; Ingold, 2000; Jackson, 1996). There are, however, theoretical
and heuristic challenges that have thus far been neglected. We will touch upon
them in the following.
Henri Lefebvre’s The Production of Space (1991), which brings together
broader philosophical, sociological, and phenomenological perspectives, offers an
innovative framework that can be used to diminish the gap between philosophical
38 Friedemann Neumann and Hans Peter Hahn
concepts and the lifeworld fruitfully. Lefebvre brings spatial and material dimen-
sions into relation with perception and embodiment extending to abstract con-
ceptualisations and their complex and flowing interconnections (Lefebvre, 1991,
p. 350). As shown with Ilkay’s case study, it does not necessarily take global
flows to give things a completely different role or meaning; it might be fully suf-
ficient to confront them with different concepts of space, of what domestic space
should look like. The phenomenological and ethnographic framework thereby
contributes to a perspective on (post-)migration based on day-to-day interrela-
tions and not so much on ‘identities’.
Lefebvre presents a notion of the triplicité of the production of space in order
to highlight the complexity of spatial relations. Thus, he declares:

1 ‘Spatial practice’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 38) is the starting point. It ‘propounds

and presupposes’ (ibid.) social space concurrently in a dialectical process;
further, it requires a certain ability, performance, and cohesiveness and is
deeply interwoven with localised social relations (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 32).
These practices processually and dynamically link different dimensions (i.e.
individual or public) of space (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 155) such as perceived
space, routines of the everyday and broader societal or transnational dimen-
sions (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 38).
2 ‘Representations of space’ (ibid.) may be scientific or normative conceptuali-
sations. These are the dominant forms of space production and hence tied to
the imposition of social orders in space (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 32).
3 ‘[R]epresentational spaces’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 39) are different from the second
point, as they address the directly lived, experienced, and embodied phenom-
ena.2 These are the spaces of dwellers and occupiers. Although they are domi-
nated, they are also experienced, appropriated and transformed, and are thus
part of the creative and subversive side of everyday life (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 32).

As we have shown, deviant ‘representations’ and ‘quotations’ of cultural orders

by subjectively arranging furnishings can also be regarded as an example of a
resourceful appropriation of space.

Lefebvre and Merleau-Ponty: Commonalities and differences

To gain a proper understanding of the (post-)migratory condition, its social space,
and materiality, it is somehow misleading to understand it as something just sub-
jectively perceived, as a coherent cultural entity or as transition of free flows,
as might emerge from the brief outline of Lefebvre’s spatial theory given in the
previous section. Therefore, we suggest combining Henri Lefebvre’s thoughts on
social space with Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenological approach. The benefit of
this conceptual blending is that it enables us to scrutinise everyday dimensions as
well as the broader societal conditions of space.
Lefebvre and Merleau-Ponty can be considered as two scholars who approach
the realm of social spaces and material objects from quite different directions.
 Between things 39
The former, as a social theorist, sees the everyday relations of (material) culture, eco-
nomics, social circumstances, position and perception of space, and bodily involve-
ment in terms of perception and practice (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 40), while the latter, as
a phenomenologist, focuses on the body ‘in-the-world’ as a ‘third term’ against the
dichotomous division of ‘external and bodily space.’ (Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 115).3
On the one hand, social space is a product between human bodies and things
(Lefebvre 1991, pp. 170; 199). On the other, these interactions have consequences,
as every touch of the body is an attempt to localise and hence situate oneself
(Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 122). However, Lefebvre (2004, p. 24; 1991, p. 183)
criticises Merleau-Ponty for not taking social practices into account and thereby
for remaining on the level of intersubjectivity. The aspect of practice is highly
relevant, as, for example, the ‘cosiness’ of Ilkay’s used kitchen does not derive
from simply looking at it. The attribute of ‘cosiness’ obviously emerges from
practical interaction with a pre-owned moveable. Ilkay’s perceiving, handling and
thus orienting (taking direction) and bodily locating herself in relation to this thing
are among the relevant practices defining the quality of this object. Thus, we can
consider this case study as the starting point of a phenomenological analysis of the
situatedness and perception of migration and to the conditions of these relations.
The benefits of a combined approach, using Merleau-Ponty’s perceptual phe-
nomenology, thus become evident. It enables us to do justice to social space as a
multi-faceted aspect of the lifeworld and furthermore to regard space as an entan-
gled yet broadly societally ‘produced’ and conceptualised context for material
possessions (see Goodman et al., 2010).

Moving things into the background and back again

The arrival of someone or something always implies a presence of what is appar-
ent, though also, at the same time, the absence of something else that is there
but we cannot perceive (Merleau-Ponty, 1964, p. 16). In large part such back-
grounds shape how everyday objects appear (Ahmed, 2006, p. 38; Husserl, 2008,
pp. 357ff.); how they are used and evaluated is related to temporalities, memo-
ries, arrangements, yet also the co-present ties to relatives (Baldassar et al., 2007,
p. 135; Selle and Boehe, 1986).

‘Behind’ time and space

The background, on the one hand, implies a spatial dimension,4 since bodies and
items which are ‘behind’ someone or something are part of it, yet it further entails
(spatial) representations of distance which make an object appear in the fore-
ground. However, being ‘behind’ something can also be a reference to the past, to
what happened ‘before’ (Ahmed, 2006, p. 38; Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 26).
It is moreover necessary to take the notion of the future, as an aspirational pos-
sibility, into account, which in many cases of migration plays a significant role
as a background for practices and perceptions of dwelling (e.g., Laszczkowksi,
2016; Ingold, 1995). Here, Bloch’s ‘konkrete Utopie’ (Bloch, 1978, p. 226)
40 Friedemann Neumann and Hans Peter Hahn
(concrete utopia), a notion of prospective possibilities, can serve as a ‘concrete’
one when it becomes the background or reference of processual realities that aim
at a specifically mediated novelty (Bloch, 1978, p. 226), be it working towards
an improvement of living conditions or hoping for reunifications with intimate
persons or family members.

Links behind things to people, places, and memories

Specific arrangements of material objects may be considered as spatially corre-
sponding with particular temporal situations. For example, the storing of things,
a spatially situated and productive material practice, mostly implies processual
references to people, places, and memories, as well as a certain knowledge.
‘Uncertain traces’ (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 110) create a referential space beyond the
household and over time (Levin, 2014, p. 55; Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 81). Storing
can thus also be related to notions of future eventualities. In this sense, relations
to items, yet also to technical devices, possibly entail a potential capacity to act
(Miller, 2010, p. 98f.). Concrete utopias can reconcile diverging norms and needs,
and make it possible to put up with constraints and difficulties, yet they require a
steady practice of unfolding such potentials.
There are also social and cultural aspects, the mobile biographies and particu-
lar family backgrounds which shape households, their boundaries, and orders.
Such notions of usage and evaluations of things are not inevitably visible at first
glance; they are complex and highly context-related and of fundamental relevance
(Kopytoff, 1986, p. 77ff.). The question of invisibility yet also of absence or loss
must be scrutinised by how the absence of loved ones, places and familiarity is
‘presenced’ via material objects (Buchli, 2010; see also Döbler in this volume).
Ties in transnational family settings are maintained and transformed by experiences
of mobility and life cycles (Baldassar et al., 2007) but also by new technologies of
communication, which can bridge considerable distances and counter feelings of
loss yet also entail unexpected forms of copresence (Elliott and Urry, 2010).
Things can be interwoven with (co-residential and/or) kin ties, things, and peo-
ple, thereby establishing a ‘mutuality of being’ (Sahlins, 2013). It is useful to ask
to what extent ‘redoing kinship’ (Carsten, 2003) implies a reconceptualisation of
family ties, as we have shown in Ilkay’s case. This particular story can also be inter-
preted as a rearrangement of social relations and kin ties. Here, the confrontation of
diverging cultural and gender claims, also expressed by material arrangements, was
quite obvious. In more general terms, it is to be asked how far kin ties can become a
matter of choice (see Baldassar et al., 2007, p. 13; Carsten, 2003, p. 142).

Migration, space, and materiality

Post-migratory conditions
Things of the everyday entail a multitude of relations – relations of spatial and emo-
tional proximity as well as of distance. With regard to studies of households in a
(post-)migratory society, aspects of lived, social, and material relations become an
 Between things 41
important field of studying material culture (see, e.g. Lozanovska, 2016; Levin, 2016,
2014; Boccagni, 2014; Dalakoglou, 2014). These significant studies make it doubt-
ful as to whether the limited perspective focusing on a mere reproduction of orders
has any value, since they look at the continuities yet also the (trans-)formations and
uncertainties of dwelling. Instead of the pure reproduction of existing cultural orders,
the focus should be on daily routines and practices, perceptions, emotional relations,
and tactics of inhabiting and appropriating of social space (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 165f.).
As Ayşe Çağlar (1990) underlines, it is of no use to approach cultural practices as if
they were straightjackets. Instead, individuals’ and groups’ experiences of mobility
in a (post-)migratory society contribute to its transformation and innovation, as can
currently be seen in many urban settings in central Europe (Hess, 2015).
Transnational social spaces (e.g. of families) are spheres which extend across
national boundaries (Basch et al., 1994). Here, dwelling means to negotiate and
situate oneself between claims and context means shifts and contestations of
priorities over time (Boccagni, 2014, p. 288). Transcultural or post-migratory
lifeworlds (see Geisen et al., 2017) do not necessarily require mobility or com-
munication across borders; rather they entail negations between different cultural
norms and values, yet also the material and immaterial dimensions of boundaries
between public and private domains (Steiner and Veel, 2017). Observing material
cultures may reveal dynamic interplays, in terms of shaping people and things and
their relations in space.
In the light of these conceptual insights, it is at the very least problematic to
portray migrants and their households as ‘exceptional’. Such arguments often
carry forward untenable ideas about exoticism, thus constructing migrants, their
materialities, and spaces as ‘others’ (Spivak, 1985). Such representations (of
space) alter from lived and perceived realms of everyday life, although they can
possess a certain influence on them (see, e.g. Clarke, 2001, p. 27). As the case of
Ilkay’s kitchen shows, things do not have to occur in a ‘migratory’ setting, how-
ever defined, in order to become an object of diverging cultural norms and percep-
tions, which has to be practically negotiated in everyday life (Neumann, 2018).
It is, therefore, necessary to take a critical look at (spatial) ‘productions’ of
sameness and differences (Lozanovska, 2016, p. 230f.). For that reason, post-
migratory perspectives on space and materiality imply focusing on everyday prac-
tices of location and negotiation, and furthermore acknowledging migration as
mobility and, thus, as a non-exceptional phenomenon which must be studied on a
societal and cultural level. To understand how greatly (spatial) representations of
migration affect the dimension of people’s everyday life is of utmost importance;
it is a serious but common flaw to simply presuppose their effect. In this respect,
future studies should examine how people are affected by exclusion and othering,
and how such problematic representations play a part in the everyday.

On consistency and unpredictability

To inhabit space necessarily implies finding and creating a place both for oneself
and for things and, in doing so, establishing a specific order (Seamon, 2015, p. 74)
42 Friedemann Neumann and Hans Peter Hahn
and a specific form of space (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 47ff). Establishing one’s own
personal style of furnishing, as shown in Ilkay’s story, can be identified as a pro-
cessual act of inhabiting. Buildings, as social and material entities, are widely
perceived as relatively stable, since they are able to reconcile diverging tenets
(Carsten and Hugh-Jones, 1995, p. 8). A similar stabilising effect can be assumed
for domestic things (Csikszentmihalyi and Rochberg-Halton, 2000, p. 100ff).
Scholars from different fields shifted to a consideration of buildings as something
processual, since ‘building’ must be understood as a verb as well as a noun, as a
processual practice and as a material entity alike (Ingold, 1995; Pezeu-Massabuau,
1999; Jones, 2009). Thus, when it comes to understanding the relations, scales,
and dynamics of households, it is not helpful to single out objects as representa-
tives of the status of those living in the household. Instead these objects should be
scrutinised with their intertwined references and intricacies.
Louis Althusser (2006, p. 167) in his late work argues against both a determin-
ist as well as an idealist liberal understanding of materialism. As an alternative, he
suggests perceiving materialism as a product of social interaction and underlines
the unpredictable, taking aspects of what he calls ‘materialism of the encounters’
(Althusser, 2006, p. 167 [emphasis in original]). Consequently, things entail a cer-
tain contingency of contact. Social space, therefore, is not just a result of negotiat-
ing symbolic delimitations but also of managing ‘obstinate’ items, constellations,
and references. The meaning of a thing – its effects, references, and valuations in
the everyday – are unpredictable and therefore difficult to control (Hahn, 2015).
The story about Ilkay’s kitchen cabinet is a good example of the multi-per-
spectival character of transcultural encounters with things in everyday life. This
piece of furniture is obstinate in the sense that it evokes contradictory emotions
and evaluations, depending on the point of view from which someone perceives
and evaluates it. These views are not only related to the position of the person
watching, but also to past bodily experiences of social and cultural practices, con-
cepts, and appropriations of space. Therefore, Ilkay’s family evaluates the kitchen
furnishing radically differently: for them, it is not something presentable. It is the
background, the social complexity ‘behind’ a thing, which decides how an object
appears in a certain context, and if the kitchen cabinet from the fifties is regarded
as shabby or something treasured as a homely thing.

Conclusion
In this contribution, we have discussed how (post-)migration can be scrutinised
by looking at how people and things situate themselves or are situated in social
space. With the aim of linking specific contexts and experiences with broader
cultural and societal aspects, we proposed a phenomenological perspective on the
production and perception of social spaces and their materialities, based on con-
cepts of Henri Lefebvre and Maurice Merleau-Ponty. Moreover, the multifaceted
background of things has been addressed, as well as the (post-)migratory dimen-
sions of domestic space and everyday life. Finally, we explored the contingent
character of objects, as a result of social and cultural ‘encounters’.
 Between things 43
The ethnographic phenomenology of material culture proposed here can be a
helpful tool to look more closely at how objects and space appear in the context
of (post-)migration. Here, the perceptions and ways of culturally producing space
by practices and the materiality intertwined with them are of importance, yet so
too is the ‘obstinacy’ things entail. Everyday items are not necessarily symboli-
cally charged or value-laden, but are nonetheless multi-dimensional and context-
related and therefore not of any less analytical importance. While discourses on
migration are often entangled with identity politics and discourses of ‘othering’,
the ethnographic and phenomenological framework unfolded in this chapter may
serve as a more appropriate approach for scrutinising situated belongings of eve-
ryday life and the material culture related to these contexts.

Notes
1 This research was conducted by Friedemann Neumann in Hamburg in 2016/17.
2 We prefer Lefebvre’s term ‘lived space’ (1991, p. 362), which can be understood as
an everyday spatial field, instead of the term ‘location’, which implies problematic
proclamations of cultural and spatial coherence (Lefebvre, 1991, p. 16; Knecht, 2010,
p. 25).
3 Nevertheless, Merleau-Ponty pursues to some extent a similar approach as Lefebvre
(see i.e. Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 200; 1964, p. 25).
4 See also Merleau-Ponty, 2002, p. 115.

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5 Space and the intersection of
gender, work and family
Recent currents in US scholarship
Marina A. Adler

Introduction
The ‘decade in review’ articles about family-related research at the start of the
twenty-first century (see Bianchi and Milkie, 2010; Fincham and Beach, 2010;
Sweeney, 2010), published in the key US family journal Journal of Marriage
and Family do not mention any spatial concepts commonly used in the European
literature. Not only was the ‘spatial and mobilities turn’ in US sociology delayed,
it has only very recently reached family research (Noah, 2015). In addition, the
spatial currents in US sociology and family research emphasise different key con-
cepts and questions than European scholarship. This chapter is an attempt to shed
light on these distinct foci and illustrate the differences with the use of recent US
work on space-sensitive topics in family research.
In order to better understand these cross-national variations, this chapter pro-
vides a cursory overview of recent scholarship involving spatial concepts in
American sociology, using a gender, work, and family intersections lens. The
chapter begins with a brief description of the spatial and mobilities turn in US
sociology in general and then presents space-sensitive research on ‘doing gen-
der, work, and family’ in terms of neighbourhood effects and parenting across
time and space. In addition, research on multi-local relationships (long-distance
relationships and transnational families) is discussed. Throughout, a special focus
is on the use of information and communication technology (ICT) as a means to
navigate across distance and borders. The chapter closes with suggestions for pos-
sible ways to narrow the conceptual and research gap between the US and Europe,
and to chart a path for a fruitful exchange of ideas across the Atlantic.

The spatial and mobilities turn in US scholarship

US social science scholarship experienced a ‘spatial turn’, but not until the 1990s
when new conversations around the significance of space and place in social
research emerged. At that time it was noted that understanding ‘(…) the arrange-
ments of particular social actors in particular social times and places’ (Abbott
1997, p. 1152) is crucial to analysing social life. In addition, the argument that
space is not merely a physical or geographical location in which social life occurs,
 Space and gender, work and family 47
but that space is imbued with meaning, gained popularity. The conceptual distinc-
tion between place and space, and which should be privileged in sociological
research, also became a matter of debate. In this context, two seminal essays with
divergent foci forged the path for a new spatial sociology in the US: Thomas
Gieryn’s (2000) ‘A Space for Place in Sociology’ and Herbert Gans’ (2002)
‘The Sociology of Space: A Use-Centered View.’ Gieryn (2000) pleads for a
place-sensitive sociology and illustrates how place matters for social life through
its three defining features: location, material form, and meaningfulness. In his
view ‘place is space filled up by people, practices, objects, and representations’
(p. 465). He urges sociologists to study everything that is informed by a sense
of space. For example, he argues that research shows that geographical gender
segregation contributes to the historically ‘spatialised’ social control of women
by limiting their mobility and denying women access to resources necessary to
increase their power. Thus, the spatial separation of gendered work and family
practices not only sets boundaries due to distance, but also creates social borders
that limit geographic mobility for one gender.
Gans (2002) is interested primarily in how people use social space. According
to Gans, ‘spatial sociologists’ examine how natural space is transformed into
social space by the way it is used and the effects of social space on those using it.
For example, members of families create social spaces in the ways they use and
relate to spaces and each other, in how they define living spaces, and in how they
infuse spaces with meanings. Borrowing Gieryn’s (2000) concept of emplace-
ment, Gans (2002) argues, ‘all social life is emplaced’ (p. 330). While families are
emplaced at a number of physical and relational levels – countries, cities, neigh-
bourhoods, and homes – Gans holds that not much is known about how families
live inside their homes. Because family members experience and interpret space
as lived or imagined space, according to Gans space becomes a relevant factor
shaping family lives, including decision-making about having (more) children. In
this view, also traditionally shared by ethnomethodologists, ‘doing family’ may
in part depend on the availability and adequacy of perceived living space (see
Nelson, 2006). People not only become attached to personalised spaces, they feel
a sense of displacement when they move away. For example, space matters when
parents divorce, as an analysis of children’s living spaces in each parent’s resi-
dence shows (see Janning, Laney and Collins, 2010; see also Hachet in this vol-
ume for a European example). It appears that the quality, rather than the quantity,
of children’s personalised space is important for a positive parent-child relation-
ship post-divorce (see Janning, Laney and Collins, 2010).
In a Current Sociology issue on ‘spatial sociology’, Mimi Sheller (2017)
describes the process from a spatial turn to a mobilities turn in American sociol-
ogy. The ‘new mobilities paradigm’, and the relational conceptualisation of space
developed with John Urry, she argues, challenge ‘the idea of space as a con-
tainer for social processes’ and bring into focus ‘the dynamic, ongoing produc-
tion of space’ (Sheller, 2017, p. 628). This view of complex, multi-dimensional
mobilities generated through cultural and social practices allows a space-sensitive
understanding of intersections of gender, work, and family. Particularly relevant
48 Marina A. Adler
here is mobility’s relativity in terms of American culture, history and inequal-
ity: ‘there is a record of coerced mobilities, displacement, and closely controlled
tracking’ (Sheller, 2017, p. 631). Hence, spatial segregation of and (im)mobilities
in places are both grounded in and reproduced by gender, class, race/ethnic, and
cross-national inequalities that affect families. For example, boundaries between
private and public spaces, neighbourhoods, and countries, depending on their
permeability, can encourage or limit mobility of family members with certain
social characteristics.
In fact, much of the sociology of gender focuses on (im)mobilities and rela-
tional (often hierarchical) spaces occupied by women and men in various social
structures (gender order, labour market, homes), as well as the gendered nature
of the spaces themselves. For example, masculinity is done in certain spaces (e.g.
public spaces after dark, corporate workplaces or golf clubs) where women his-
torically have been ‘out of place’. These places are socially constructed as inap-
propriate or harmful spaces for women, which reinforce gendered, often symbolic
boundaries (see Walsh, 2015).

Neighbourhoods and the activity spaces of families

Based on the previous discussion, scholars also examine how place matters for
American families’ everyday lives and how members of families use spaces for
family practices. In fact, in the introduction to an issue of the Journal of Family
Issues on spaces, places and family life, Michelle Janning (2008) asks: ‘What is
the geography of American family life? Where are families located?’ (p. 230).
Given that families, even when they are in multiple homes, are located within
neighbourhoods, researchers have suggested that American family scholarship
would benefit from incorporating spatial insights from neighbourhood effects
research in order to put ‘families into place’ (Noah, 2015, p. 452).
Due to the unique historical development of ethnic and racial relations in the
US, scholarship on urban neighbourhoods was initially concerned mainly with
various causes and consequences of racial segregation, ethnic enclaves, poverty
concentration, residential (im)mobility, and immigration. In particular, the role
of racial segregation in creating poverty and disadvantages in inner city neigh-
bourhoods, that in turn affect the structure of African-American families, were
investigated (see Wilson, 1998). In addition, scholars examined the effects of
zoning laws related to the integration of neighbourhoods and public schools (see
Rothstein, 2015), spatial mismatches related to unequal access to resources (see
Kalleberg, 2007), and ‘white flight’ to suburbia (see Woldoff, 2011). This lit-
erature produced a tradition in US space-sensitive scholarship that emphasises
borders, boundaries, and divisions. Only recently has the focus shifted to the
activities within the spaces bounded by borders, on how boundaries are managed
in everyday lives, and on how distances are bridged, particularly using ICT.
Neighbourhood effects research allows researchers to understand family for-
mation, parenting behavior, and decision-making about mobility within a spe-
cific and changing social and spatial environment (see Freisthler et al., 2016;
 Space and gender, work and family 49
Entwisle, 2007). There is an increasing interest in how family members use and
think about their neighbourhoods, how they move within and connect across
neighbourhoods, and how they negotiate neighbourhood boundaries in their daily
moves between work and family-related activities. Thus, not only do neighbour-
hood characteristics affect families, but residents alter the neighbourhood struc-
tures they live and/or work in, and move to and from (see Clark and Withers,
2007; Entwisle, 2007). For example, research shows that because more affluent,
often white, families in the inner city decide to send their children to local private
schools, minority students are disproportionately left in the public schools with
few resources (see Saporito and Sohoni, 2007).
Nevertheless, recently scholars have found that residential neighbourhoods may
be too narrow a frame (see Freisthler et al., 2016) or even a methodologically flawed
unit of analysis for understanding family activities (see Noah, 2015). Family mem-
bers routinely cross neighbourhood boundaries and parents may spend more time
outside than inside their neighbourhoods, especially if they have long commutes
to work. An analysis of this type of issue may require what urban sociologist John
Logan (2012) calls ‘spatial thinking,’ defined as considering the relative locations
of social phenomena, i.e., where they are or happen in relation to others. Hence,
distance and proximity can be measures of family members’ access to certain peo-
ple in their social network or to resources, like jobs, day care, or transportation.
One methodological tool that helps to understand how neighbourhood bounda-
ries have become more ‘fuzzy’ is the ‘activity spaces approach’ (Noah, 2015).
Activity spaces are defined as the routine geographical locations that individu-
als visit during their day-to-day activities. These are, for example, mapped in
polygons and vary in size and by family characteristics, but tend to be larger
than neighbourhoods (see Feisthler et al., 2016). Individual activity, or travel,
patterns in space are important in understanding the relative locations and dis-
tances involved in ‘doing family’. This approach captures spatial concepts, such
as distance, proximity, exposure and access, and thus is considered superior to
traditional neighbourhood-effect research (see Noah, 2015; Browning and Soller,
2014; Logan, 2012).
Recent research has found that parenting styles are affected by neighbour-
hood context and activity spaces (see Wolf et al., 2017; Freisthler et al., 2016).
Larger activity spaces are related to the use of less punitive parenting, indicating
that access to a wider social network exposes people to more positive parent-
ing norms than those found in disadvantaged neighbourhoods. In addition, Noah
(2015) argues that activity spaces can inform research on gender, work and family
intersections because working mothers’ activity spaces include home, workplace,
day care or school, and resources, such as grocery stores, which are crucial to
understanding how doing ‘work-life-balance’ is approached in a spatial context.

Parenting across time and space

Part of the reason the US is a relative newcomer to spatial family scholarship is
that work and family intersections are primarily conceptualised in terms of a ‘time
50 Marina A. Adler
squeeze’ and thus spatial issues are often subsumed under or conflated with time
issues. For example, Arlie Hochschild’s (1989; 1997) seminal works on the ‘time
bind’ and ‘the second shift’ focused on the time pressures caused by combining
work and family responsibilities. While using a spatial term, Jerry Jacobs and
Kathleen Gerson (2004) defined the ‘great divide’ in US work and family recon-
ciliation also in terms of time rather than space. Whereas the work-family con-
flicts exist in all contemporary societies, the specific daily time constraints faced
by working parents in the US are more extreme than in Europe.
Unlike Europeans, US citizens are not entitled to any statutory paid vacation,
paid sick leave, paid parental (maternal or paternal) leave benefits, or access to
affordable day care. Furthermore, dual earner couples (both parents work full-
time) predominate in the US, yet only higher-level professionals receive some
paid leave, depending on the generosity of their employer. Americans also work
on average more hours than Europeans – for example, in 2016 Americans worked
1,783 total hours per year, compared to 1,472 hours for the French, and 1,363
hours for the Germans (OECD 2016). This has led Jacobs and Gerson (2004) to
conclude that American dual earner couples, and particularly working parents,
are overworked.
In addition, US norms regarding child supervision are more restrictive than
those in most of Europe. These standards of care are based on fears regarding
exposure to the risk of ‘stranger danger’ and have led to parents to severely limit
their children’s mobility outside the home. According to Nelson (2008), parental
anxiety has become routine and normative in the US. Using Gieryn’s conceptuali-
sation (2000), spaces become places when they attain certain meaningful attrib-
utes, such as public/private or dangerous/safe. From an overprotective parent’s
point of view, public places are by definition dangerous to children. Constant
monitoring to reduce risk exposure poses logistical problems for parents as they
negotiate their activity spaces. The prevalence of ‘helicopter parenting’ in main-
stream US has increased, which means that parents ‘hover’ protectively over
their children either via co-presence, by shuttling them from one activity to the
next (‘soccer moms’), or by using technology (see Nelson, 2008). However, even
within the safety of their home, parents monitor their young children with ICT
(see Nelson, 2008). Thus, the location of caregiving and control is not necessarily
physical, but can occur remotely in order to overcome the constraints on location.
With the help of ICT children are now under continuous surveillance, from baby
monitors (see Nelson, 2008) and ‘nanny cams’ to smartphone apps.
Although these facets of American family life have interesting spatial implica-
tions, relatively little sociological research has examined how working parents
negotiate the spatial boundaries of their work-family arrangements on a daily
basis. The gendered locations of mothers’ work are characterised by an ideologi-
cal distinction between either stay-at-home or working mothers (see Dillaway and
Paré, 2008). Analysis of the spatial locations of these types of mothers and their
activities in those spaces illustrates the ideological connections between mother-
hood and locations. A question for future research is how these dynamics differ
for fathers who stay at home or are working.
 Space and gender, work and family 51
US literature on multi-local living arrangements
The US may be the most highly mobile among post-industrial societies in terms
of long-distance and local residential mobility (see Clark and Withers, 2007).
Suburbanisation, labour market changes, and (un-)availability of affordable
housing are factors in families’ mobility strategies. Yet, the US literature has
a short history of researching spatial distance in living arrangements. While
Europeans have developed concepts, such as ‘multi-locality’ or ‘multi-local
families’ (see Schier, 2015; Schier et al., 2015; see also Monz, Nimmo/Schier,
Schier, Schlinzig in this volume), these are not used in the US. Even though
shared custody arrangements of families after separation or divorce are becom-
ing more common in the US (see Austin, 2015; Melli and Brown, 2008), when
multi-local living arrangements involve children, the research focus is on child
custody and child support (see Austin, 2015; Venohr and Griffith, 2003) rather
than space or place. Furthermore, the European usage of the term ‘long-distance
relationship’ (LDR) exclusively describes couple relationships without a shared
household (see Schneider, 2009). Lacking the ‘multi-local family’ concepts for
US scholars, the term LDR applies more broadly to relationships between roman-
tic partners or family members, where geographic constraints restrict contact (see
Stafford, 2016). By this definition LDRs include ‘cross-residential’ relationships
of parents and non-residential children as well as couples, who are separated
due to employment, divorce, migration, or lifestyle preferences (Stafford, 2016).
In addition, the amount of time and frequency of co-presence rather than the
lack of a common household is the defining feature of American LDRs (see
Schneider, 2009).

Long-distance relationships (LDR)

Spatial mobility is a key feature of contemporary living and working lifestyles
and raises questions about how important physical co-presence is to maintaining
close relationships (for a discussion of variations in co-presence see also Döbler
in this volume). This section will discuss current US literature on geographically
separate living arrangements of partners and family members in LDRs in general
and the special case of commuter marriage (CM).
Originally, Gerstel and Gross (1984) defined LDRs as relationships where it
is difficult or impossible for partners to be physically co-present on a daily or
even weekly basis. Recently, Orsolya Kolozsvari (2015) described LDRs by con-
tact and distance: LDR-partners maintain separate residences, live over 100 miles
apart, and meet face-to-face no more than once every week. Because relation-
ships generally occur in a specific temporal and spatial context, they are usually
defined in terms of ‘togetherness.’ When partners are separated geographically,
they are challenged to ‘do togetherness’ without physical co-presence. Gretchen
Kelmer and colleagues (2013) examined the relationship quality, commitment,
and stability of LDRs and found that distance is not disadvantaging LDRs vis-
à-vis close-proximity romantic relationships. In fact, LDRs scored higher on a
52 Marina A. Adler
number of relationship quality measures, such as love for and fun with partner and
conversational quality, and reported less problematic communication.
One factor facilitating the maintenance of high quality multi-local relationships
is the availability of ICT (see Dwrokin et al., 2016). According to Kolozsvari
(2015), ICT provides the opportunity to achieve and shape shared spaces for
social interaction and intimacy in LDRs. Her interviews with partners in hetero-
sexual couples show that the emotional commitment and the conscious decision
to be together validated them as couples. Their responses suggest that emotional
closeness transcends distance, implying that ‘distance and closeness are not nec-
essarily opposites, or at least that the boundaries between them can be perme-
able’ (Kolozsvari, 2015, p. 107). These couples understand the meaning of shared
space as mental or emotional closeness rather than as being based on physical
co-presence.
Building on these insights, another study specifically examined which ICT for-
mat LDRs prefer to bridge geographical distance (see Janning et al., 2018). The
findings suggest that audio and visual technology increase feelings of closeness
in relationships (see Janning et al., 2018) and make socio-mental spaces ‘just as
real as physical spaces’ (Kolozsvari, 2015, p. 112). Interestingly, the use of ICT
may also provide an environment that allows separated parents to find new and
less combative ways to communicate about their children’s lives (see Dworkin
et al., 2016). These changing conceptualisations of sharing space demonstrate the
advantages of using ICT for maintaining well-functioning relationships with fam-
ily members across a distance.

Commuter marriages (CM)

Commuter marriages are a specific form of LDR, where married partners, with or
without children, live apart and maintain geographically separate homes to accom-
modate career advancement (see Rhodes, 2002). Usually one spouse becomes the
‘commuter’ by moving to a secondary residence close to their workplace and then
‘visits’ the shared home. The CM is more prevalent among highly educated pro-
fessionals, mainly because their specialised occupations are not supported in one
local labour market. Although this relationship form continues to increase in the
US, relatively little research has been done since Gerstel and Gross (1984) pointed
out that CMs may reflect increasing gender egalitarianism by valuing women’s
and men’s careers equally.
This raises the question to what extent the gendered division of household labour
is undermined by multi-local living arrangements. Along those lines, Danielle
Lindemann (2018) finds that everyday activities in separate spaces provided
CM partners opportunities to both do and undo traditional gender performances.
Specifically, while women were relieved of some of their typical housework, men
had to do more. Both partners found that this living arrangement was beneficial
to their work productivity, but women more so. At the same time, in CMs with
children women remained the primary caretaker, and their de facto status as ‘lone
mothers’ actually increased their childcare responsibilities, thereby maintaining
 Space and gender, work and family 53
the gender structure. The questions arise to what extent being the proximate or
distant parent changes mothers’ and fathers’ activity spaces and how do working
parents in CM negotiate the boundaries of their daily work-family activities?

Transnational migration, displacement and families

Transnational migration is not a homogenous phenomenon – it can be forced,
voluntary, temporary or permanent. In either case, however, it affects the family
members involved in the sending and receiving countries. While transnational
families did not emerge as a subject of scholarly research in the US until the mid
2000s (see Zentgraf and Chinchilla, 2012), since then a robust body of litera-
ture on family life across borders has emerged (see Hamilton and Hale, 2016).
These studies focus on the effects of family separation due to displacement and
undocumented migration on family structures and parenting practices, particu-
larly with respect to the US-Mexican border. Most recently, scholars have stud-
ied the effects of US border militarisation on the residential location of children
with migrating Mexican parents (see Hamilton and Hale, 2016). Since 1993,
militarised border control has disrupted the historically circular family migration
pattern, where one parent works in the US and visits the spouse and children,
who stay in Mexico. Now entire families are remaining in the US either undocu-
mented or with mixed-status. The children brought to the US undocumented grow
up in fear of deportation and family separation (see Dreby, 2015). The DACA
(Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) policy of 2012 (but not renewed in
2017) intended to protect these children, called Dreamers, in undocumented or
mixed-status families in the US (see Abrego, 2018). The benefits associated with
DACA also gave recipients spatial mobility within the US in order to pursue edu-
cational and occupational opportunities.
The loss of place, dislocation, and displacement has profound effects on fami-
lies and parenting at a distance. Of particular interest is the migration of mothers,
examined as ‘transnational motherhood’ (Parreñas, 2017) or ‘global care chains’
(Hochschild, 2000). These studies deal with the consequences of spatial mother-
child separation and the need for substitute care in the sending countries (see
Zentgraf and Chinchilla, 2012). Regular contact across space can maintain paren-
tal authority and a sense of caring (see Zentgraf and Chinchilla, 2012), and tech-
nological advances have changed the everyday dynamics of transnational family
relationships dramatically. Specifically, the instantaneous connection across
borders and more frequent digital interaction facilitated by ICT has shaped the
lives of migrants and transnational families. For example, care work of mothers
at a distance is mediated by ICT, creating new intimacies (see Francisco, 2015).
Visual technology allows mothers to see their children grow up and monitor day-
to-day activities despite long-term separation. Thus, technology is ‘magical’ in
that it offers a ‘presence’ in each other’s lives that can create more closeness than
in the past (see Francisco, 2015).
At the same time, just as is the case with American LDRs, ICT leaves the
traditional gendered division of labour mostly unchanged. While ICT allows
54 Marina A. Adler
migrant women to perform work they usually would not do in their home coun-
try, it also lets them continue to perform care work from a distance, delegating
various domestic tasks (see Parreñas, 2005). In addition, while ICT has facilitated
closeness across borders, Valerie Francisco (2015) argues that the expansion of
capitalism and globalisation that produced the migrants and separated families
also necessitates their use of ICT, thereby changing the relationships within trans-
national families.

Conclusion
This chapter was intended to show that US family scholarship on spatial issues
not only lags behind that in Europe, but focuses on different concepts and topics.
Thus, time rather than space has been considered the crucial factor in understand-
ing familial relationship dynamics. Scholarship examines how Americans are rec-
onciling their work and family responsibilities under extreme time pressure, and
the spillover across boundaries is understood in terms of time poverty rather than
proximal factors.
Clearly, US scholarship should adopt the terminology of ‘multi-locality’ in
researching couple and family relationships. Rather than exclusively focusing on
the relationships per se, understanding the locations and meanings of the distant
spaces inhabited by separated families is important. The strengths in US schol-
arship on families and space is the extensive investigation of the use of ICT in
LDRs and transnational mothering, activity spaces and boundaries, and a focus on
diversity and inequality.
As this review shows, the use of technology has moved beyond being a
means of coping with the separation of family members to being an integral part
of actively ‘doing family’ and parenting across a distance. ICT allows for joint
decision-making, planning, problem-solving and task management in relationship
maintenance, co-parenting, and mothering. Are today’s LDRs more resilient than
those in the past because of more available technology? Clearly the examination
of ICT and activity spaces should be expanded to fathering practices – how father-
ing is done at a distance, either due to separation/divorce or for career reasons.
How do fathers negotiate the spatial boundaries of work and family via ICT? This
includes research on transnational fathering practices as well.
Understanding the geography of family life in contemporary advanced coun-
tries within the context of globalisation processes requires that scholars include
space more explicitly and systematically, particularly in terms of mapping tech-
niques (see Logan, 2012). Family research can indeed benefit from more spatial
thinking in general and from the cross-fertilisation of research strands on both
sides of the Atlantic.

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Part II

Space-sensitive research on
family and identity
Methodology and methods
6 Notions of space and family
The documentary method approach to
analyse communication about family life
Giulia Montanari

The aim of the following chapter is to show the link between family discourses
and social milieus by exploring our communicative use of space in everyday life.
Space is understood as a fundamental category that not only informs and struc-
tures our everyday life knowledge but is also used in fundamentally different
notions. To approach this endeavour empirically, I have applied a communicative
constructivist view, arguing that we can only observe and analyse communication
procedures. While this perspective lacks a methodology of its own, the documen-
tary method, an empirical approach following practice-theory concepts, can pro-
vide a consistent complement, while also connecting the findings to social milieus
as the social context that informs our world views. To this end, in this chapter
I will start by exploring current discussions concerning family discourses and
continue by discussing communication as an empirical base to research notions of
family. This will be followed by an empirical example that will be analysed with
the help of the documentary method. A short conclusion rounds off the chapter.

Family discourses on time and space across time and space

Even though there are many advocates claiming the existence of a ‘natural’ family
order, a look into the historical development of social ideals of what constitutes
a ‘proper’ family makes clear that this very question has changed throughout his-
tory and always been politically challenged. As one of the main topics approached
by biopolitics (Foucault, 1978, p. 108), societal value is constantly contested and
its core ideas therefore change not only historically, but also according to cultural
context. It is well known that the political divide between liberals and conserva-
tives sees at its core a fundamentally different view around everyday family life –
even within the constructs such as ‘liberal’ and ‘conservative’. This divide comes
to the fore when issues such as gay marriage, child welfare, or measures that
tackle gender equality are discussed.
Notions of family thus differ dramatically. They can be differentiated in terms
of such categories as gender, partnership, and childcare (see Halatcheva-Trapp in
this volume), individualism, biological/social relation, childhood, or time (who
spends how much time with the children, how much ‘quality time’ do the par-
ents need, etc.). Space can also be used as a category around which notions of
62 Giulia Montanari
family are built. For instance, different issues emerge on where to live (family-
friendly neighbourhoods), parents living together or not, living in the city or the
countryside (see also Karsten in this volume), etc. When focusing on the rela-
tionship between family members, the concept of co-presence, which is closely
related to questions of presence/absence in families, comes to the fore (Baldassar,
2016; Rüger et al., 2014). According to Berger and Luckmann, co-presence is the
prototypical setting for social interaction, and further: ‘no other form of social
relating can reproduce the plentitude of symptoms of subjectivity present in the
face-to-face situation. Only here is the other’s subjectivity empathically “close”.
All other forms of relating to the other are, in varying degrees, “remote”’ (Berger
and Luckmann, 1966, p. 43). While there is some detailed research on co-pres-
ence – as well as on proximity – as a theoretical concept (Urry, 2002; Baldassar,
2016; Doebler in this volume), there is still little emphasis put on the question of
how space and spatial knowledge is negotiated on an everyday level – rather than
dealing with how people move in space, explaining their behaviour, and naming
their motives regarding ‘spatial facts’ that more often than not refer to one specific
notion of ‘space’, such as distance, explicitly.
Here, I want to tackle the question of how we can better understand the embed-
dedness of space as an epistemic category in various aspects concerning eve-
ryday family life. In this approach space is not only a piece of information that
we communicate openly about in everyday life. Rather, it is also a concept that
structures our knowledge of everyday life aspects that are not obviously spatial,
as I shall demonstrate.

Communication as empirical basis to approach

social knowledge
What we know about the world – and thus about families and their everyday
life – structures our actions in a profound way. The sociologist Alfred Schütz
offered a very detailed analysis of how our subjective knowledge inventory is
textured. According to him, awareness of the limitation of the following four
basic elements shapes all commonly shared knowledge (Schütz and Luckmann,
2003, p. 149ff.):

•• the current situation (we experience one moment in historical time)

•• the social situation (of roles, of traditions, habitual processes)
•• time (temporal structures of our being)
•• space (e.g. the spatial limitations to movement).

Schütz also sometimes integrates these elements into three basic knowledge
aspects, namely the socially, temporally, and spatially defined structure of our
lifeworld. Apart from that, he also differentiates specific epistemic elements that
we can communicate about, as well as routine or practical knowledge that we usu-
ally do not explicitly communicate about. This corresponds to the well-­established
distinction between practical and tacit knowledge (Meusburger, 2015).
 Notions of space and family 63
Just as important as the knowledge itself are the relevance systems that struc-
ture the application of pieces of information in specific situations. Therefore,
Schütz emphasises, ‘[a] theory of projected action and decision in the lifeworld
requires an analysis of the underlying systems of relevance’ (1975, p. 131).
This view informed Berger and Luckmann, who also deepen the analysis of
the social genesis of knowledge and typifications. While Schütz claims that we
either develop typifications in new social situations to be solved or adopt already
existing ones which we become acquainted with in the course of our socialisa-
tion, Berger and Luckmann elaborate this view further and deal specifically with
the objectification and transfer of knowledge through language. Assuming that
knowledge has to be in some way or another ‘objectified’ before it can be trans-
ferred (in a process in which it becomes ‘social’), it has to become visible or
audible (at least in some physically accessible way) and understandable within
a given knowledge system. Only then will actions become social, observable,
and open to the experience of others. Furthermore, Berger and Luckmann (1966,
p. 49ff.) assume that language is especially eligible to communicate knowledge
broadly, and they focus on the kind of typification that language already contains
and automatically transmits in practice.
This focus on language as communication has recently been further deepened
in the German-speaking sociological community that currently aims to develop
communicative constructivism (Keller et al., 2013; Knoblauch, 2013a; 2013b;
Luckmann, 2013). With this comes a focus on communication instead of lan-
guage, with language being only one of many forms in which communication is
actualised. This is why Knoblauch (2003) went even further to proclaim the end
of the linguistic turn.
According to communicative constructivism, meaning is the matter the social
is made of – building at the same time our subjective and our commonly shared
knowledge world. But it is only communication that we can observe and study
(Keller et al., 2013, p. 11). Empirically speaking, communication is the only
access we have to the social world, since we as scientists are also part of that very
world. Language is only one of many forms in which social meaning materialises
into objectivations that are subjectively acquired and reproduced. Following that,
we also have to recognise ‘the role of “objectivations” in social action, which
allows one to consider body, practice and things’ (Knoblauch, 2013b, p. 298).
Meaning is subjectively acquired, transmitted, and transformed through and by
communicative practices that include non-verbal actions as well as language. The
‘how’ rather than the ‘what’ of practices then comes to the fore. The approach as
proposed by Keller, Knoblauch, and others therefore follows the practice turn (see
especially Knoblauch’s focus on practice, 2013a and b) and considers the social
context that influences the way in which practices are carried out. This also leads
us to the question of socialisation and social milieus.
For our present purpose, families will be seen as a complex knowl-
edge structure embedded in a social context which influences how – and not
only what – we talk about families. What this chapter will show is that this
knowledge around families is built on different notions of space (as a specific
64 Giulia Montanari
linguistic objectivation) that is also communicated practically within different
social milieus in a specific way.

Documentary method to analyse communication

Even though the most visible representatives of communicative constructivism,
especially Knoblauch, stress the importance of going beyond language-based per-
spectives (see Knoblauch, 2013a, p. 29), the empirical approaches presented thus
far mainly use discourse analysis to investigate communication practices (see, e.g.,
the collection of contributions in Keller et al., 2013). Just as Knoblauch demands
a more practical theory that focuses on the ‘how’, the documentary method also
proposes a methodological programme that is applicable to the analysis of the
‘how’ of communicative processes. While the debates around the documentary
method and communicative constructivism take place quite independently from
each other, I will argue that those approaches differ more in some terminology
and citation practices, and less in terms of methodological approach.1 As we have
seen before, Knoblauch (2013a, p. 29) also argues that the practice of communica-
tion has to be taken into account, not only the intentional meaning, as is the case
in many qualitative studies and which, according to Bohnsack, cannot not even be
accessed (Bohnsack 2014, p. 219). In this sense, Knoblauch implicitly follows the
distinction between explicit and implicit knowledge – i.e. the main distinction in
the approach of the documentary method.
The documentary method as a methodological approach has been developed
by Bohnsack and his associated colleagues since the late 1980s. It is a recon-
structive approach that also refers to practice theory (especially Bourdieu), and
aims to analyse different empirical materials, such as group discussions, interview
texts, video data, and images. In his attempt to found a reconstructive approach,
Bohnsack comes back to the German sociologist Karl Mannheim. Strengthening
the idea of a human-made social world, he especially emphasised the idea of
observing the social world and reconstructing social meaning from it – just as we
also do on an everyday basis.
The documentary method relies heavily on the fundamental distinction between
explicit, communicative knowledge that is intentionally transferable, and implicit,
practical, or documentary knowledge that is revealed through the conduct of com-
munication itself. Following a practice-theory approach, it is also a change of
perspective from the ‘what’ to the ‘how’ (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 218), focussing on
the embodied practice we rely on when interacting with others. Practical knowl-
edge is in itself also a social phenomenon, as can be empirically observed in
the form of social milieus, named ‘knowledge communities’ by Gerhard Schulze
(1992, p. 267). Both approaches, that of communicative constructivism as devel-
oped by Knoblauch and the documentary method as developed by Bohnsack, fol-
low this argument and make references to Bourdieu (Knoblauch, 2013b, p. 306;
Bohnsack, 2014, p. 222).
Continuing this approach, the following empirical remarks focus not on the
fact that space is used in talk about families (as a piece of theoretical content
 Notions of space and family 65
of communication), but rather show that there is a difference in ‘how’ we use a
­specific notion of space when talking about everyday family life.

Empirical case study: How we use space in family-talk

In order to show how space – as part of the codified information, the what –
is structured by milieu-specific knowledge about everyday family life, I refer to
a previous work of mine that examined how people talk about their everyday
family life by using a language that reveals implicitly as well as explicitly their
knowledge about the link between space and society (Montanari, 2016). It was
empirically founded on open qualitative interviews with 14 grandmothers and
grandfathers, and employed the documentary method in its analysis, as adapted
for narrative interview texts by Arnd-Michael Nohl (2012). The sample of per-
sons interviewed varied in terms of gender, age, employment status, level of pro-
fessional training, number of grandchildren, and degree of emotional closeness
(for more details, see Montanari, 2016, p. 114).
I conducted single narrative interviews that focused on their everyday life:
we talked about the last visits, upcoming visits, conflicts with parents and grand-
children, choice of activities, joint vacation, school visits, and so forth. All inter-
views were audio-recorded and subjected to the analysis procedure explained in
the following.

Analysing the ‘how’ of speech: the documentary

method for qualitative interviews
The aim of the documentary method is to reconstruct the style of practice – the
‘how’ – using two analytical steps. While – first – the formulating interpretation
aims at revealing the topical structure of a document (the ‘what’) by identifying
topics and text pieces to transcribe, the reflecting interpretation aims – second –
at understanding ‘how’ the topics were elaborated on (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 225ff.,
Nohl, 2012, p. 40ff.). The latter step targets ‘both the formal and semantic aspects
of interviews’ (Nohl, 2012, p. 41; transl. GM). Those two steps are followed by
the development of a two-dimensional typology. From the formal and semantic
aspects, the meaning-genetic typology reconstructs different orientation frames
that structure the knowledge, which is then exposed to the socio-genetical typol-
ogy, which links it to common experiences like generation, age, gender, etc.
(Nohl, 2012, p. 50ff.).
As part of the reflecting interpretation, Nohl proposes an analysis of four dif-
ferent types of text we use in language-based communication: narrations, descrip-
tions, arguments, and evaluations (Nohl, 2012, p. 21).
While Nohl aims at identifying narrative parts because practical knowledge
ought to be found there (Nohl, 2012, p. 43; Bohnsack, 2014, p. 225), I argue
that the use of different types of text is a practical skill per se, a communicative
technique people use differently.2 Similar to communicative genres (such as jok-
ing or instructing; Keppler, 1994), the text types are communicative techniques
66 Giulia Montanari
(on a lower level, though: communicative genres contain text types) which we
use in different manners – think of the proverb ‘Still waters run deep’ or when
we describe very talkative persons. When considering the way we use objecti-
fied, socially shared knowledge (Berger and Luckmann, 1966), the specific inter-
play of these learned techniques reveals everyday knowledge connections and
relevance systems (Schütz and Luckmann, 2003). Luckmann also explains that
communicative genres are used milieu-dependently (Luckmann, 1986, p. 205).
Based on this assumption, empirically reconstructed types can be interpreted as
knowledge communities that deal with their everyday family life in a similar way
(on a practical level) and also connect space and time in their communication in
a specific manner.

Findings: An open vs. a formal approach to the social world

In the course of the interviews, very diverse topics were addressed, such as
relationship constellations and living arrangements, work life, vacations, eve-
ryday activities, and visiting regulations. Analysed independently from any
‘space-talk’, the first step of the reflecting interpretation revealed two distinct
ways of talking about any of these topics: one in a very open and fluid way,
putting emotions and personal needs in the middle of their communicative
considerations. A second way of contextualising the topics was more for-
mal and oriented toward abstract ideals. See Table 6.1 for an outline of these
two ways.
Taking the topic of gift giving as an example, the distinction can be made more
comprehensible, as explained by one grandfather when citing his grandson asking
for a toy:

‘Grandpa, I’ve already seen something. A kind of Lego box.’ [To which] I
said, ‘that costs more than one hundred German Marks, it is expensive. Well,
I will have to see, Grandpa will have to work for a while.’…. One should not
spoil them, but when you can, you can …. And this is in in fact when I am
happy, when I can provide that for the kids. Because… we didn’t have any-
thing, there was nothing for us.
(Michael Reiser, 69 years old, pensioned driver
[translation GM])

Table 6.1 Two distinct ways of contextualising everyday family life

Formal •• Search for rules and valid norms
•• Oriented towards abstract family ideals
•• Similar to a modernist, rational approach to social and everyday knowledge
Open •• Situative negotiation processes
•• Oriented towards individual needs and emotions
•• Similar to a fluid, postmodern approach to everyday knowledge
 Notions of space and family 67
The topic of ‘gift giving’ is introduced by Michael Reiser by means of a concrete
narration and description, leading him to reflect on consumer desires. He empha-
sises nonetheless how much he likes to give, which is a way of bringing some joy
to his family. He always contextualises the topic of gift giving with finances, often
in an arbitrary way (because every now and then during the interview, he also ques-
tions some wishes of his grandson, like a mobile phone (Montanari, 2016, p. 160).
This considerable openness and arbitrariness is different from another approach
to gift giving, namely that of Michaela Riemerschmidt, who instead tends to talk
about gifts in terms of educational purpose:

I only buy a few toys. I buy clothes for the children, because I say they have
so many things and I don’t have to… They get small things of course, which
they like. But I introduced – and this is what all my friends now do – kids
getting a magazine subscription for their birthday. They can choose it for
themselves, and, so they read, and… so they can spend time by themselves.
These are really great things.
(Michaela Riemerschmidt, 71 years old, pensioned
kindergarten worker [translation GM])

She argues very thoroughly, rather neglecting the playful and joyful aspect of gift
giving. Her explanation instead focusses on the pedagogical value of gifts. In a
very rational and individualist way, she talks about consumerist ethics and the
moral implication the specific gift has on personal development. There seems to
be a ‘right’ way of gift giving.
These two positions correspond very well to the opposition of two everyday
life strategies or coping mechanisms that Richard Sennett famously described for
dealing with late-modern capitalism: drifting and surfing (1998). While drifting
implies a sense of losing ground and aim in the face of a search for stability and
a ‘true order’, surfing implies situational mastery in face of the unknown and the
unforeseeable – as you can never know what wave is going to hit you next.
None of my interview partners used only one of the two logics. Based on that
observation, I also reconstructed the conversations individually for each inter-
viewee. The outcome was a more detailed differentiation of communicative styles
of talking about everyday family life. I identified at least seven different styles
that were still dominated by either the formal or the open account (see Montanari,
2016, p. 168ff.). For the simplicity of the argument, I will therefore stick to the
simple two-dimensional distinction of formal and open accounts to make sense
of everyday life.

Space semantics
When we talk about space, we have to take into account the fact that there exist
different accounts of what space actually means. There are numerous ways of fun-
damentally differentiating the category of space (see, e.g., Curry, 1996). For the
68 Giulia Montanari
argument here, I will follow the popular differentiation between space (choros)
and place (topos) (see Hubbard, 2005; Sui, 2012). While space refers to the
Cartesian, physical, and fixed realm, place, though still referring to a bound place,
approaches the meaning, the subjective understanding, and the lived experience
of places. The latter meaning of place is then understood in a relational manner
rather than in an absolute way.
Using a language-based approach to space, such different notions can be
understood as linguistically objectified knowledge elements. Spatial codes con-
stitute knowledge about families and make communication about families pos-
sible. Spatial notions do not hint at ‘real’ spatial impacts (that distances have, for
instance); the kind of impact is instead rhetorically insinuated, based on the per-
ceived material world of spatial structures (Hard, 2008, p. 300ff.). In this sense,
the present contribution tackles the impact of spatial communication as a rhetoric
that produces what we perceive as reality (Hard, 2008, p. 304).
All the specific notions of space carry a specific system of statements about
the presumed impacts of space; they carry meaning and can therefore be coined
‘spatial semantics’. Following Luhmann, ‘semantics are generalised meaning on a
higher level and more or less depend on situations. As term or topic inventory they
are a specifically stable type of form in the medium of language’ (Redepenning,
2006, p. 72, translation GM). One could also call spatial semantics a communica-
ble, codified knowledge that can only be contextualised and evaluated on a practi-
cal level, which is the level of milieus and ideology.

Empirical space talk

What I want to show in this section is how the same notion of space – that of
absolute space, namely in the form of distance – can be contextualised in differ-
ent ways, depending on the background logic that informs the world view of the
interviewees.
Angelika Michler, who follows a rather open approach to the world when
communicating about family, talks about another grandmother that supports her
daughter with childcare:

And with the second child it will be the same. Now she will probably drive to
Rosenheim every week for the next three years. Well, that is one grandma… I
would not do that. That I know for sure… All this driving during the week….
It is a burden for her. I see that. But she, she does not complain, does not
whine. I only think, to be honest, it is kind of impertinent of her daughter.
(Angelika Michler, 63 years old, pensioned
bookkeeper [translation GM])

She is talking about an acquaintance who, as a grandmother, makes the effort to

drive to her daughter that lives a two-hour drive away, in order to help her with
the childcare. She emphasises that she would never be willing to do the same
because it is a burden; instead, she reproaches the daughter who does not respect
 Notions of space and family 69
her mother’s needs. In this way, she argues based on individual needs and rela-
tionships rather than on an abstract ideal of what a good grandmother should and
should not do.
Then, on the other hand, there is the case of Erika Nagy, who I consider to fol-
low a rather formal approach to everyday family life:

If you want, everything will work out…. If you want…. Yes, but it is….
Unfortunately, money is very important as well, because, if you can’t pay
for all the flights.... When she comes here, Serena [the granddaughter], then
Robert pays more, and everything. Well, that is how it is. But if you want
that. And to him – yes, he prefers it that way and… so he can keep and have
the relationship. Well, that is praiseworthy, one can say.
(Erika Nagy, 70 years old, retired art teacher)

She talks about the financial effort her son undertakes to see his daughter, which
is necessary with the distance to the place his daughter lives (she lived in Croatia
at that point, while he is based in Germany). But instead of stating that distances
come with greater financial burdens, she argues that it is also a personal, individ-
ual cost that her son consciously decided for. It is a question of personal priorities
and, even though there is a long distance, you can have a good relationship with
your daughter – if you want. So here it is the individual coping strategies with
given environments that inform her view.
Erika Nagy asks what to make of a given material situation – the distance –
and her formal account of family life reflects an individualistic endeavour that
puts into action abstract family ideals – here the one of the committed father. For
Angelika Michler, as the representative of an open account, the emotional con-
sequence of distance is fixed; it is a burden. The physical facts produce specific
situational circumstances in her reflection that come with emotional consequences
which are out of her hands. Her line of argument relies on individual and situ-
ational emotional needs rather than on individual options to live up to the abstract
ideals that the given situation provides.

Discussing notions of space as notions of family

This chapter has its starting point in the linguistic turn and has tried to integrate
two distinct strands of German sociology of knowledge, namely the documentary
method and the approach of communicative constructivism. My aim has been to
depict how we communicate through spatial codes. Speech acts are viewed here
as individual objectivations of knowledge structures that are mediated socially.
Individuals share only parts of their knowledge with others, as we can never adapt
all knowledge that society generates – and this fact hints at social groups such as
milieu, generations, etc. that build up the background context of how we appre-
hend our surroundings. This very knowledge also informs our view on families in
scientific endeavours. Barton elaborates on the cultural ideas and values that can
be found in family research, namely two bigger strands: political liberalism and
70 Giulia Montanari
liberal individualism (Barton and Bishop, 2014, p. 252).3 The former relates to
the formal logic presented in this chapter, the latter to the open account of family
everyday life.
What this perspective renders is an investigation of the term ‘family’ from a
bottom-up approach that illustrates the many forms which ‘family’ takes in peo-
ple’s everyday lives. While the usefulness of the term ‘family’ for understanding
human relationships has been questioned for decades (see, e.g., Bernardes, 1985),
what has been done here is to examine the meaning of ‘families’ alongside the
dimension of space – so basic yet so fundamental (besides, for instance, gen-
der; see Halatcheva-Trapp in this volume) and not only applicable to the phe-
nomenon of the family (see Schlottmann, 2008). If we see that more than one
notion of space is applied to families, we can leave behind a rather (territorially)
fixed notion of the family for an open concept of relationships that are negotiated
through not only territorial but also relational thinking in everyday life discourses.
We can see a multifaceted life, which families live in and through family talk, and
which reaches beyond any fixed definition that researchers can give to families.
This also opens the field to further investigation into the connections to milieus
and in this respect also to ‘other’ fields of everyday life such as work or politics.

Notes
1 While Bohnsack distances himself from hermeneutic approaches that aim specifically
at reconstructing intentions (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 219), both conceptual lines refer to
hermeneutic approaches (Bohnsack, 2014, p. 222; Knoblauch, 2013, p. 299).
2 For a more profound critique of Nohl’s and Bohnsack’s preference of narrative text
parts see Montanari (2018).
3 This view is still very attached to western-centred ideas of families. To go a step further
would mean to radically de-colonise family research. As Bermúdez et al. (2016) argue,
that step is still pending.

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7 Social relations, space, and place
Reconstructing family networks in the
context of multi-local living arrangements
Kerstin Hein, Michaela Schier and Tino Schlinzig

Introduction
Social networks constitute one of the most central theoretical constructs of social
sciences describing the ensemble of relationships among a group of social actors
(see Straus, 2002). Social networks have been typically discussed in association
with concepts such as social capital, social integration, or social support (see
Hollstein and Pfeffer, 2010; Diaz-Bone, 2006). The analysis of social networks
attempts to understand and visualise the structure and function of social relation-
ships (see Schönhuth and Gamper, 2013; Straus, 2013). Most network analysis
has been carried out by means of quantitative research methods, although there
has been an increasing demand for including qualitative interpretation of network
data. Qualitative network analysis has the advantage of allowing the reconstruc-
tion of the subjective perspective, logics of action, and conduct of everyday life of
social actors (see Diaz-Bone, 2007; Hollstein, 2006).
The present chapter describes and discusses the application, advantages, and
limitations of two different procedures of qualitative reconstruction of social net-
works: the socio-spatial network game (Schroeder, Picot and Andresen, 2010;
Picot and Schroeder, 2007) and the digital network mapping tool VennMaker1 (see
Lelong et al., 2016; Gamper et al., 2012). Network data were collected in the con-
text of a series of studies about multi-local families including the scientific work
of the Schumpeter Research Group ‘Multi-locality of family: The management of
family life under spatial separation’ at the German Youth Institute in Munich and
the project ‘Identity politics of multi-local post-separation families’ at Technische
Universität Dresden. The everyday life of multi-local families takes place across
different households and residential locations among others due to separation and
divorce or job mobility (see Monz, 2018; Schlinzig, 2017; Schier, 2016). The
general purpose of the studies was to explore how family life is done and shaped
under the condition of spatial separation. Therefore, familial networks were recon-
structed paying special attention to the spatial dimension of social relationships.

Social networks, space, and place

The concept of social networks has been used during recent decades to describe
the web of linkages among a particular set of social actors and the social structures
74 Kerstin Hein et al.
emerging from the mutual influence of the actors involved (see Castells, 2004;
Straus, 2002). These emerging patterns of interaction are usually seen as decen-
tralised forms of collective organisation with few or no hierarchical structures
(see Huber, 1991). The term ‘social networks’ tends to have a generic character
and is often discussed without a distinct definition of its features in various disci-
plines, contexts, and in relation to all sorts of actors (e.g. persons or institutions).
In the following, we consider social networks to be social spaces, which may be
localised at one or distributed across several places. By considering social net-
works as social spaces, we emphasise the necessity of exploring relationships
from a subjective as well as spatial perspective (see Straus, 2005).
When we speak about social networks as social spaces, we depart from a rela-
tional understanding of space. As such, we conceive of space as the relational
ordering of people and social goods (see Löw, 2008). From this point of view,
human action constitutes space by means of spacing and synthesis. Spacing is ‘the
situating of social goods and people and/or the positioning of primarily symbolic
markings in order to render ensembles of goods and people recognisable as such’
(Löw, 2008, p. 35), whereas synthesis means that individuals actively connect
things and other people to spaces through perception and by means of repetitive
day-to-day activities (see Löw, 2008). In other words, space is more than just a
pre-existing closed geographical area or a physical-material vessel; it is part of
and emerges from social practice (see Werlen, 2005). At the same time, spaces
develop into social structures which in turn influence and shape individual agency
(see Löw, 2008).
In a sense, Löw’s concept of relational space dissolves the boundaries between
physical and social space (see Löw, 2008; Lelong et al., 2016). At the same time,
she makes a distinction between space and place. In this respect, spaces may exist
across many places or as virtual and de-territorialised spaces, while places con-
stitute the areas, territories, or sites where social spaces are located (see Löw,
2008; Hein, 2006). Places are constituted by the meaning subjects attach to them
through social practice. Social action makes places visible, typifies them, and
determines their boundaries (see Löw, 2008; Werlen, 2005).

Multi-local families: Terminological and

methodological considerations
Regardless of differentiation and diversification processes of the family, we all
believe that we know what a family is, in science as well as general discourse with
its normative claims, and not least in terms of ideas about our own family (see
Halatcheva-Trapp in this volume). Between these circulating assumptions on the
spatial configuration of families, a picture of it is suggested as a household based
on a corresponding exclusive ensemble of members. Following the relational
approach to space, family can be considered as a crystallisation of a complex
interplay between personal perceptions and collective memories of goods, human,
and non-human actors, (ritual) practices, and their relational positioning that con-
stitutes an ensemble of personal relationships between children and (step)parents,
 Social relations, space, and place 75
siblings, grandparents, and grandchildren, etc. Thus, family can be seen as a spe-
cial form of social network organising and providing care between generations
and gender (see Schier and Jurczyk, 2007). In our understanding, family is not a
self-evident or predetermined category but a kind of living arrangement, which is
constantly (re)constructed and (re)affirmed by members through everyday prac-
tices (see Schier, Schlinzig, and Montanari, 2015; Jurczyk, 2014; Morgan, 2011;
Schier and Jurczyk, 2007). Within families, different interests, needs, and daily
routines have to be managed, negotiated, and combined in order to allow familial
conduct of everyday life (see Schier and Jurczyk, 2007).
Multi-local families are familial networks whose everyday life is distributed
across two or more locations (see, among others, Schier, 2016). This means that
multi-local families maintain familial bonds beyond household boundaries and
organise family life under the condition of spatial separation. This situation may
lead to the constitution of complex multi-local living arrangements, which pose
several challenges to their methodical reconstruction.
Applied to spatially disperse family arrangements and against the background
of the embedding and positioning of multi-local actors in multiple places and
spaces, across and between them, it is important to look at their multiple reference
systems (see Schier, Schlinzig, and Montanari, 2015), an idea already present in
George Marcus’ (1995) multi-sited ethnography. As plausible as this claim is,
network maps and respective tools can represent a meaningful answer to chal-
lenges of ‘field research under mobility pressure’ (see Welz, 1998). As a means
in the method toolbox – especially the qualitative kind – it is a promising way to
approach spatial references of familial actors and their foremost implicit or tacit
knowledge of the constitution and structure of personal relationships and family
networks, e.g. in terms of emotional and functional solidarity or belonging and
family identity. Network mappings and their analysis can raise awareness for the
complex choreography of social relationships and their spatial configuration in
everyday family life.
The reconstruction of multi-local family networks required a space-sensitive
instrument capable of capturing the configuration of multi-local family relation-
ships across places and the ways of family members to keep in touch despite
distance (trans-local relationships). The instrument had to be capable of record-
ing the integration and place-making practices of multi-local family members at
different localities (anchoring) and their transition practices (mobility). It fur-
ther had to be applicable to children as well as adults and permit gaining insight
into daily life practices and subjective interpretation. In accordance to these
requirements, two different qualitative methods of social network reconstruc-
tion were employed: a digital version of network maps and the social-spatial
network games. Both instruments represent participative methods that allow the
qualitative reconstruction of the socio-spatial networks of an individual. Yet
they differ in the way they consider and represent spatiality and also in the way
they visualise social data. In the following, special attention will be paid to
these methods, starting with an introduction to the qualitative reconstruction of
social networks.
76 Kerstin Hein et al.
The qualitative reconstruction of social networks
During recent decades, there has been an increasing demand for complementing
quantitative network research with qualitative methods, since the latter are better
suited to explore the subjective perspective and logics of action of social actors.
Yet there still is no clear definition of the field of qualitative network research
as most qualitative network studies still represent a combination of interpreta-
tive and standardised methods rather than a pure qualitative research design (see
Hollstein, 2010; Diaz-Bone, 2007; Franke and Wald, 2006). In fact, there are few
qualitative techniques specifically designed to reconstruct social relationships. It
is, rather, the case that qualitative network studies employ standardised instru-
ments and adapt them to meet qualitative research criteria (see Diaz-Bone, 2006;
Franke and Wald, 2006). One example of this is the use of network maps, also
known as network cards. Network maps represent a widespread method of quali-
tative inquiry even though they technically derive from the standardised convoy
model by Kahn and Antonucci (1980).
Despite its standardised origin, network maps are the most familiar instrument
to qualitative network research in the context of German-speaking countries (see
Schönhuth and Gamper 2013; Straus, 2013; Diaz-Bone, 2007; Franke and Wald,
2006). Network maps allow the reconstruction of personal or ego-centred net-
works. Personal networks depict an ensemble of social relations gathered around
an individual, a group, or an institution (see Schönhuth, 2013; Diaz-Bone, 2007;
Straus, 2002).
Network maps usually entail a diagram with concentric circles around a centre
representing the ego and may display varying degrees of standardisation. Usually,
qualitative investigators prefer semi-structured network maps as they permit par-
ticipants more freedom of expression. Besides concentric circles, network maps
may also include a division of the diagram in different segments. Segments look
like ‘pieces of a cake’ and can be used for different purposes like the representa-
tion of different sectors of daily life or diverse locations. Segmentation fulfils dif-
ferent functions: on the one hand, it supports participants recalling the names of
individuals, groups or institutions of their personal network. On the other hand, it
facilitates the comparison of individual network maps for research purposes (see
Straus, 2002). However, experiences with network maps in other cultural contexts
have also shown that not all participants feel comfortable with the segmentation
of networks, especially if segmentation is standardised and does not fit partici-
pants’ everyday life experiences (see Hein et al., 2013).
Qualitative network maps are typically employed in the course of an interview.
This enables participants to complement the visualisation of social networks with
narrative elements (see Olivier, 2013; Diaz-Bone, 2007). The use of network
cards during the interview supports the understanding of the social context of
participants. At the same time, the diagram functions as a trigger, eliciting narra-
tives about the social context. In other words, the visualisation of social networks
via network maps fulfils a double function: it both represents the result of an
 Social relations, space, and place 77
investigation, while also serving as an input during the interview (see Noack and
Schmidt, 2013; Straus, 2010).
Though qualitative network maps represent a diverse and flexible instru-
ment, the spatial dimension still does not play a significant role and tends to be
neglected during social data collection unless it is an explicit goal of research.
Accordingly, we have found few qualitative network studies taking into
account the spatial dimension of social nets. Interestingly enough, investiga-
tions adapted network maps in different ways in order to incorporate spatiality
into their research design. Olivier (2013), for instance, assigned attributes of
geographical distance to different circles of the network card in order to discern
whether the acquaintances of ego were living in the same locality, within the
same region, in the same country, or abroad. A similar approach was used by
Lelong et al. (2016) in their study on the transcultural transformation of the tra-
ditional carnival music of Cologne. On the other hand, Kesselring (2006) opted
to explore the mobility of his participants by locating places instead of social
actors in the network diagram.

Studying family networks in shared residence arrangements

using the VennMaker software tool
During the last years, software tools have gained increasing importance in the
field of social network analysis and evoked positive responses by qualitative
researchers (see Schönhuth, 2013; Straus, 2010). As pointed out by Kahn and
Antonucci (1980), many of these digital tools employ a diagram of concentric
circles to study personal networks, where the focal person is represented by the
map’s centre and the larger surrounding circles display significant reference
persons. This basic idea is also followed by the VennMaker software tool (see
Lelong et al., 2016; Gamper et al., 2012) that was used to reconstruct personal
networks and identity politics of shared residence families after separation and
divorce (see Schlinzig, 2017). It represents an actor-centred interactive network
mapping tool that allows the collection of qualitative as well as quantitative rela-
tional and attributive data. From our research practice, we consider the potential
to meet two basic premises of qualitative social research as one of VennMaker’s
merits – the principle of communication and openness (see Hoffmann-Riem,
1980). Both acknowledge the interaction between researchers and research
participants as constitutive for the process of understanding and allow partici-
pants to actively structure the research situation. Following this, research can be
understood and realised as a collaborative process of creating and reconstruct-
ing (implicit) meaning between researchers and research subjects.2 Beyond
that, one more general difficulty is to study children and adults alike with
comparable instruments. Although there exists some scepticism towards the
use of network maps with children (see Picot and Schroeder, 2007), we found
VennMaker to be very suitable when working with both groups in light of their
different cognitive abilities and technical skills (see Schlinzig, 2017). In our
78 Kerstin Hein et al.
experience, it served children’s daily habits well in dealing with media and
user interfaces. A major benefit of the software – not least in connection with a
pen touch laptop that we used – was its intuitive, graphic user interface, which
allowed both children and adult participants to create and evaluate network
maps by themselves and to retrospectively and collaboratively reflect changes
made during the drawing process. Moreover, VennMaker allows for synchro-
nous recording of entries, their modification, and verbal comments throughout
the entire process. It also permits playing records back as a video clip, which in
turn enabled us to study the making-process in detail and independent of cur-
rent constraints of the survey situation as well as of demands on the researcher’s
attention.
In order to create a personal network map, participating children and their
(step)parents were first requested to list all people belonging to their family.
We also asked them to explicate on what grounds they included these per-
sons. In the next step, research participants were requested to transfer their
family members listed into an ego-centred network map of the VennMaker
tool, where, on the one hand, concentric circles allowed the differentiation
of nodes in accordance to their emotional proximity. Relational quality was
further depicted by means of connecting lines of varying width and design.
On the other hand, relating to space as a ‘visible, material world and a kind
of area-related address information’ [translation of the authors] (Weichhart,
2008, p. 77), the physical distances between the households of the respondents
and their relatives were depicted by circular sectors that research participants
could flexibly adjust in terms of size and added value. Brought together, these
components shed light on the manifold construction processes of a family’s
identity by its members and provided insights into similarities and differences
in their perspectives on familial figuration. In this sense, spatially positioning
actors within the network drawings and research participants configuring the
maps themselves can shed light on how place-making processes’ fundamental
role in defining a family collective and as a medium for individual senses of
belonging and identity.
The example maps of 10-year-old Eva and 9-year-old Louisa, living in a
shared residence arrangement after separation of their parents and thus commut-
ing regularly between two households, show matches regarding the family mem-
bers themselves, although they differ in number, network density, and the spatial
localisation of its members (see Figures 7.1 and 7.2). Particularly revealing is the
spatial division of the family network along the circular sectors. While Louisa
uses only two fields – ‘apartment’ and ‘further away’ (see Figure 7.2) – her sister
Eva creates a more differentiated description (see Figure 7.1). Whereas the former
assembles all relevant members of her closer family in one place – irrespective of
the spatial separation between the two households of her father and mother – the
latter distinguishes between both family places and subsequently constitutes sepa-
rated collectives – an observation that provides insight into space/place-making
 Social relations, space, and place 79

Figure 7.1 Ego-centred network map of Eva (10), living in a shared residence family
arrangement.

processes in the construction of subjective family concepts. The detailed com-

parative analysis of aspects like structure and density of the networks and number
of registered persons was complemented by the verbalised material, which made
a significant contribution to the understanding of the map drawings. This does not
mean that network maps were not given an independent analytical value. Rather,
we found interleaving different types of data to be a fruitful approach as it allowed
for detailed description of the depicted networks. During the process, we encour-
aged children and their parents to verbalise their thoughts and elaborate on their
decisions, which gave us the opportunity for further inquiries. We did so with
the two girls of the example case. The accompanying narratives and the map-
ping process itself could show that both were struggling in a way to configure the
network maps. We interpreted this observation as the challenge that both children
were facing to differentiate between the two familial places, its material, social,
and cultural conditions, and, on the other hand, to mentally fuse them in the sense
of one family as the normative ideal type of a coherent social group suggests – an
idea borrowed from psychologist Dencik (2001) to describe children’s adaption
efforts to behavioural expectations in different social contexts, e.g. the family and
day-care-institutions.
80 Kerstin Hein et al.

Figure 7.2 Ego-centred network map of Louisa (9), living in a shared residence family
arrangement.

Studying multi-local family networks using the socio-spatial

network game
Within our project of ‘Multi-locality of family: The management of family life
under spatial separation’ we used another instrument to explore the social con-
figuration of multi-local family networks called the socio-spatial network game.
The socio-spatial network game was originally developed to reconstruct the
social networks of children in the context of the German World Vision Study,
after acknowledging that network maps were too abstract and had too few ludic
elements to be employed with children aged six to 11 years. Besides, network
maps offered only limited possibilities to explore children’s everyday life prac-
tices and spatial contexts (see Schroeder, Picot and Andresen, 2010; Picot and
Schroeder, 2007).
Regarding our own research, the socio-spatial network game was carried
out with active multi-local family members (e.g. job mobile parents or multi-
locally living children in post-separation families). Active multi-local indi-
viduals were asked to set up relevant places and important people of their
daily life on a playing surface and to tell stories about them. In order to do so,
participants were given cardboard discs, building blocks, board game pieces,
 Social relations, space, and place 81
and model animals. Particularly significant persons could be put on platforms
to signal their importance and emotional proximity to ego. Individuals also
had the possibility of setting up toy vehicles (car, train, or airplane) between
places in order to symbolise spaces of transition. Participants were asked to
start the socio-spatial reconstruction with the place they feel at home (see
Schier, Schlinzig and Montanari, 2015; Schroeder, Picot and Andresen, 2010;
Picot and Schroeder, 2007).
The reconstruction of socio-spatial networks was complemented with open-
end questions about the meaning of places, the infrastructure of localities, and
activities participants perform here and there. In addition, individuals were asked
about their social contacts at and across places and about their (trans-local)
communication practices. Transition spaces and time patterns were examined
by asking individuals about their transition practices (see Schier, Schlinzig and
Montanari, 2015).
Combined with a narrative-oriented interview, the socio-spatial network
game proved to be a suitable tool to reconstruct multi-local family networks.
The instrument permitted an exploration of the interplay between social rela-
tions, spaces, and places and could effectively be used with primary school
children and teenagers as well as with adults. Compared with the reconstruc-
tion of family networks by means of the VennMaker, the socio-spatial network
game made visible the spatial distribution of social relation and offered concrete
insight into the conduct of everyday life at different places as well as the place
attachment of multi-local participants. It also allowed mobility to be made a
topic of discussion.
A comparison of the socio-spatial network structures of two sisters living in a
post-separation multi-local family and attending primary school revealed matches
between subjectively relevant places (e.g. parental homes, school, courtyards)
and significant members of their social networks including persons like mother,
father, new partners, pets, and friends (see Figures 7.3 and 7.4). However, the
structures differed in the number of pieces and the emotional significance attached
to the figures. Particularly striking was the completely different arrangement of
the constructions, which clearly revealed different significant social and spatial
references, place attachments, and spatial appropriation. Thus, the 8-year-old
Sophie used the whole playing surface, locating her mothers and fathers in oppo-
site corners and arranging the figures symbolising herself, her sister, her parents,
and their new partners in parallel lines (see Figure 7.3). Melanie, on the other
hand, only used the lower half of the playing surface, placing her mother’s resi-
dence on the right edge and her father’s home in the middle. Afterwards, she used
orange cards to indicate important micro-locations, including her day-care centre
and her musical activities, both of which she connected with her father. 10-year-
old Melanie further emphasised the importance given to her father’s place by
locating a close friend and his family next to her sister, father, and his new partner
(see Figure 7.4).
Figure 7.3 Socio-spatial network structure of Sophie (8).

Figure 7.4 Socio-spatial network structure of Melanie (10).

 Social relations, space, and place 83
Compared with network maps, the socio-spatial network game represented a
less abstract research method, which made it particularly suitable for application
with younger children. Interestingly, the toolkit was used differently in accord-
ance to the age of the participant. The older the participant, the less he or she
used building blocks and animal figures to reconstruct his or her socio-spatial net-
works. Children were also inclined to build up their networks on the floor, while
young people and adults preferred to use a table surface.
In sum, in the socio-spatial network game, participants were largely free to
shape the visualisation of places and social relationships in accordance with
their imagination and subjective relevance. Thus, socio-spatial network games
offered freedom of subjective expression and a rich basis for data interpretation
comparable to the creative possibilities of network drawings without the partici-
pants’ apprehension of their drawing performance (see Scheibelhofer, 2006; Lutz
et al., 2003).
In order to analyse and interpret the data, we developed our own analysis
procedure following the principles of the documentary method for interpreting
images and texts (see Bohnsack, 2010; 2008) and some aspects of the analysis of
narrative maps (see Lutz et al., 2003). Despite that, comparing individual socio-
spatial networks remained a challenging endeavour.

Conclusion: Comparing digital network maps and

the socio-spatial network game
If we compare the digital network map with the socio-spatial network game, we
can first acknowledge that both instruments represent suitable methods of explor-
atory research. Though some experts have suggested that network maps do not
represent a genuine method of qualitative inquiry, the fact is that both procedures
are integrated parts of qualitative network research praxis.
At the beginning of this chapter, we argued that we needed to find an instru-
ment capable of approaching social phenomena in a subject-related manner and
providing insight in the daily life practices of participants. In this regard, the
socio-spatial network game showed a clear advantage over digital network maps
in that it allowed a better and more concrete visualisation of everyday life issues.
We further pointed out that a suitable method of qualitative network recon-
struction should be applicable to adults as well as children. In this sense, network
maps and the socio-spatial network game could both be regarded as participative
and interactive methods of inquiry, which makes them particularly suitable to be
used with children. Although some researchers have argued that network maps
are not appropriate methods for younger children due to their abstract character
and the lack of ludic aspects, our experience points in a rather different direction.
In effect, it seemed that software tools harnessed the technical affinity of chil-
dren with electronic devices, which facilitated the reconstruction of their social
networks via digital network maps. Therefore, the instrument was applicable for
children as well as for adults. Interestingly enough, in the case of the socio-spatial
network game, we had the opposite situation. The socio-spatial network game was
84 Kerstin Hein et al.
initially designed for children, containing several ludic elements. Thus, initially,
we had doubts about the appropriateness of the instrument for adults. However,
experience showed that adults accepted very well the application of the socio-
spatial network game, although they employed building blocks or model animals
less often than participating children.
Another important aspect to consider is the degree of standardisation of the
chosen instruments. Digital network maps and the socio-spatial network game dis-
played different degrees of standardisation and possibilities of subjective expres-
sion. In this sense, network maps still represent an adaptation of a standardised
tool and not a specific method of qualitative inquiry. Accordingly, their level of
abstraction and pre-determined structuration may constrain the degree of subjec-
tive expression of participants. In contrast, the socio-spatial network game offered
very few elements of structuration, which allowed a high degree of subjective
expression but also restricted the comparison between individual networks. Such
a comparison is easier to be carried out with network maps.
Finally, in order to reconstruct multi-local family networks, we needed space-
sensitive instruments capable of capturing the configuration of social relation-
ships across different places and the ways to keep in touch despite distance. But
how was spatiality considered? The spatial dimension of social networks was
considered in different ways. As seen before, network maps do not automatically
incorporate the spatial dimension and thus have to be adapted in order to be able
to acknowledge it. In our case, digital network mapping was adjusted in order
to acknowledge the geographical distance between the ego and different family
members. Otherwise, the socio-spatial network game explicitly incorporates spa-
tiality in the reconstruction of social networks by requesting participants to build
up important places of their daily life. The resulting distribution of nodes across
different places provided a vivid picture of the geographical distribution of family
networks and the subjective meaning attached to different locations.

Notes
1 http://www.vennmaker.com/, accessed 04.06.2018.
2 For the distinction of reflexive/theoretical and implicit/incorporate/atheoretical knowl-
edge dating back to Karl Mannheim’s (1982) sociology of knowledge see Bohnsack
(2010, p. 99f.) and his approach of reconstructive qualitative research and the docu-
mentary method.

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8 Multi-local family life
Researching the commute between two
worlds using video-supported mobile
participant observation
Anna Monz, Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier

Increasingly, people are no longer conducting their family life in one place.
Parents who have separated and are living in separate places or employment-
based mobility lead to families ‘living’ across distances. Researchers undertaking
empirical research on multi-local forms of living together and multi-local spatial
mobility are faced with a range of methodological questions and must reflect on
the methodological instruments they are using (Schier et al., 2015).
This contribution discusses the possibilities and limits of participatory obser-
vation using mobile videography to investigate multi-local family life. We draw
on experiences from our own research practice from two ethnographic studies on
‘multi-locality of family’ in order to demonstrate how the method can be applied.
We studied how families who reside in multiple places live and carry out family
life.1 The aim was to generate findings on the various challenges faced by such
families, as well as on the everyday practices associated with living life in multi-
ple places. One specific focus of the study was on the practices necessitated by the
family being located across multiple social spaces, practices of transition and of
being in transit, among both children who commute between their parents’ homes
after their parents have separated, and among adults who repeatedly have to travel
between different places for work purposes.
We commence this contribution by defining the phenomenon of multi-local
living. On this basis we then introduce the conception of our methodological
approach within the research group ‘Multilokalität von Familie’ (‘Multi-Locality
of Family’) and address its methodological and ethical challenges, as well as the
challenges in terms of research practice. As part of this, we refer to the current
debates on mobile and participatory observation and videography. Finally, we
explore the advantages as well as the limits of this methodological approach.

Circular spatial mobility as a constitutive element in

multi-local living
Multi-locality, as a socio-spatial practice of where family members live and
how they live together (Weichhart, 2015), is characterised by regular alternation
between periods of living separately and periods of living together in the same
place, by maintaining relationships from a distance, by living in different familial
 Multi-local family life 89
worlds, and by repeatedly being in transit and traversing the space between places
of residence (Schier, 2016). Circular spatial mobility, i.e. moving between fam-
ily homes as well as sojourning in an independent ‘third space’ between loca-
tions (Rolshoven, 2006), therefore comprises constitutive elements in multi-local
familial living – and they must be considered in their full complexity in the empir-
ical approach to multi-local everyday worlds.
Here, mobility does not simply mean surmounting the distance between two
locations. The space in-between is not a neutral space between a place of depar-
ture and a place of arrival, but a space with independent qualities, options and
restrictions, a space with many different functions which go far beyond reaching
the place of destination (see Hilti, 2013, p. 201). Mobility infrastructures (e.g.
railway stations, airports, motorway service stations) and modes of transportation
(e.g. cars, trains, aeroplanes) also always function as a space people occupy tem-
porarily, a space where they work, relax, play, converse, or eat (Poppitz, 2009).
These are experienced as social spaces; they have particular meanings for the
people who use them temporarily and adapt them specifically to their needs. They
shape, use, and experience the time they spend en route to a destination in particu-
lar ways (Jain and Lyons, 2008).
In addition, repeatedly commuting between multiple everyday familial worlds
that are sometimes characterised by different ‘rationales’, i.e. by different rituals,
rules, and structures within everyday life, requires people to actively manage the
transitions between these places, connect their living environments despite alter-
nating between them, and establish continuity (Hilti, 2013).
Any examination of practices of where families live and how they live together
in multiple locations must therefore take into account the situation of people being
in transit and the space ‘in between’ in all their complex forms, uses and meanings.

Methodologically capturing the commute between two places

Conception of the field of observation – three
‘sensitive moments’ of multi-local family life
The fundamental assumption that members of multi-local families have to adapt
their lifestyles in order to manage particular aspects of their lives at two or
more locations meant that we focused our research on the physical alternation
between the different places of residence as well on how the transitions are man-
aged. Drawing on the ethnologist Arnold van Gennep’s concept of rites of pas-
sage (1960) as well as on Christena Nippert-Eng (1996), whose work has focused
on the commute between the worlds of ‘work’ and ‘home’, we established three
phases in the production of the transition between living environments as sensi-
tive moments of commuting. We assume that each of these is closely connected
with specific rituals: first, a period of preparation for ‘going away’ and of transi-
tion with recourse to rites of passage; second, parting from family and leaving the
environment the individual is currently living in with the aid of rites of separation;
and third, ‘arriving (back again)’ and inclusion in the new living environment
90 Anna Monz et al. 
with the aid of rites of incorporation (see Nippert-Eng, 1996, p. 119f.). We used
this division into phases as a heuristic in order to operationalise the transition
between the familial worlds. We defined the following sensitive moments as data
collection situations with the respective specific research questions.

First moment of transition: preparation, departure,

and parting from the one place
The first moment of the transition involves preparing for the journey, parting from
family, and ‘setting off on one’s way’. The focus here was on the questions of
what the commuters do before they depart, how they prepare for the journey (e.g.
how they pack their bags), and how family members manage and frame their
parting. The emphasis was on the following questions: Is the parting celebrated,
questioned, problematic, or normalised? What role do physical contact and ges-
tures play?

Second moment of transition: being in transit across the space in-between

The second moment of the transition is characterised by the physical switch from
one place of residence to another, or the state of being in transit itself. Here, we
were primarily interested in how the time between the two places is used, what
challenges arise during the journey, and the implications of ‘being in-between’ for
the individuals who are transitioning from one living environment into another.
How do people ‘use’ and manage being on the move and waiting in spaces of
transit (e.g. railway stations, airports, motorway service stations), as well as train
or car travel or walking?

Third moment of transition: arriving (back again)

and settling in at the other place
The third moment of the transition is the re-integration into everyday familial life
and the attempt to interweave the differing logics of action and rationales of the
adults and children after a phase of absence. The research here was focused on
how the family members are greeted, as well as how the time is spent once they
have arrived back. What do the participants do to re-integrate the returning family
members? How can people keep each other up to date? What difficulties arise in
the situation of re-integration?
These three sensitive moments of transition are characterised in particular
by the fact that practices happen incidentally and cannot – or can only to a cer-
tain extent – be explained: being in transit, parting and coming back, and the
reception after longer periods of absence are characterised by specific move-
ments, gestures, attitudes, physical contact, and non-verbal communication
(Loer, 2010, p. 322). These are, on the whole, incorporated, implied practices
which can be very different depending on the individual and the familial culture
(Bloch, 1998).
 Multi-local family life 91
Conception of the data collection setting and the
choice of suitable survey instruments
Forms of observation are appropriate for capturing what is a matter of course in
multi-local everyday life2: they make it possible to take into account both verbally
communicative behaviour and non-verbal, linguistically non-explicated phe-
nomena or non-explicable social practice, performative aspects, and the physi-
cal and spatial organisation of everyday practices in the natural situation in situ.
Patterns of interaction and physical practices, which conceal incorporated knowl-
edge, become observable (see Bohnsack, 2000, p. 146). They also make it pos-
sible to take into account aspects of spatial utilisation as well as the utilisation of
material objects.
The anthropologist George Marcus (1995) has put forward a suggestion for
how to analyse multi-sited living: the ‘multi-sited’ approach. He suggests track-
ing the people, things, metaphors, history, biographies, and conflicts of interest
(Marcus, 1995, p. 109). But what might a mobilisation of research look like?
What methods can be implemented in order to track the people and things?
The field of ‘Mobilities Studies’, which also deals with the question of ‘mobile
method(ologie)s’ (Büscher et al., 2011; Fincham et al., 2010), offers interest-
ing starting points here (Urry, 2007; Cresswell, 2006; Sheller and Urry, 2006).3
Researchers suggest investigating people’s mobility practices with the aid of
‘methodology on the move’ (Sheller and Urry, 2006, p. 217f.). Here, the assump-
tion is that researchers gain specific insights into spatial mobility practices and
experiences if they are themselves mobile (i.e. in situ), because additional or
other aspects of phenomena come to the fore under conditions of situational pres-
ence (Sheller and Urry, 2006). In short, ‘The world looks different on the move’
(Fincham et al., 2010, p. 4).
One possible methodological approach to multi-local mobility practices and
experiences is, accordingly, to accompany the people who are moving from one
place of residence to the other, observing and, at the same time, using auditory
or visual recording techniques. For interactive methods, which are referred to as
the ‘walking interview’ (Evans and Johnes, 2011) or the ‘go along’ (Kusenbach,
2003) within the discourse, the researchers accompany the study participants
on their natural routes and try – by witnessing, asking questions and hearing
accounts, by listening and observing – to actively comprehend the mobile indi-
viduals’ stream of experiences. It is not only a matter of observing practices, but
also of investigating the actors’ subjective experience through conversation.
In addition, methods are used whereby the researchers observe the mobile
individuals (as far as possible) without intervening in what is happening, by
shadowing them (Jirón, 2011). This provides empirical access to how the state
of being mobile is ‘done’, how people manage face-to-face relationships with
other people while they are in transit, how places, infrastructures, and materiali-
ties are used en route, as well as how particular situations and unforeseen events
are dealt with en route. With mobile videography, these observations are filmed
and thereby conserved (Laurier, 2014; Spinney, 2011; Pink, 2007). This increases
92 Anna Monz et al. 
the possibility of observing and reconstructing mobility and everyday practices
in their minutiae (Simpson, 2011; Spinney, 2015). In this way, material can be
interpreted by different researchers, and interpretative variants can be continu-
ally interwoven in a reciprocal research process. Through stills, and by changing
playback speeds (slow motion, fast motion), video technology makes it possible
to discover things that are otherwise much less obvious (see Loer, 2010, p. 329).
A further advantage of videography is that it makes it possible to take into consid-
eration the simultaneity of events in social situations, i.e. systems of interaction
which operate simultaneously and which, to some degree, interlock (see Wagner-
Willi, 2007, p. 141). At the same time, however, there is also the challenge of
developing analytical methods for very large amounts of data. Likewise, there is
also the question of how far the data should be analysed in detail.4

Specific method – observing the transition, following the commuters

In order to trace the performative aspects of transitional situations, parting and
re-integration practices in multi-local everyday life, we ourselves became mobile
and accompanied the commuting family members on their way from one place
to the other.
First, we decided where the video recordings should begin and end: as the
starting point, we chose an hour before the ‘departure’ from the commuting fam-
ily member’s current place of residence. This was due to our assumption that prac-
tices and rituals of preparation for parting and transition have a key role to play,
and that the preparation for the physical changeover to the other place of residence
is a longer term process which cannot, however, be clearly defined in temporal
terms. We therefore arrived with our camera and began recording the family’s
everyday life one hour before the ‘departure’, thereby becoming participants and
observers of sensitive, intimate moments, such as eating meals together and part-
ing rituals in private living quarters. Then, we followed the commuting family
member on their way to the other place of residence. These journeys ranged from
short routes within walking distance to longer car and train journeys and inter-
German flights; these accompanied journeys lasted between one and nine hours.
Finally, we observed and recorded the arrival at the other place of residence, the
reception of the family member, and the first hour at the new location. This meant
we were able to record not only the reception but also the first rituals and routines
of re-integration into this familial world, including any arising rifts and conflicts.

Methodological, ethical and research-practice challenges

Openness of the research process and the subjective
selection of the image detail
Even though we had defined the moments of observation as a team in advance,
the way we accompanied the family members on their journeys was character-
ised by a great degree of openness. Transitional practices, as became evident,
 Multi-local family life 93
are very diverse and, to a certain extent, cannot be planned in advance. This also
implied particular challenges for us as researchers, for we had to be flexible and
continually adapt to different situations. For example, some departure situations
took place early in the morning, transitions extended over long train or car jour-
neys which involved traffic jams, late arrivals, and missed train connections. As
regards the ‘sensitive moments’ we defined earlier, such as the parting, we some-
times ‘missed’ them or did not manage to record them in full because, unexpect-
edly, they took place too quickly, or they took place in a small space, which
did not allow enough room for us with our camera. The research process was
therefore characterised by a great degree of contingency and openness, as well as
frequent unforeseen turns of events.
Particularly in the phase of transition between living environments, we were
faced with frequent and unforeseen movements and changes of position by the
individuals concerned. It was therefore not possible to have the camera in a fixed
position; the camera work had to be mobile. This meant we had to ­spontaneously –
and whilst on the move – decide which detail of the reality surrounding us we
were going to record, and at which points we were going to use technical effects
such as the zoom to change the image detail. This gave rise to a further methodo-
logical challenge; the audio-visual data produced during the accompanied jour-
neys was always pre-structured and produced through our subjective selection
of the image detail (see Wagner-Willi, 2007, p. 142; Hirschauer, 2001, p. 433).
We repeatedly had to decide where to position ourselves: next to, behind, or in
front of the individuals we were observing, or close to, or at a distance from,
them. We were also frequently confronted with the difficult question of which of
the accompanied individuals we should focus the recording on in the respective
situations. In particular, when accompanying siblings commuting with a parent,
one child would move away from the focus of the camera. In these situations,
we had to quickly decide whom to follow with the camera. Decisions around
position and image detail necessarily mean delimiting and selecting the recorded
reality. Which perspective, which image detail, and which focus we chose was
also based on our implicit and explicit prior assumptions about more important
and less important scenes and subjects. We therefore reflected extensively on the
process of videoing and producing images. Moreover, this reflection was incor-
porated into the analysis of the material and made visible. In order to counteract
the selectivity of the video camera medium, we compiled – as is required in eth-
nographic approaches – detailed field notes giving information about the context
of the recordings: specifically, these included reflections on our own perspective
and the choice of image detail, which frequently changed over the course of the
moving observation.

Technical challenges – the quality of images and sound

The analysis of the data is dependent on the quality of the data material – the
visibility and recognisability as well as the comprehensibility of the audio-visual
material. The key to achieving high-quality images is steady camera work, and
94 Anna Monz et al. 
this is extremely difficult to achieve on the move. Furthermore, the visibility of the
practices under observation is dependent on the lighting conditions in the record-
ing situation. Often, however, the lighting conditions during the video recording
could not be influenced in the context of the data collection being carried out, such
as in the case where we accompanied someone on a journey which started at six
o’clock in the morning when it was still dark. The prerequisite for recording audio
data is audibility and comprehensibility. Here, too, we kept running into difficul-
ties, for instance, when we were on a train journey and the train noises and the
passengers’ conversations were just as loud, or louder than, the communication
between the people we were accompanying. Another example of the selectivity of
the medium became apparent when we were accompanying individuals on foot.
Here, too, we as researchers had to make a choice regarding our position: should
we mainly record interactions and therefore take up a position in front of or behind
the individuals we were observing, or instead try to capture the perspective of the
individuals we were observing, i.e. a take up a position next to these? In order to
be able to conserve the non-verbal practices as visual data, we took up the position
behind the individuals we were observing and dispensed with the documentation
of verbal data as well as with the recording of facial expressions. Because the
conversations of the individuals we were accompanying were often impossible
to understand, some of the participants were, in addition, equipped with a digital
audio recording device for the rest of the research process. Here, too, we had to
decide which person should be provided with the recording device. This, however,
involved significant extra time and effort with regard to the data preparation and
analysis, since the audio files ultimately had to be ‘merged’ with the video files.

Ethical challenges for research – videography in public and

private spaces
Another challenge for us was undertaking video recordings in public spaces.
These often contained many non-participant individuals, and such individuals
are fundamentally entitled to protect their personality rights.5 These include the
right to one’s own image and, in terms of the spoken word, the right to informa-
tional control. However, not everyone who moved into the camera’s focus over
the course of the research could be asked to give their permission prior to the data
collection or during the process of filming.6 This was, for example, the case when
we accompanied two siblings and their father on a regional train that was full.
Because it was not possible to reserve seats, there could be no guarantee that the
researcher and the subjects of the research would be physically near one another.
Filming from a position further away would mean the recording would include
many non-participants over a longer period of time. Here, we had to be aware of
preserving the personality rights of non-participants; to a certain extent, we could
protect these through our choice of position.
However, it was not only video recordings in public spaces that were full of
challenges, but also those in private spaces. Videoing in private spaces represents
a major intrusion by the researchers into the private sphere of the subjects of that
 Multi-local family life 95
research. The participants in the studies opened up their own homes, their private
and intimate space and refuge, to us as researchers. It requires a great degree of
trust and willingness to offer an insight into one’s own living environment, so the
situation must be handled with a high degree of sensitivity. For us, identifying
the boundaries and taboos, knowing when it was time to withdraw or switch the
camera off, was challenging. After our initial experiences of filming in private
spaces, we went on to address this issue with the participants in the study prior
to the observation, referring explicitly to their right to break off the observation
at any time, without needing to give any reasons for this, or to interrupt filming.
Nonetheless, we often encountered uncertainties in dealing with these boundaries
and our own role in intimate or emotional family moments. This was specifically
the case, for example, in the context of an observation early one morning, where
a team member was present when the participants were waking up, getting out of
bed, getting dressed, and having breakfast, as well as in situations of emotional
and physical parting. We also had to reflect on the power relation between the
children and ourselves as adult researchers: will the children really dare to ask
us to interrupt the filming? The feeling of transgressing the boundaries of the
intimate sphere was, and remained, a burden and a challenge during the whole
research process, and we kept having to make decisions spontaneously and with a
lot of sensitivity to the situation and to minor signals.

Participants vs. non-participants – our own role in

the field between proximity and distance
As has already been described in various ethnographic studies, our study, too, was
concerned with exploring proximity and distance. Our aim was to capture, within
this field of tension, the perspective of the individuals we were studying and, at the
same time, to observe the situation and behaviours. As field researchers, we were
required to constantly reflect on our role in this process (Przyborski and Wohlrab-
Saar, 2014). When constructing the methodological design, we had decided to
‘shadow’ the individuals, take up a neutral observer position, and remain outside the
familial interaction. Before we accompanied them on their journeys, we announced
to the participants that we were using this method, and we encouraged them to ‘Do
everything just as you always do. Just behave as if I wasn’t there.’ Nonetheless,
the adults and children tended to repeatedly address us as researchers and involve
us in the usual events. We found it very challenging to withdraw again from the
interaction and retreat to our position outside of what was happening. Over the
course of the research process it became apparent that this kind of ‘neutral’ posi-
tion in the setting under study here was often difficult to implement and created
a situation which was perceived on both sides as unnatural and irritating, for our
presence was already structuring the social reality, and interactions (at least, non-
verbal interactions) were taking place between ourselves and our research subjects.
As the research process went on, we therefore if necessary adapted our own role
slightly from that of a ‘shadowing’ observer to that of an attendant who does refrain
from getting involved but may also enter into interactions with the participants and,
96 Anna Monz et al. 
whilst accompanying the participants on their journey, ask questions about what is
happening at that moment and about the practices observed. In this way, the meth-
odological approach, which was originally conceived in the style of the ‘becom-
ing a shadow’ method (Jiron, 2011), occasionally became a ‘walking interview’
(Evans and Jones, 2011). This meant the researchers were not only able to observe
practices but also understand the subjective meaning through the dialogue.

Conclusion
To sum up, we can say: mobile video ethnography expands the possibilities for
describing and interpreting the various everyday and mobile practices and experi-
ences of mobile actors. It allows us to take both verbal and non-verbal commu-
nication into consideration, as well as physical practices. Recordings of natural
interactions between family members make it possible to reconstruct the patterns
of interaction between them. Observations of touch and gesture exchange allow,
for example, the reconstruction of social rituals (greetings and farewells) as well
as other social forms of association (playing, spontaneous expressions of emo-
tion, disputes, etc.) which create emotional and social bonds or display distance
(Konecki, 2008). In this way, mobile ethnography provides insights into sponta-
neous, situation-based processes of ‘doing family’.
It is, however, important to reflect on the limits and challenges of this method
in advance, and to incorporate them into the planning for a mobile videography
project. In particular, reflection on the question of one’s own position within the
moving situations, the focus, and the respective selected image detail is impor-
tant for the data production, comparability, and the possibilities of evaluation.
Specifically, to ensure successful data collection, it is essential to be trained in
how to handle the camera, how to deal with difficult lighting and sound condi-
tions, as well as the basics of image composition, the choice of image detail, and
technical effects such as zooming and filtering. Most of all, the question of the
role and position of the researchers in the field, accompanying, on a mobile basis,
multi-local families through their everyday lives, has proved particularly virulent.
On the one hand, researchers have to be highly flexible, and on the other, they
have to handle their role sensitively in intimate and emotional situations.
The mobile videography method facilitates the investigation of mobile prac-
tices and interactions which are not accessible via interviews, so it is of great
additional benefit for family and mobility research. It requires of the research
team, however, a high degree of flexibility, sensitivity, and empathy, technical
and visual competencies, spatial awareness, and continual reflection.

Notes
1 The collection and analysis of the data was undertaken as a collaboration by the team
within the Schumpeter Research Group ‘Multilokalität von Familie’ (‘Multi-Locality
of Family’), based at the Deutsches Jugendinstitut (German Youth Insititute). The team
comprised of the authors of this text as well as Nina Bathmann and Kerstin Hein. For
the results of the project, see inter alia Monz (2018); Schier (2015; 2016); Cornelißen
and Monz (2015); and Nimmo and Schier in this volume.
 Multi-local family life 97
2 For a critical discussion on the limits of observation as a socio-scientific method, see
inter alia Scheffer (2002).
3 Merriman (2014) is critical of this.
4 In this contribution we concentrate on questions of the collection of audio-visual data
in the context of mobile observation. Due to word count restrictions it is not possible
to elaborate further on the methods and associated challenges of the analysis.
5 This is anchored in Art. 2, Para. 1 of the Grundgesetz (German Basic Law) in connec-
tion with Art. 1, Para. 1 of the Grundgesetz.
6 Prior to the study, we acquired permission from all participants to produce image mate-
rial and audio files, as well as a detailed agreement on how, in what context, and to
what end the images and material may be used in connection with the study. In the case
of accompanied children, we acquired permission from the children and both parents
with custody.

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9 Sensory encounters and
mobile technologies
Mundane intimacies as a site for knowing
Sarah Pink, Jolynna Sinanan, Heather Horst
and Larissa Hjorth

Introduction
Esther and Patrick were respectively from two parts of the world very different
from Sarah’s own place of origin. They had met in England before moving to
Australia together in the 1980s. The three of them sat in the dining area in Esther
and Patrick’s Australian middle class suburban home, talking about their biogra-
phies and experiences of mobile media. A British woman of a different genera-
tion who had moved to Melbourne only four years earlier, and who had some
knowledge of Esther’s country of origin, Sarah looked around her for material
cues, wondering how and where the connections and gaps in their understanding
would lie.
This encounter was the start of a three-year research project undertaken with
colleagues in Melbourne, Tokyo and Beijing – Locating the Mobile – about
mobile media use in intergenerational families. Several transnational families par-
ticipated in the Melbourne-based part our project and it became apparent that for
such families, mobile media and apps are integral to how living across generations
and countries is navigated. With Esther and Patrick, and two other Melbourne
based nuclear families they were related to, we learned how digital and mobile
media had grown to be part of the complex sets of everyday mundane social and
intimate relationships that held their families together. As the project unfolded,
we realised that their and other participants’ uses of mobile media enabled senses
of well-being, playfulness (see Pink et al., 2017) or concern as they lived their
everyday lives together across the world. These feelings are at the core of the
themes that sensory ethnography seeks to follow. Sensory ethnography is not
simply a technique for understanding what people do and say, but for seeking to
imagine how they may feel.
In these encounters with participants we drew into our conversations their
memories and the mobile technologies that formed part of past and present fam-
ily relationships. We placed these devices at the centre of our conversations as
we explored and video recorded our discussions of how they were implicated in
the ways family members had encountered each other with technologies over the
years, and the feelings associated with this. For instance, we explored mundane
moments when parents and children felt reassured that they were able to know
each other’s whereabouts through their technologies, and how partners were
100 Sarah Pink et al. 
able to feel supported by each other through their devices during the day when
they were apart or at bed time when they were in different countries. We learned
about participants’ everyday digital/mobile worlds through the tactile and visual
experiences of their using them with us, as we videoed their hands showing us
and taking us into their devices and apps (see Pink et al., 2016). In our research
encounters mobile media memories were evoked through material engagements
with the devices as we recovered stories of their ownership and use. As partici-
pants opened up their apps to show us how they used their technologies on an
everyday basis they also opened up (to) a field of sensory and affective engage-
ment with people, processes and things that they connected to through that digital
environment. They showed us experiences of their worlds that they would not
usually describe in words, and which create entry points for us into understanding
their transnational everyday family lives.
In this chapter we argue for and outline a sensory approach to the encounters
that occur in ethnographic research and dissemination. We focus on the mundane
as a dynamic site, where things, feelings, and people are entangled in the ongo-
ingness of everyday life, as it forever slips over into a not yet determined future.
In developing the above perspective, we conceptualise the encounter
beyond culture and beyond representation, towards a phenomenological, non-­
representational approach. Here the encounter is always a situated event, which
occurs as part of a wider configuration of things and processes. It does not simply
entail an interaction between people, but requires us to understand how those
people and the ways of knowing about each other that are accessible to them are
always emergent from within particular sets of circumstances. That is, to borrow
a term from anthropology, how research encounters can be seen as ‘technologies
of the imagination’ (Sneath et al., 2009) because they enable us to empathetically
imagine something that we cannot anticipate before the event. In these encoun-
ters certain configurations are intentionally brought together with the intention
of producing new ways of knowing, yet their outcomes always remain undeter-
mined (see Akama et al., 2018). By focusing on the mundane as a site for such
encounters we also call for attention to those areas of family life that often remain
invisible since people never usually feel that they need to articulate them verbally.

Conceptualising the sensory encounter

The notion of the sensory encounter offers a way to consider how meetings
between people happen as part of wider configurations of things and processes.
Through reference to the sensory encounter the emphasis is not, however, on the
interactions between people (or on the social) but rather on how sensory percep-
tion is emergent from the currently changing environments of which people are
part. To put these ideas into historical context and disciplinary relief, the idea that
our interpersonal encounters with others are characterised by sensory exchanges
has long since been part of sociological analysis, in particular represented by the
interest of sociologists in human/social interaction. This was initially brought
to the fore in the work of Simmel, and has been perpetuated through that of
 Sensory encounters and mobile technologies 101
sociologists such as Low and Vannini et al. (see Vannini et al., 2012; Low, 2005;
Simmel, 1997[1907]). Anthropologists of the senses have in contrast often sought
to account for how sensory categories (such as vision, sound, smell, taste and
touch, but including others) are articulated in culturally specific ways (e.g. see
Howes, 2005; 2003); such culturalist accounts, however, do not seek to analyse
or bring us accounts of human experience so much as to understand the senses as
a cultural phenomenon. Instead, here we situate such interpersonal and cultural
articulations of sensory experience as just one element of how human action, per-
ception and experience are entangled with a range of different things and pro-
cesses of different qualities and affordances, in currently changing environments.
We account for human sensory perception of and in the environment (see Ingold,
2000) through a focus on how we know and sense the worlds that we inhabit and
are part of. To situate the encounter, and the ways of knowing that emerge from it,
we draw on theoretical positions relating to place and to the imagination.
First, a theory of place invites us to consider how persons and other things
and processes of different qualities and affordances, are currently configuring
in relation to each other (see Pink, 2015; Ingold, 2008; Massey, 2005). Here,
place can be understood as dynamic, in movement, open and unbounded, not a
discrete or static unit that can be captured or analysed but as a cluster or inten-
sity of things that become entangled with each other (see Ingold, 2008) or that
accompany each other, and perhaps later disperse as they move through everyday
environments. This situates everyday worlds as being continually emergent and
always slipping over into their not determined futures. Here place becomes the
site for the everyday improvisatory activity of mundane worlds. Place is not a
locality, but a conceptual unit through which we can think about the encounter,
and where we can regard the things that contribute to the making of that encounter
as becoming entangled.
Second, a theory of the imagination (see Sneath et al., 2009), which is coher-
ent with an understanding of everyday worlds as emergent (see Ingold, 2000) and
sees imagination as equally non-determinate and as emergent from specific con-
figurations and circumstances, is useful. Sneath, Holbraad and Peterson’s (2009)
notion of ‘technologies of the imagination’ provides a way to consider how we
might conceptualise an encounter as a generative site and imaginative processes.
They note the ‘generative capacity of (…) technological implements in relation to
the social projects in which they are embedded’ (2009, p. 18), which demonstrates
how we can see technologies in the more literal and lay sense of the term as being
generative processes or things. They engage this idea to advance a further (and
specifically anthropological) way of thinking about technologies as generative,
whereby technologies of the imagination are not simply ‘material tools (…) but
a wider repertoire of objects and practices that bring about imaginative effects’
(Sneath et al., 2009, p. 20). These ‘imaginings’ are not random but are ‘unpredict-
able and often unintended’ (Sneath et al., 2009, p. 22). We propose thinking of
the research encounter as a type of place which is generative of such ‘imaginative
effects’. Thus our intentional immersion in the everyday mundane worlds of oth-
ers – themselves generative sites of (often invisible) improvisory action as argued
102 Sarah Pink et al. 
in the next section – can be situated as place-based encounters, which are equally
generative of imaginative effects.
Acknowledging the encounter as a site for imagination is significant, since
in our encounters with others as researchers we seek to engage imaginatively in
order to be able to understand other people’s experiences; that is, to fill the gaps
between their experiences and ours, in ways that are empathetic, and often use our
own experiences to seek to imagine what it might be like to be differently situated.

Encountering the mundane

The mundane, as a category of the everyday, has long since been of interest to
scholars and researchers in the social sciences and humanities. For instance, in
cultural studies providing a domain that was differentiated from the sacred (e.g.
see Fiske, 1992), in anthropology as a site other than the spectacular (e.g. see
Palmer and Janoviak, 1996), and more recently in ethnology in studies of bore-
dom and waiting (see Lofgren and Ehn, 2010). The mundane is important to
understand because, as these earlier approaches signal, it is a fundamental part
of life that is often less visible, while being a key site in the production of those
aspects of lives and worlds that are more visible and impactful. The mundane is
also a key site where family relationships are played out and where the everyday
routines that sustain life signify transition moments in our days. Here, moments
of well-being, satisfaction, and gratification on the achievement of everyday mile-
stones, or what Giddens (1991) called a sense of ‘ontological security’, come
about (see Pink et al., 2017).
However, the mundane, although it is non-dramatic, routine and boring, is not
unchanging or static. Elsewhere, Pink argues for a departure ‘from the emphasis
on the mundane as the landing site where phenomena such as technology and
power can be studied, to instead acknowledge the mundane as a generative site,
where people deal with contingency, improvise in the face of uncertainty, adapt
and move forward through the world’ (Pink et al., 2017, p. 3). Therefore, the
mundane can be seen as a dynamic site of everyday improvisation with technolo-
gies and other matter and processes, where we can regard ordinary people to be
everyday designers. The mundane as such is a site of creativity and potential.
The mundane is also an intimate site. It is where people whose lives are closely
entangled manage living alongside each other in ways that are caring and logisti-
cally effective and affective. This includes activities such as checking on each
other during the day, collecting and dropping off from school, work or transport
terminals, doing the laundry and ensuring that the other has ways of accessing
what they need to know or do to stay safe at work. This intimacy is part of ordi-
nary life where feeling for and with others is expressed through mundane, rather
than spectacular, acts. Here we are interested in how such intimacy is manifested
in ways that are not necessarily particularly private, but because they are mundane
are less frequently revealed, often simply because they appear less interesting or
go unnoticed. It is precisely such less obvious and less explicit elements of the eve-
ryday, that it rarely occurs to people to mention, that underpin what is meaningful.
 Sensory encounters and mobile technologies 103
Yet by making visible these mundane intimacies, and their sensory and affective
ways of knowing and feeling, and engaging them as part of an encounter with oth-
ers through video, researchers might develop novel understandings of family life.

Ethnographic sites of the mundane and

sensory ethnographic intimacies
Sites of the intimate mundane can be understood as places in the conceptualisa-
tion outlined above. Once figured as research sites and as sites of encounters, sites
of the intimate mundane can be understood as part of the ‘ethnographic place’,
which is ‘an analytical construct to conceptualise fundamental aspects of how
both ethnographers and participants in ethnographic research are emplaced in
social, sensory and material contexts’ and when ‘place as lived but open invokes
the inevitable question of how researchers themselves are entangled in, participate
in the production of and are co-present in the ethnographic places they share with
research participants, their materialities and power relations.’ (Pink, 2015, p. 38).
The ethnographic place helps us to situate ourselves, participants and readers/
audiences of our work as all being part of the research process/site, since:

By attending to the sensoriality and materiality of other people’s ways of

being in the world, we cannot directly access or share their personal, indi-
vidual, biographical, shared or ‘collective’ memories, experiences or imagi-
nations (see also Okely, 1994: 47; Desjarlais, 2003: 6). However, we can, by
attuning our bodies, rhythms, tastes, ways of seeing and more to theirs, begin
to become involved in making places that are similar to theirs and thus feel
that we are similarly emplaced.
(Pink, 2015, p. 46)

The ethnographic place is thus a site or environment for creating empathetic

understandings within the research process. However, it is not a locality but rather
a mobile and multiple site of the intensities where the things and processes that
figure in our research cluster. In the context of researching and generating under-
standings of/through the mundane it is the place where the ethnographer con-
nects with the everyday sites of other people’s mundane worlds, that is where
the encounter between those mundane sites and an ethnographic sensibility and
practice come together. It is, moreover, the place of encounter between eth-
nographer and participant, and where a form of collaborative intentionality to
share or develop appreciations of cultural specificity, connections, similarities,
and difference emerge. However, it is also a site that is currently changing, and
that transforms into the site through which others come to know about/with our
research. It can, therefore, be seen as a site of encounters that generate new senses
of intimacy – between researchers, research participants and viewers and read-
ers of ethnographic documentaries or texts. This includes ‘The possibility that
bringing together ethnographic, artistic and media representations might create a
sense of intimacy sufficiently powerful to invite empathetic understandings and
104 Sarah Pink et al. 
communicate experiential knowing to audiences has been suggested across prac-
tices and media’ (Pink, 2015, p. 165). These ambitions to create intimacy and
empathy between participants, researchers, and audiences of research is evident
in the literatures of visual anthropology such as that of Biella (2009), and acous-
temological anthropology (e.g. see Feld and Brenneis, 2004) in uses of olfaction
or scent (e.g. see Arning, 2006). They reinterpret ‘the ethnographer’s task’ as
‘not simply to represent, but to convince, or to enable an intimate and sympa-
thetic rendering of other people’s experience in the audiences of the work (Pink,
2015, p. 187).
Sensory video ethnography techniques, already focused towards the genera-
tion and communication of intimate mundane scenarios, were therefore an ideal
mode for researching in intimate mundane site. However, in addition to this,
mobile technologies, and particularly smart phones and tablets, have been associ-
ated with the generation of the digital forms of intimate co-presence (discussed
in Pink et al., 2016) that our project focused on. In the next section we focus on
how this played out.

Digital cooking: Encountering mundane intimacies

In 2015, Sarah and Jolynna met Nancy, Esther’s (introduced above) sister-in-
law. Nancy, also in her fifties, lived with her husband and teenage daughter in
Melbourne. Part of our encounter involved exploring Nancy’s everyday uses of
her iPad on video. In this situation the iPad itself became a prompt for her showing
Sarah and Jolynna how she used the iPad and, in doing so, demonstrating these
mundane but meaningful activities. It also became a way for us to understand how
they were part of the transnational and sensory everyday world that she inhabited.
For Nancy, the iPad was convenient and had now become her main device over
the desktop, because, as she explained it: ‘since the iPad came, I use the iPad,
because of travelling as well I like that, it’s very portable. That’s good. You get a
lot of your email, and if you want to search for things you can do that. Like if you
go to Safari, you can look up whatever you want’. This was particularly useful for
Nancy’s interest in cooking and recipes. Showing me how she would google reci-
pes, she continued that ‘I like to collect a lot of recipes. Even though I have a lot
of recipe books, here you’ve got a lot of ratings and you can see which one suits
what you have and you can choose to make whatever you like. (See Figure 9.1.)
This ongoing process was part of a wider system through which Nancy organ-
ised her mundane and pleasurable everyday activity, as well as the recipes since,
as she explained to me: ‘if I like something I copy, so what I do is I have in my
notes a whole list of what I like… I like to make recipes or recently [articles
about] about Gallipoli from the Age, I have digital Age, so sometimes I don’t have
the time to read. So what I’ll do is I transfer to my notes and I read later’.
Sometimes Nancy’s friends would also email her recipes, and her anticipatory
archiving included email and items from various platforms, as she pointed out
when showing me her long list of note headings: ‘So there’s lots of things, so this
is my note pad for everything, like information. Like my daughter is doing VCE
 Sensory encounters and mobile technologies 105

Figure 9.1 Nancy showed us how she googles recipes.

from her school, sometimes you know they have notes from school. So what I
do, I think it’s really important, I don’t have time yet, so I just copy for now and
I read later’. This included taking photos; for example, Nancy showed Sarah and
Jolynna an album of the cookery of her daughter who was learning to cook at the
time, telling me how ‘I take photos of, just to have a record… sort of like what
we’ve tried, and then we’ll talk about it, recipes we’ll keep or not or things to try
and improve. Mainly things like that.’
Yet the everyday mundane for Nancy was not only caught up with her rela-
tionship with her husband and daughter at home, but also her wider transnational
family. There is a broad literature about how transnational families use technolo-
gies to stay in touch (see e.g. Madianou and Miller, 2012) and the co-presence
this creates (see e.g. Licoppe, 2004). Nancy was from Singapore and she and her
husband, originally from Malaysia, both kept close connections with them. Her
cookery photo-sharing included her extended family overseas, and she explained
how she would send the photos of food they had cooked to ‘my cousins and
aunties in Singapore. Just share because they don’t have the opportunity to cook
much over there. They do cook different things, they would like to bake more but
they don’t have that kind of equipment like here and it’s hot over there as well so
sometimes baking is not a conducive thing. And sometimes if we go for occasions
we’ll share, so some things that the family do’.
The device and software she used varied. If she was taking photos on her iPad
then she would share them by email, but if she took them on her smartphone then
she used Whatsapp; she explained how ‘I find the iPad picture is better. But on the
phone it’s quicker. Also the garden. Because in Singapore they don’t have much
land to grow things so I love gardening so I take all kinds of like plants and things
like that and I show them fruits that’s fruiting. So I like to do that.’
106 Sarah Pink et al. 
Using these mobile apps and technologies was part of Nancy’s everyday life,
and enabled her to maintain both her everyday routines by organising and antici-
pating activities and her intimate relationships transnationally, which were also
embedded in her gardening, cooking, and laundry routines.
‘I have WhatsApp which I have all my friends and things like that. And
recently I found my ex-classmates and they started a group so we’ve been com-
municating quite a bit (a group on WhatsApp from Singapore). So I have friends
from Singapore and here, and I enjoy doing that (…) the other thing I do with my
iPad is Skype. I love to Skype a lot. With my extended family, my cousins and
my aunties (in Singapore) a lot and my US friends. I was sharing with my niece
that what happened was the recent passing of the prime minister in Singapore, so
my cousin through Skype I was watching the funeral and all through her TV. With
the accessibility and all, that’s great’. When Sarah asked her if she still felt close
to them she told me that she now felt closer: ‘More now yeah. Previously through
the phone it was very costly so now through Skype we keep in contact at least
once a week. Yeah we are closer, even my friend in the US’.

Video, intimacies and empathies

When leaving these intensive interview and video tour and reenactment encoun-
ters, like that with Nancy and her husband Stephen, and with Esther and her hus-
band Patrick discussed above, there is a deep sense of gratitude and privilege for
the ways they have let us into their everyday worlds. There is always a strong
sense of participants having offered us a connection with some of those aspects
of life that would not normally be shared, and that are deeply meaningful to the
ways that people feel and sense their social, material, and digital environments. In
these types of encounters researchers and participants share an ethnographic place
that reveals and creates ways of experiencing forms of intimacy through co-pres-
ence and empathy. In ethnographic research we are always open to other people’s
worlds in that the role of the ethnographer is to precisely construct these corre-
spondences (see Okely, 1994) and empathies (see Pink, 2015). In our research, in
particular, we sought to understand how family relationships were played out in
sites of mundane intimacy through mobile technologies. This, as we have shown,
required a particular type of encounter, which involved people and technologies
and enabled us to empathetically engage with everyday worlds that were other-
wise invisible to us. We now reflect on how this became possible.
Our encounter with Nancy is an ideal example, since by showing us how she
used her iPad she invited us into the digital materiality of her everyday world in
a number of ways. First, Nancy opened up the temporality of her everyday life.
While we sat with her at her table for a couple of hours, she showed us how the
anticipatory modes of her everyday life were constituted through her use of digital
media and technologies; she showed us how she archived recipes, emails, and
other digital items related to local and transnational family members for later;
and she discussed how communications with her transnational family using social
media were part of the structure and routines of her day. Second, Nancy led us
 Sensory encounters and mobile technologies 107
into the affective spatiality of her digital-material transnational world – as she
showed us how and where she Skyped and chatted using different types of social
media, and with whom. We saw how the sensoriality of her garden and cooking
were part of the everyday social media lives of her family overseas, and how these
intimate mundane affective actions and relationships were part of her routine eve-
ryday activity.
Our use of video also played an important role in our encounters, since it cre-
ated the possibility for these experiences to take on further significance for our
research team, and for us to review them as part of the process of re-engaging
empathetically in/with the sites of our encounters with participants. However,
making such encounters accessible beyond the research team is also important in
order to generate wider academic and public understandings. The project web-
site holds a series of vignettes, still images, and video clips which seek to bring
the experience of using mobile technologies in transnational family contexts to a
wider audience, continuing our aim to create new modes of empathetic engage-
ment and understanding of intimate mundane family relationships.

Conclusion
In this chapter we have shown how encounters can be understood as a site for
generating empathetic understandings of the mundane intimacies of family rela-
tionships. In the context of researching transnational family relationships as they
are experienced and played out through mobile technologies, an understanding of
‘where’ such relationships happen is well supported by a theory of place that is
not location-based and not static. Encounters, as noted above, are not fixed sites,
but part of continually changing environments, whereby people are in ongoing
relationships and activities. By seeing the sites of research as being located in the
encounters through which researchers are able to collaborate with participants to
explore the digital-material environments through which they experience such
relationships, we are better able to both conceptualise and empathetically imagine
the feelings associated them. By engaging video at such sites we were able to
record our experience in them with participants, enabling us to sense them anew
when viewing the videos. This does not mean that the videos take us ‘back’ to the
temporality of the encounter, but rather that we can create new sensory encounters
with the video trace of that which has been recorded.

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Part III

Space in family – family

in space
Interrelations in the focus of
empirical research
10 Falling pregnant and space
The reconstruction of procreation from
a practice theory perspective1
Diane Nimmo

This contribution is part of a current doctoral project proposal addressing the

question of how women, men and couples deal with the potential for procrea-
tion in sexual activity and how pregnancies, understood as emergent phenomena,
‘arise’. But what does falling pregnant have to do with space? An analysis of the
social science and sociological literature ultimately suggests: absolutely nothing.
Procreation is not a noteworthy object of research in either field in terms of sexu-
ality research. Isolated empirical studies which address this subject demonstrate
a biological understanding of procreation (e.g. Roberts, 2003). Contraception
is dealt with as a protective measure against infection with sexually transmit-
ted diseases, thus seen as a health issue (e.g. Horner et al., 2009). By contrast,
falling pregnant in the sense of having children is dealt with extensively in the
demographic sciences (e.g. Philipov, 2011), family research (e.g. Huinink et al.,
2011; Cuyvers and Kalle, 2002) and reproductive health research (e.g. Iuliano
et al., 2006). Whereas the demographic sciences are interested in individual fer-
tility intentions in the context of forecasting population figures, family research
is focused on fertility decisions of individuals and couples. Reproductive health
research, on the other hand, is interested in pregnancy intentions and the associ-
ated practice of contraception. It is based on a contraceptive norm which asserts
that those who do not wish to become pregnant should use contraception con-
sistently and safely. It is clear that the demographic sciences (Philipov, 2011),
family research (Burkart, 2006), and reproductive health research (Iuliano et al.,
2006) all proceed from a respective specific social problem focus. This means the
research studies are, in general, strongly characterised by pre-empirical assump-
tions, which restricts the perspective on falling pregnant or having children as
objects of research. It is assumed that having children is based on an intention
and a decision, just as there is a prevailing expectation that the practice of both
contraception and procreation can be measured by the yardstick of (normative)
rationality. The majority of research studies are therefore strongly influenced by
purpose-orientation and action theory, which is based on the interest-led actions
of individual actors equipped with a subjective rationality (see Reckwitz, 2003,
p. 287). This concept of action always assumes a certain degree of both reflec-
tion and intentionality behind the action. However, it loses sight of anything that
does not follow this logic, i.e. the eventfulness of social occurrences, situationally
112 Diane Nimmo
unreflective actions, and routine habitual actions which are anchored in the body,
retrievable as schema for bodily practices, and which proceed automatically.
Neither does it take into account the bodily ‘doing’ as well as the bodily commu-
nicative elements in the partner’s acting, the situatedness of sexual interaction –
including its spatial and material setting – or the use of artefacts. Fertility and
sexuality are consequently treated as dissociated from one another: procreation
is regarded as detached both from the sexuality practiced between the partners
as well from their relationship (whatever the nature of this may be). It is not
understood as an intimate, situated interaction between two partners which takes
account of sexuality as a bodily practice and also of the fact that artefacts such as
contraceptives also have an effect.
I would like to distance myself from precisely these kinds of problem-orien-
tations and pre-empirical premises. This contribution offers new insights not by
studying empirical data material from the narrow perspective of the pre-empirical
assumptions of intentionality, normativity, rationality or the expectation that a
decision is made for or against having a child (or an additional child), but by
choosing an ethnographical approach which considers the issue of falling preg-
nant from the point of view of ‘doing’, i.e. as practical execution (see Hirschauer,
2016, p. 73). This opens up the perspective to incorporate the sexual interaction
between partners in the context of any kind of relationship, including how part-
ners deal with the procreative potential inherent in it.
In order to expound on the complexity and multiplicity of the everyday socio-
environmental factors and circumstances underlying the procreative potential
of sexual activity as a social phenomenon, this contribution draws on prac-
tice theory.2 Even though practice theory perspective disregards pre-empirical
statements of rationality, intentionality, normativity, and the expectation of a
decision, this does not, by any means, imply that no decisions, intentions or
(normative-) rational processes whatsoever are involved in falling pregnant
or dealing with the procreative potential of sexual interaction. Practice theory
does not assume that these processes take place; rather, where necessary, it
establishes their existence through empirical observation and turns them into
an object of explication in terms of their relevance and mode of action. The
practice theory perspective is based on the assumption that sexual interaction
between couples is situated, encompassing – among other things, and not least –
spatial and material aspects. This assumption makes it possible to reconstruct
from the empirical material how the space and form of the spatial and material
environment are involved in sexual practice, in practices by women, men, and
couples which promote or inhibit procreation, and ultimately in how pregnan-
cies ‘arise’.
First, I will briefly outline the main features of practice theory in order to illus-
trate how the way people deal with the procreative potential of sexual interaction
can be understood as praxis, and the role played by space in this context. By
means of an empirical case study, I will then explore the extent to which space is
involved in how this specific pregnancy arises. The contribution concludes with
an analysis of the nexus between falling pregnant and space.
 Falling pregnant and space 113
Practice theory approach
Practice theory rejects the action theory assumption of the rational actor and shifts
the focus to the bodily execution of social phenomena. This emphasises the active
and situated dimension of action and behaviour (see Hirschauer, 2016, p. 46),
and shifts the focus to activities. Here, the person’s involvement in social events
is not understood as an ‘active/passive’ dualism but as a continuum of levels of
activity (see Hirschauer, 2016, p. 49). Taking into account the human partici-
pant’s low-threshold levels of activity opens up the possibility of also consider-
ing the effect of other participants: artefacts, situative settings and self-acting
bodily processes. The rational actor as the sole initiator is therefore replaced by
the coactivity of multiple participants, wherein the individual participants do not
all participate in a practice in the same way. This approach makes it possible to
ask how pre-structured situative opportunities and circumstances, including their
spatial and material settings, impact on the way people behave (see Hirschauer,
2016, p. 50).
In light of these explanations, the following assumptions form the basis for the
observation of social practice demonstrated in the empirical case study: a practice
is, in many respects, situated. It always takes place in the context of a situation
framed by a cause that is connected with a certain situative engagement by the
respective participants. This in itself is accompanied by a particular way of inter-
acting and communicating. In addition, consideration must be given to spatial and
material aspects by asking what effect artefacts have, which practices they imply,
and how they are integrated into practices. Furthermore, consideration must be
given to the role played by bodies and people. It is important to ask what is guid-
ing their practices, who is involved, when, and with what effect (see Hirschauer,
2016, p. 50).
We can conclude here that the spatial relation of a practice is intrinsic to it by
virtue of the fact that a situation within which a practice is executed possesses
a multiple spatial relation. In this way, the cause of a situation may be directly
connected with physical space (for example, the holiday situation in which the
precise appeal of the holiday is the idea of consciously and deliberately leaving
the ‘everyday space’). Then there are the material factors as well as the material
appointment of the direct or indirect spatial environment. This environment rep-
resents the context in which human participants are involved. It is in the course
of this involvement that the human participants actively construct a meaning-
ful world. This means they themselves produce, inter alia, space (see Simonsen,
2007, p. 173f.), for example by imbuing an initially ‘neutral’ space with meaning
via their practices. The space produced in turn itself represents a spatial relation
which takes effect in the execution of practices. In terms of the underlying ques-
tion in this contribution, we see here that the practice theory perspective enables a
‘materialistic’ understanding of action which does not work without a considera-
tion of space in the sense of the spatial and material setting.
Using the interview with Mandy3 I will now focus on the reconstruction of
how the procreation ‘came about’ in this specific case. Firstly, considering the
114 Diane Nimmo
spatial relation in particular, I will ask, in concrete terms, how the persons, bod-
ies and artefacts participate in and sustain the sexual interaction (see Hirschauer,
2004, p. 73), in which the dealing with the procreative potential is inherent.
Secondly, I will ask how this was ‘negotiated’ in the context of the partners’
relationship as a couple. The material was handled in the manner of an explora-
tive, open, investigative process in the style of grounded theory (Strauss and
Corbin, 1990).

Falling pregnant and space: An empirical case study

Mandy (33, academic) and Alex (37, manager) have been together for over two
years. Their daughter was 14 months old at the time of the interview. We learn
from Mandy’s interview that before she met her boyfriend, Alex, she was in a
same-sex relationship, but it did not satisfy her sexual needs. Mandy ended the
relationship after eight years. Following this, she relocated to a new town and
because she had no social contacts, and wanted to have a fulfilling sex life, she
registered with a dating platform. In the interview, Mandy describes the first few
months in this town as a phase in which she ‘blithely… alternated [her] sexual
partners’. This is also how she met Alex. Alex is one of many men Mandy dated
and had sex with. At first, Mandy had little interest in Alex because, in her opin-
ion, he was an ‘average Joe’ – not very striking. Even though he did not spark
Mandy’s interest, Alex nonetheless stood out from the many other men because
he really tried to win her over. He persisted in phoning Mandy unremittingly,
and he initiated further liaisons. Without any better alternatives, Mandy agreed
to these meetings. She thought Alex was likeable and charming, and she was
flattered by his efforts. When asked how she would define the social relationship
between herself and Alex at this stage, which she herself described as ‘the stage
before a couple’s relationship’, she replies:

Well, I think sex played a very big role… yes, I’d say it was mainly sexual.
But/ we also spent time together in our everyday lives. Not every day, but we
did spend a lot of time together.

With respect to how Mandy and Alex spent their time together, they found they
suited each other both sexually and on an everyday level. Here, their passionate
sexuality was the force that not only characterised the social relationship4 between
Mandy and Alex from the first time they met, but also sustained it. In this sense,
sexuality may be understood as constitutive in the social relationship between
Mandy and Alex.
Around ten weeks after they first met, Mandy and Alex defined their rela-
tionship as being a couple. Another eight weeks later, they flew off on holiday
together for the first time. At the time of the holiday, the couple were exclusively
using condoms for contraception. During the holiday, between several acts of
intercourse, they agreed to stop using condoms. At this point in time, the danger
of possibly falling pregnant was far from the couple’s mind. It turned out that
 Falling pregnant and space 115
Mandy did fall pregnant in this period. In terms of the issue central to this con-
tribution, the following key questions arise: how come Mandy and Alex stopped
using condoms? And what was the role of space in this?
Let us hear from Mandy in detail on this point, for she tells us how ‘somehow
one thing [led] to another’, with the result that the couple eventually stopped using
condoms. Let us first look at the circumstances in the holiday destination country
in order to ascertain how they had an ‘impregnating effect’:

‘And then we flew to Egypt, and Alex thought this country was so boring, so
that/ we <actually had a very nice hotel> (laughing). And it really was a bit
like that/we were a bit closed in, because as soon as you left the hotel people
were coming up to you and asking you if you wanted to buy things. And he
had a big <problem with this> (laughing). So, you could say we actually just
sat around, lay on the beach and hung out in our room.’

Firstly, it is to be pointed out that going on holiday to a hotel represents a break

from the daily routine, as it means rarely having to deal with anything. Tasks
such as shopping, preparing food, tidying, and cleaning are temporarily put on
hold, which leaves more time to devote to other activities. This means, however,
that this time must be filled with activities, as otherwise boredom will set in.
Holidaying in a foreign country is usually associated with actively learning about
and experiencing this country in some way. This usually means leaving the hotel
complex. Mandy, however, says there was a ‘source of disturbance’ outside the
walls of the hotel complex, i.e. the locals ‘manically trying to sell their wares’.
The only protection against them was the walls of the hotel complex, and these
became a ‘shelter’ for the couple against the outer area. Due to the lack of suit-
able activities on offer beyond the hotel walls, and Alex’s lack of interest, there
was very little incentive to leave this shelter. The range of possibilities in terms
of what the couple could do to amuse themselves was therefore restricted to what
was on offer within the hotel complex: eating in the restaurant, sunbathing on the
hotel beach, and lingering in the hotel room. The time the couple spent in the hotel
room was predominantly taken up with one particular activity:

Well, we probably had sex six times a day…

The couple’s extensive sexual activity can be traced back to a combination

of factors:

1 In the holiday situation in the foreign country, the only people Mandy and
Alex knew were each other, so they automatically became a unit. They
checked in at the hotel as a couple and, at the same time, the check-in process
formalised them as a couple. Because Mandy and Alex were previously in a
specific social relationship, i.e. a couple relationship, in which the practice of
passionate sexuality played no small part, the holiday situation – by formalis-
ing the couple – brought the previously existing social relationship with its
116 Diane Nimmo
specific constitutive feature into the foreground. The practice of sexuality
was therefore fundamentally self-evident for Mandy and Alex.
2 In general, at the beginning of a relationship in particular, the partners con-
cerned expect the relationship to develop positively into something lasting.
The partners get to know each other better, come closer together as people,
get to know their respective sexual preferences better, and learn how to adapt
to one another. In this phase, the partners’ suitability to one another must
be confirmed and perpetuated. At the same time, common experiences cre-
ate a common history for the partners, and this binds them together more
tightly. In short, the relationship’s foundations must be strengthened if it is to
become a permanent couple relationship. In this context, the first joint holi-
day is of particular significance, for this is the first time the partners spend
time intensively and unavoidably with one another outside of their everyday
lives. It represents an opportunity for the young couple’s relationship to fulfil
precisely this expectation of development. It seems obvious, then, that the
partners should build on aspects of their suitability which are constitutive
in their relationship and which promise to fulfil the expectation of positive
development. Because, in the case of Mandy and Alex, the suitability of the
partners was strongly focused on the sexual-bodily level, and the passion-
ate sexuality they experienced was constitutive in their couple relationship,
sexuality was given a prominent place in their holiday situation in particular.
They had to capitalise on the potential for the sexuality to improve; it had to
become more passionate and intimate if it was to strengthen the foundations
of their relationship. Sexuality was practiced increasingly – ‘rehearsed’, so to
speak – so that it could develop positively.
3 Furthermore, the hotel room had a particular effect due to the artefacts typi-
cal to it, (a) for these objects implied particular use practices. Let us imagine
a hotel room: a hotel room is kept to a functional level and is characterised
by the absence of artefacts connected with activity (apart from a television).
This means the occupants have to rely on one another for entertainment. A
hotel room is usually not very large, so it creates a certain physical closeness
and presence. It is furnished with a cupboard, a small table or desk, one or
two chairs, a television and a bed. The bed is the central element in the room,
and this corresponds to the function of the hotel room as accommodation. It
takes up the majority of the space, it is positioned in the middle of the room,
and it is set up to be inviting. As well as its function as sleeping accommoda-
tion, however, the bed is also the classic place for the practice of sexuality.
Of course, people can also watch television or read in the hotel bed, but for
a couple like Mandy and Alex, for whom sexuality was a constitutive part of
their relationship, these potential activities represented less obvious ways of
connections facilitated by the situation. For them, the bed in the hotel room
implied the practice of sexuality. In this context, this took on a dynamic of its
own (b), for the hotel room, into which Mandy and Alex had moved tempo-
rarily and for the first time, represented for them a ‘historically’ neutral place
which, as such, was open to being imbued with meaning through the practices
 Falling pregnant and space 117
of the couple. This meaning with which the room was imbued increasingly
implied the practice of precisely these kinds of practices over the course of
the stay and during the use of the room itself. The use practice was therefore
self-reinforcing. In this way, the hotel room increasingly became, for Mandy
and Alex, a place where they could practice sexuality.
Other factors were involved, too. Let us hear from Mandy again:
‘Well, we probably had sex six times a day… and/… well… the boredom
might have also been <to blame> for that (laughing). And normally I don’t
drink/ or at that point in time I drank very little and very rarely. And it was
just such an intimate atmosphere (laughs) and/ I don’t know/ as I said,
there wasn’t very much on offer otherwise. And so at some point I just
drank a bit more alcohol, and then somehow one thing led to another. So
that/ we, so that you just became very casual about certain things.’
4 The threat of boredom was kept at bay with both the frequent sexual activ-
ity and the accompanying consumption of alcohol, which in turn increased
sexual desire. In addition, alcohol shortens the body’s regeneration time, so
it contributed to the continuation of the sexual interaction between Mandy
and Alex. Considering the very limited possibilities for interaction as well as
the comparatively large amount of time that needed to be filled, alcohol had
a significant role to play.

The partners’ uninterrupted co-presence in a confined space during the holiday

and their frequent sexual activity led to them feeling closer to one another in
their holiday situation than they did in their everyday lives. This closeness, which
increasingly creates intimacy, as well as the consumption of alcohol, which – with
increased consumption – increasingly overrules reason, had the effect of lower-
ing inhibitions. All these factors had a role to play in the partners doing things
they would not otherwise do. When the interviewer enquires, Mandy ‘admits’ to
refraining from using contraception:

I: So, what does that mean [‘became very casual about certain things’]?
M: Hmm, well, at some point we said ‘OK, we’ll just use withdrawal’. That
was it… And after five <orgasms or so already> (laughing) that’s perhaps/
it’s perhaps not really very <clever> (self-deprecatingly) (I: So, because the
condom was an interference?) Yes. (I: Or because it was somehow/) No, I
mean it was about how it felt. (I: Hmm, so it didn’t have anything to do with
taking risks?) No, no. (I: But just because it was an interference.) Yes. Yes,
exactly. It was about how it felt.

The object of the negotiation between Mandy and Alex was the sensation of
physical passion and the feeling of closeness, not the risk of falling pregnant.
The condom stood in the way of the partners’ sexual and physical closeness as
well as their sensation of passion, which both wanted to increase in the context
of their holiday situation and in light of the fact that their relationship was still in
118 Diane Nimmo
its early stages. It represented a barrier to the act of the partners ‘fusing together’
physically, thereby preventing not only an impregnation but also a further intensi-
fication in closeness and passion. The condom’s function of preventing the fusion
between semen and ovum took a back seat to its dysfunction in the sense of pre-
venting physically passionate fusion in a state of maximum possible closeness
and passion; the partners refrained from using the condom in favour of maximis-
ing the physical closeness and passion which would bring them closer together
and stabilise their relationship. In rational and logical terms, however, by refrain-
ing from using the condom, they were increasing the potential for impregnation.
The interviewer asks about this:

I: And… were you aware of the risk of what might happen?

M: Somehow it wasn’t about that at all. So, it was somehow/<hm> (consider-
ing)… Well, as I said, there was just a lot of alcohol involved, and it just
happened so often that I can’t at all/ well, I can’t really remember at all
the moment when it then/when we said, ‘So/’, because then it would have
somehow been more conscious. But of course, I can remember this/ the dif-
ference with condom and without condom… I don’t know why, it was just
more sexual for me, this feeling.

Feeling, in the sense of experiencing passion and generating intimate closeness,

was in the foreground here. Within this moment, the partners did not weigh up
the risks in the sense of facing the possibility of an actual physical impregnation
and its consequences. It was not the persons but the physical sensation that was
directing the bodily practice, in which it simply ‘came about’ that the participants
refrained from using contraception.

The nexus between falling pregnant and space in the context

of couple dynamics
Mandy’s and Alex’s sexual action praxis, including the way they dealt with the
procreative potential of their acts, was based on a complex interplay of multiple
factors. These combined factors, which led to the partners engaging in extensive
sexual activity as well as refraining from using contraception, constituted two
contexts which were equally effective: (1) the situative context of the practice of
sexuality, which led to Mandy’s impregnation, encompassed, on the one hand,
the holiday situation. The change of location from their own homes to a hotel cre-
ated free time which had to be filled up with activities. At the same time, it turned
Mandy and Alex into a ‘couple’ in two respects, thereby foregrounding the exist-
ing social relationship between them, which in Mandy’s and Alex’s case implied
the practice of sexuality. In addition, the holiday situation, in contrast to their
everyday situation, offered them the opportunity to work on their relationship (in
whatever ways) in order to stabilise it. On the other hand, the (spatial and material)
circumstances in situ also had an effect; the incompatibility between the activities
on offer and Alex’s interests, as well as the ‘protective enclosure’ provided by the
 Falling pregnant and space 119
hotel walls meant the range of possibilities in terms of what the couple could do to
amuse themselves on holiday was severely restricted. Even the spatial and mate-
rial conditions of the hotel room, including the artefacts located there and their
implied uses, led to the couple engaging extensively in sexual activity in order
to fill up the available time and counteract the threat of boredom. (2) There are
two aspects to the context of Mandy’s and Alex’s biography as a couple: Firstly,
sexuality played an important role in the relationship between Mandy and Alex.
Secondly, it framed the holiday situation, promising – particularly in the fledg-
ling stage of the relationship – a positive development trajectory for the relation-
ship from the point of view of the respective partners. Furthermore, in order to
strengthen the basis of this couple relationship, sexuality virtually called for the
sexual relationship be ‘built upon’. The aforementioned factor already suggests
that both the situative context and the context of the partners’ biography as a cou-
ple became effective only, or primarily, in the interplay with the respective other
context. The fact that the two contexts were intertwined was pivotal in how, and to
what extent, Mandy and Alex practiced sexuality, including how they dealt with
the procreative potential of sexual interaction. In this sense, their desistance from
using contraception was not pre-meditated or a decision taken after weighing up
the risk of pregnancy, rather it simply ‘came about’ on the basis of this specific
interweaving of contexts. At the same time, this desistance from using contra-
ception fulfilled a function: refraining from using condoms improved the sexual-
ity, thereby bringing the partners closer together and stabilising the relationship.
The procreative potential of the sexual interaction took a back seat – both within
the situation and conditioned by it – to the importance of the social relationship
between Mandy and Alex, which was negotiated within the holiday situation via
the practice of sexuality. It is therefore clear that the social relationship between
Mandy and Alex was connected in a particular way with sexuality, just as the
practice of sexuality itself had an effect on their social relationship. Their con-
traceptive practice – which was also related to, and had an effect on, their social
relationship – was embedded in this too.
If we again pose the question of what falling pregnant has to do with space,
the answer is very clear: a lot. In the case study presented, taking into account
the situatedness of sexual interaction, including its spatial relation, allows us to
reconstruct how it ‘came about’ that the couple stopped using condoms, and how
Mandy’s pregnancy ‘came about’. It is even clear that taking the spatial relation
into account is essential if we are to consider falling pregnant as an emergent
phenomenon. If this is disregarded, it means that the multiple contexts effec-
tive within specific sexual bodily practice – embedded within which is also the
way people deal with procreative potential in terms of practices – are rendered
only partially visible. The ‘intrinsic logic’ of the case would, as a result, remain
hidden. The practice theory perspective, however, which does take into account
the situatedness of sexual interaction – including the spatial relation – allows
us to turn the apparent irrationality, inconsistency, and normative-rational devi-
ance in Mandy’s and Alex’s contraceptive behaviour into an object of research.
This allows both the intrinsic logic of this contraceptive behaviour as well as the
120 Diane Nimmo
factors and mechanisms which produce it to be explored. Furthermore, it allows
its function to be comprehended in terms of solving problems in the context of the
specific couple relationship. Observing the phenomenon of becoming pregnant
in its empirical quality as ‘doing’ through the lens of practice theory allows us to
consider the intertwining of sexuality and procreation with the operational logic
of the couple relationship.

Notes
1 This contribution took shape during my time as a visiting scholar at the German Youth
Institute.
2 Heimerl and Hofmann (2016) also take the view that we must consider the phenom-
enon of having children in its everyday socio-environmental complexity and recon-
struct, using empirical material, how the intimate couple discourse is intertwined with
the bodily-sexual level of the couple relationship (see p. 410).
3 The case I will present now has been selected from a database of 46 individual nar-
rative, biographical interviews and six couple interviews with men and women.
The interviews were conducted as part of the German Research Foundation project
‘Wege in die (leibliche) Elternschaft’ (‘Pathways to (biological) Parenthood’, dura-
tion 03/2014 to 05/2016, based at the German Youth Institute; Project lead: Waltraud
Cornelißen; Scientific staff: Birgit Heimerl, Diane Nimmo as well as, intermittently,
Anna Buschmeyer (associate)).
4 At this point in time, Mandy and Alex had not yet defined their relationship as a couple
relationship. Therefore, the term ‘social relationship’ is used to refer to an unspecified
kind of relationship.

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11 Mobile couple relationships
Arranging times of presence and absence
by means of mobile ICT
Anna Monz

Introduction
In a mobile and digitised world of work, mobility requirements are impacting
parental couples with young children with ever-greater frequency.1 They face the
challenge of organising their relationship as a couple against the backdrop of fre-
quent times of absence and high demands for availability in both work and family
matters. They need to negotiate and arrange a way to deal with mobile communi-
cation media and virtual copresence. This paper addresses the questions of how
important forms of physical and virtual copresence are for couples that are mobile
for occupational reasons, and how they arrange these forms of copresence by
means of mobile communication media.
Occupational mobility in times of digitisation involves two central issues: first,
people still have to move in physical space in order to do their work. Place-bound
activities, such as interaction with customers or co-workers, require presence,
which at the same time means physical absence from the family. Second, in times
of digitisation, mobile work is characterised by a tendency that more and more
work activities become flexible as to location, meaning that they can be performed
from any place (Vogl et al., 2014).
Couple relationships are thus confronted with a twofold challenge: first, they
have to cope with relatively long and regularly recurring times of mutual absence.
Second, work tends to penetrate familial times and spaces by means of digital
media. Thus, communication media are structuring factors for occupationally
mobile couple relationships not only during times of absence but also in times of
physical copresence.
Both challenges, physical absence and the digital intrusion of work into cou-
ple and family times, have to be actively coped with by the partners together, in
mutual dialogue. Several surveys have shown that mobile communication media
can enable people to bridge absence times and create closeness in virtual copres-
ence despite spatial distance (Baldassar and Merla, 2014; Madianou and Miller,
2012). On the other hand, research concerning the significance of digital media in
copresence has found that job-related permanent availability and virtual presence
can be very stressful for an individual’s regeneration (Menz et al., 2016) and eve-
ryday couple and family life (Monz, 2018). These developments are not confined
 Mobile couple relationships 123
to job-mobile couples, and the phenomena of temporally and spatially flexible
work pertain to different work activities and sectors. Job-mobile couples are thus
prototypical for a general social trend.

Forms and meanings of copresence: The state of the art in family

and couple relationship research
In family and partnership sociology, it is generally assumed that couples need
common times of physical copresence to keep up and shape the pair relationship
(Lenz, 2014). In physical copresence, the pair relationship is mutually constructed
and confirmed (Berger and Kellner, 1965). The individual conducts of life are
interlocked in terms of time, space, and contents (Jürgens, 2001), and the partners
establish common practices and rituals (Jurczyk, 2014).
However, the idea that physical copresence is a basic precondition for a couple
relationship has been increasingly queried in recent years, against the backdrop
of growing mobilisation and diffusion of virtual communication and network-
ing. According to recent studies, even emotional and intimate relationships can
be maintained in a satisfactory way by means of media despite spatial distance
(Baldassar and Merla, 2014), and long-distance relationships are not necessarily
perceived as deficient (Schneider, 2009).
An extension of the concept of copresence is thus currently under discussion,
in the sense that it should not be restricted to physical presence of the interaction
partners (Döbler in this volume; Schier and Schlinzig, 2016; Elliott and Urry,
2010). Some scholars suggest concepts of a ‘gradually limited technology-based
copresence’, ‘mediated copresence’, or ‘connected presence’.
Mobile communication media are not only a means of bridging and com-
pensating for times of absence for job-mobile couples. They also exert a
structuring influence upon times of physical copresence. High expectations
of accessibility for job-related issues and the potentials and expectations of
place-flexible work have led to an expansion of work-related activities and
communication into the time previously reserved for family and couple matters
(Pangert and Schüpbach, 2015). New requirements for managing the boundary
between job and family are emerging (Nippert-Eng, 1996). A ‘doing boundary’
has become necessary (Clark, 2000), since traditional and analogue boundary
practices are no longer effective under conditions of a digital blending of the
spheres of life.

Results
The data analysed below were gathered in Schumpeter Research Group’s ‘Multi-
Local Families’.2 The aim of this research was to investigate how a family is suc-
cessfully constructed when the family members live in different places. Within
the subproject ‘Work-Related Multi-Local Family Life’, theme-centred, narra-
tive-generating interviews with mobile and non-mobile parents and their children
were conducted in nine families.
124 Anna Monz
The interviews were interpreted according to the principles of grounded theory
(Strauss, 2007), using the correspondent principles and procedures of coding. For
the condensed presentation in this paper, three families were selected that offer
maximal contrast in mobility patterns and rhythms as well as their use of mobile
communication media in presence and absence. They therefore represent three
different ideal types of action and coping.

Mr. and Mrs. Jones: Blended copresence and permeable boundaries

At the time of the interviews, Mr. and Mrs. Jones have two children aged eight
and ten. The pattern of presence and absence in their pair relationship is structured
by both partners’ job mobility. Mr. Jones is an engineer and responsible for big
international building projects. He comes home for the weekend once a week or
fortnightly. Mrs. Jones is a scientist and lecturer in a university 400 kilometres
away from the family home. She is regularly absent from home at least one night
a week. The couple is oriented towards an egalitarian, equal-rights division of
work. They both aspire to achieve their respective professional goals and to sup-
port each other mutually in this process. The copresence pattern of the couple is
characterised by frequent absence phases and short phases of physical copresence.
Moreover, even the short periods of copresence are not free of work. Major parts
of Mr. and Mrs. Jones’ work are temporally and spatially flexible and can be per-
formed anywhere and at any time. This leads to frequent interruptions of their eve-
ryday family life and familial interactions by virtual job-related communication.
Mrs. Jones experiences the permanent presence of media in the couple’s eve-
ryday life as partially burdensome. She misses focussed copresence, meaning a
conscious and mutual interaction and interrelation, which she sees as being jeop-
ardised by the intense blending of work-related and couple- or family-related
activities. She says:

when we sit together, we don’t necessarily talk more than when we make a short
phone call with each other for ten minutes. Unfortunately that’s how it is. Or
if we are both here in the evening, each of us tends to sit at our own computer.
Sometimes I almost feel that it is better if he is altogether absent, better than
thinking that we are having an evening together, but we don’t really have it.

For her, physical presence is not per se favourable for the couple relationship
because physical presence does not say much about the actual ‘being there’ of
the partner, in the sense of being approachable and available for interactions or
joint activities.
Two different forms of copresence overlap and intermingle frequently in the
everyday life of the Joneses, and, moreover, these forms are associated with two
different spheres of their everyday life: physical and virtual forms of copresence
occur simultaneously or alternate constantly, and thus work-related and couple-
related activities are blended intensely. A dual copresence emerges, a state in
which the partners are physically copresent but virtually absent.
 Mobile couple relationships 125
But Mr. and Mrs. Jones also experience positive sides of opting for place-flexi-
ble work. Place-flexible work enables them to minimise job-related journeys and to
spend more time at home. In part, they actively push the spatial, temporal, and con-
tent-related blending of work contents and activities with family issues and activi-
ties. They consider it a self-chosen, actively investigated strategy to cope with the
extensive work-related demands and their need for times of physical copresence.
The challenge for the Joneses is not only to arrange the times of copresence
but also to cope with longer periods of separation. In this respect, too, mobile
communication media play an important role for them. They use them to produce
virtual interaction in their couple relationship; though physically present in differ-
ent locations, they find themselves together in a ‘virtual interaction space’. Here
the phenomenon of dual copresence emerges again, albeit with inverted signs; the
partners are physically absent (separated) but virtually copresent for each other.
The Joneses make a point of regular phone calls that not only serve organisa-
tional needs but are also designed to produce emotional closeness and convey a
sense of caring for each other. A ritualised telephone call conducted every even-
ing serves this need. Mr. Jones recounts:

Yes, almost every evening, it was a kind of rite, I took a seat on the roof ter-
race somewhere or other and took my cordless telephone from the office and
then, sitting above the roofs, looking at the aeroplanes in the sinking sun,
we phoned.

The regular phone calls enable the Joneses to be emotionally close and keep each
other informed. But particularly Mr. Jones also finds that virtual copresence has
its limits.

When Julia is in need of my support – indeed there are always moments of

strength as well as weakness, and if you sit there and cannot really help or can
only give little aid… sure, you can give consolation or advice but ultimately
you cannot really give support. You are actually somewhat helpless then…

However, Mr. and Mrs. Jones do not frame the times of absence as a danger for
their couple relationship but rather, by contrast, as warranting and ensuring their
individual independence. While at the place of work, they are able to focus on
their work, without being disturbed, and pursue their own individual interests.
Mrs. Jones says:

And the agreeable quality is of course that I can work into the evening as long
as I want…. I am absolutely free there, it’s just me, just me and my work.

For Mr. and Mrs. Jones, regular and frequent physical copresence is not a precon-
dition for a good pair relationship. Their blend of absence and presence phases
permits them to conduct an individualised way of life within (and notwithstand-
ing) the couple relationship and family.
126 Anna Monz
Mr. and Mrs. Taylor: Focussed copresence and drawing one-way
work-related boundaries
At the time of the interview, Mr. and Mrs. Taylor have three children aged eight,
ten, and 11. Their pattern of absence and presence is characterised by Mr. Taylor’s
job-related mobility. He is a construction site manager and is responsible for build-
ing projects all over Germany. Unlike Mr. Jones, however, Mr. Taylor arranges
his mobility according to a highly regular and predictable rhythm. Every week
from Monday to Thursday he is present on the construction site, while he works
from his home office on Friday till noon. Mrs. Taylor, for her part, is in marginal
employment which does not require work-related mobility. She avoids longer
phases of absence from home, thus ensuring the care for their three children and
enabling her husband to be spatially flexible.
The Taylors attach great importance to regular and reliable times of physi-
cal copresence, which is, from their point of view, an essential precondition for
preserving their couple relationship. They arrange their common times of physi-
cal copresence at the weekends entirely under the banner of being together as a
family and a couple. Mr. Taylor makes a point of preventing any work-related
issues from invading the familial times and places. He draws rigid boundaries
against job-related demands and refuses to satisfy any expectations of permanent
availability or accessibility. Though he works regularly from the home office on
Fridays, in this work activity he maintains clear boundaries with respect to time
and place as well. Unlike Mr. Jones, he actively counteracts a blending of the
spheres of his life. With the Taylor couple, there is hardly any interference of vir-
tual and physical forms of copresence, and the phenomenon of ‘dual copresence’
doesn’t exist within this pair relationship. Mr. Taylor explains:

When the children come home from school on Friday, we have lunch and
then I definitely want to spend the afternoon with the children and my wife.
Weekend work is taboo for me as well. I don’t remember working on a week-
end during the last years.

The Taylors deem it important to consciously arrange and shape the shared time
of physical copresence and to engage in focussed interaction. Mr. Taylor recounts:

We often play games…. On Sunday evenings, we often stay sitting together

up to ten or half past ten, playing cards and talking about everything that hap-
pened around us.

In the times when Mr. Taylor is absent, the couple places a high value on regular
contact and exchange as well. They are accustomed to telephoning several times a
day with each other. There are short spontaneous phone conversations during the
day and a regular, ritualised conversation in the evening. Mr. Taylor says:

Then comes the regular evening phone call. Sometimes it may take only five
minutes but at other times three quarters of an hour. If this call doesn’t come
about, I honestly have to admit that I miss something.
 Mobile couple relationships 127
For both partners, these frequent and regular phone conversations are important
to keep up and organise their relationship. It is essential for them, like it is for the
Joneses, to keep each other informed. By means of this permanent ‘updating’,
they stay closely connected and related to each other. The partners interrelate con-
tinually, which helps the return of the traveller to be managed without conflicts.
The re-integration of the conduct of life is accomplished without major breaks.
Mrs. Taylor explains:

I think it would not be possible otherwise. If he came home for the weekend
and had to ask: ‘And what happened on Monday?’ to begin with, I think that
would be frustrating.

This amounts to high expectations of accessibility within the couple relationship. At

times, Mr. Taylor experiences these expectations as stressful. Sometimes he feels
that there are discrepancies between his conduct of life at the place of work and the
demands his wife places upon him from a distance. Thus, he experiences the phone
call with his wife at 9 p.m. not only as a significant and rewarding partnership ritual
but sometimes also as a constraint. Mrs. Taylor tends to be upset if her husband hap-
pens to say that this evening he would like to defer the evening ritual. She recounts:

My husband calls, asking: ‘Do you have time later, I’m about to go to the
beer garden?’ In this case it may happen that I blow my fuse and simply hang
up…. ‘Bye’ – bang! That’s how it is, pure and simple.

Moreover, Mr. Taylor sometimes experiences, like Mr. Jones, that telephone calls
have their limits, especially in emotionally fraught situations. He has difficulties
in interpreting the situation because he lacks the mutual eye contact and percep-
tion with all senses.

Your possibilities are restricted, you don’t see the partner, you have to resort
to the sound of her voice to guess her momentary mood…. That way, it is not
necessarily so easy to handle both joy and suffering.

Mr. and Mrs. Taylor attach high importance to focussed interaction within the
pair relationship, drawing one-way work-related boundaries. By setting rigid and
strict boundaries, they prevent the virtual penetration of work content and work-
related communication into the shared copresence time of the couple. Conversely,
couple-related mediated communication during working hours, in the form of
spontaneous phone calls, is actively pursued.

Mr. and Mrs. Williams: Diverging concepts of copresence and drawing

one-way couple-related boundaries
At the time of the interview, Mr. and Mrs. Williams have one daughter aged
15. The pattern of absence and presence in their pair relationship is dominated
by Mr. Williams’ frequent absence due to his job as an engineer managing
128 Anna Monz
construction sites all over the world. Like Mr. Jones, he often spends longer peri-
ods – up to three weeks – away from the family home. Mrs. Williams is not
employed. The division of work within the family is organised according to a tra-
ditional model: Mr. Williams hardly takes any responsibility for any activities at
the location of the family home. He sees himself as the breadwinner, responsible
for providing for the family financially. Mrs. Williams does the house and family
work by herself, avoiding longer times of absence from home.
The Williams’ pair relationship is characterised by their divergent ideas of
how both physical and virtual copresence should be arranged and shaped between
them. Mr. Williams experiences his mobile lifestyle as a good way of living that
permits him to combine his needs for autonomy and closeness to his wife. Mrs.
Williams, however, suffers considerably from the frequent absence of her hus-
band. She feels that his times of absence jeopardise their couple relationship. She
desires both more physical presence of Mr. Williams at home and more mutual
focusing during the times of physical copresence, in the form of shared activities.
The weekends Mr. Williams spends at home are thus frequently overshadowed
by conflicts about how the time of copresence should be used and organised. Even
when Mr. Williams is at home, he works at his laptop and is permanently avail-
able for mediated work-related communication. As with the Joneses, frequently a
situation of ‘dual copresence’ arises, i.e. physical copresence coupled with virtual
absence. Mrs. Williams experiences the work-related accessibility of her husband
as very burdensome, and she urges him to draw more rigid boundaries against the
virtual penetration of his work into the pair relationship. From her point of view,
he is physically present but never really and fully approachable and addressable
for her. She recounts:

I am totally on edge because everything always revolves around his work.

Sometimes he comes home after three weeks and immediately he has to
resume his work, telephoning, working, writing reports, and so on. And then
I say: ‘If only you had stayed away, I don’t need you here if you continue to
work here.’ And then we quarrel. Because he simply doesn’t accept it. He
thinks he is obliged to work because it is his job. And I feel different and that
is bad for our relationship.

Like Mrs. Jones, Mrs. Williams experiences her partner’s ‘present absence’ as
stressful and would prefer his complete absence to this blended form of copres-
ence. But whereas Mrs. Jones accepts in principle the blending of work-related
and family-related activities, and even frames it as a positive strategy to recon-
cile the needs for autonomy and closeness, Mrs. Williams vehemently rejects it.
However, Mr. Williams perceives his mediated job-related availability in a totally
different way. He does not address any possible strain to the partnership caused
by this behaviour. For him, permanent accessibility is a natural part of his work.

As soon as I’m here, I’m off. Okay, being off is a tiny little bit qualified: this
telephone here usually is within reach. I leave it on. There might be queries
 Mobile couple relationships 129
and I address them. But I try not to phone during the weekend. However, it is
a balancing act… you have to take this into account.

Nor do the Williamses agree with each other concerning the issue of contact dur-
ing the times of spatial separation. They regularly get into conflicts about the
frequency and regularity of telephone calls or Skype sessions between them. For
Mrs. Williams, regular contact by phone or video talk is very important for the
preservation and shaping of their couple relationship. These conversations also
serve to alleviate her fears and insecurities that something might have happened
to her husband. Mr. Williams does not attach so much importance to the phone
conversations with his wife, and from his point of view it is difficult to integrate
them into his working day.

Recently he was in the Arab Emirates for three weeks and we didn’t phone
a single day…. Only email sometimes, and even email didn’t happen on a
regular basis.

The Williamses are characterised by the fact that they have divergent ideas of
how physical and virtual copresence should be arranged and how mobile commu-
nication media should be used. Mr. Williams draws rigid boundaries against the
virtual couple-related penetration into his working time. Conversely, he actively
pursues the penetration of work-related content and communication into the
copresence time of the couple, keeping the boundaries consciously permeable and
flexible in this direction.

Discussion
Parental couples confronted with work-related mobility have to arrange and
organise their couple relationship and family life on the basis of other copresence
patterns than mono-local couples. They are compelled to rise to the subjective
challenge of arranging and organising their couple relationship in spite of frequent
phases of absence. With regard to the importance of forms of physical and virtual
copresence for job-mobile parental couples and the way they organise and shape
these copresence forms by means of mobile communication media, three types of
action can be reconstructed from the empirical material.

First type of action: Blended copresence and permeable boundaries

This type is characterised by an active blending of different forms of copres-
ence and of work-related and family-related activities as well as communication,
both in times when the partners are physically together and in times when they
are physically separated. This entails a frequent occurrence of the phenomenon
of dual copresence which again leads to the phenomenon of ‘present absence’
within the pair relationship; both partners are physically copresent but at the
same time virtually absent. This intermingling of copresence forms and spheres
130 Anna Monz
of life may sometimes be experienced as burdensome by representatives of this
type but they also see it as an opportunity to reconcile and combine familial
and work-related demands and requirements. During the phases of absence,
frequent mediated contact (phone calls) serve the function of staying mutually
interrelated.

Second type of action: focussed copresence and drawing one-way

work-related boundaries
This type is characterised by focussed interaction established both in times
of copresence and in times of absence. Periods of copresence are consciously
arranged in the form of shared activities and conversations. During the phases
of physical absence, virtual copresence is established by means of frequent and
intense mediated communication. This permits the couples to stay mutually inter-
related and maintain the interlocking of the individual conduct of their lives.
There is only a partial, one-sided blending of physical and virtual copresence
forms, with a virtual penetration of familial communication into work-related
times and spaces actively pursued; in this direction the boundaries are perme-
able and flexible. However, in the opposite direction the boundaries are kept rigid
and hardly permeable; the virtual penetration of work-related communication into
family-related times and spaces is actively prevented, in order to protect the fam-
ily relationship.

Third type of action: Divergent concepts of copresence and drawing

one-way couple-related boundaries
This type is characterised by an unsolved and dominant conflict between the part-
ners concerning the issue of how to use communication media both in times of
physical copresence and in times of physical separation. The partners harbour
divergent needs and ideas about how often physical and virtual contact should
take place and how this contact should be designed and shaped. States of ‘absent
copresence’ are sometimes actively brought about by one partner in order to draw
boundaries against the other’s demands and requirements. In phases of absence,
sometimes a state of inaccessibility or unavailability with respect to the other
partner is constructed in order to defend one’s right to be inaccessible within the
pair relationship.

Conclusion
To sum up, mobile communication media tend to restructure both work and fam-
ily and entail new demands for the individuals: new expectations of accessibility
and availability emerge in both realms, in work as well as in the pair relationship.
This pushes the structural interference and blending of both spheres of life on
further. Since the concept of boundaries between work and family life is not sup-
ported per se by communication media such as the smartphone, the possibilities
 Mobile couple relationships 131
and necessities for users to draw boundaries are changed and restructured. Within
these communication media, work-related and private interactions are blended,
and the work sphere tends to invade the copresent family times. More and more
frequently, a dual copresence or ‘present absence’ occurs (see Monz, 2018); the
other person is physically present but at the same time virtually absent.
Job-mobile couples make active use of the options of mobile communica-
tion technology in different ways in order to arrange and structure their everyday
lives. First, they try to produce closeness within the pair relationship by relocat-
ing place-flexible work-related activities into the home office, thus establishing
physical copresence. This involves the danger that work-related communications
and activities expand beyond the regular work hours into family time so that times
actually free of work are reduced. There is another option to produce closeness
within the pair relationship by means of mobile communication media, estab-
lishing situations of virtual interaction in physical absence. Job-mobile couples
use new digital spaces to stay interrelated and in constant connectivity with each
other. Thus, despite physical separation, a continuous integration of both indi-
vidual life conducts is established. This counteracts phenomena of alienation and
facilitates re-integration when the absent partner comes back.
Second, they use mobile communication media to establish distance and set
boundaries within the couple relationship. The individuals consciously produce
situations of inaccessibility or ‘present absence’ in order to escape a focussed
couple’s interaction.
Mobile communication media thus play a dual role within the pair relationship
of job-mobile parental couples: in phases of absence they may serve to produce
closeness between the partners, whereas in phases of copresence they frequently
serve to produce distance between them.
Moreover, the empirical findings endorse the statement that the extent of
copresent time is not a good indicator for the quality of the pair interactions.
In spite of physical separation, closeness and intimacy between the partners
can be produced by means of mediated interaction, whereas mediated interac-
tion can serve to establish distance between the partners in phases of physical
copresence.
Work-related mobility and absence is not per se experienced as burdensome;
by contrast, some couples frame it as an option to reconcile individual claims for
autonomy with the needs for pair relationship and family.
Conflicts will particularly arise if there are diverging ideas within the pair rela-
tionship about how copresent time should be spent. The ideas of and needs for
closeness and focussed interaction might not only diverge between different types
of couples (see Bathmann et al., 2012) but also between the partners of a pair rela-
tionship, which creates a great potential for frustration (see Jurczyk et al., 2009;
Daly, 2001).
It can safely be assumed that these empirical findings concerning the use of
communication technology in the everyday life of couples and families reflect a
general trend, one which is not restricted to job-mobile parental couples but might
also be found in certain mono-local forms of work and family.
132 Anna Monz
Notes
1 The present analysis focusses on the pair relationship. The arrangement of parenting
under conditions of physical absence is not the subject of this paper.
2 The collection and analysis of data was performed in cooperation between the partici-
pants of the Schumpeter Research Group. Besides the author of this paper, Michaela
Schier, Diane Nimmo, Nina Bathmann, Kerstin Hein, Julia Sailer, Julia Serdarov, and
Nathanael Zahner took part in the data collection and analysis. The present author
also did a secondary analysis of the data, focusing on the pair relationship for her doc-
toral thesis.

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12 Between convergence and divergence
Territorialisation practices within multi-local
post-separation families1
Tino Schlinzig

Transformations of the family: Pluralisation and

multi-localisation
Following modernisation theory, personal relationships in second modernity are
by no means a given entity, but rather the subject of negotiation processes between
the social actors (see Beck/Beck-Gernsheim, 1995, p. 90 ff.). The conjugal family
increasingly loses its hegemonic position in favour of alternative forms of family
coexistence. Also, changes can be observed in terms of space: the mono-local
family household is increasingly challenged by multi-local arrangements, among
others, in the course of separation and divorce as well as for reasons of employ-
ment mobility (see Schier, 2016; Schneider and Collet, 2010).
One catalyst for the pluralisation and multi-localisation of families has been
the increasing risk of parental separation (see Walper, 2016; Grünheid, 2013).
The breakup of a partner relationship is usually accompanied by a reorganisation
of the everyday life of the family and the establishment of two parental house-
holds in a bi-nuclear structure (see Schier, 2015; Ahrons, 1979). Shared paren-
tal custody and care for the children after separation, which has become a legal
norm – and a desirable outcome, an ideal even, for a majority of parents – is also
reflected in the decision for a corresponding spatial arrangement (see IfD, 2017).
Parity housing arrangements with shared-residence families, in which children
alternately live in the two households of the separated parents in almost equal
proportions of time, have experienced considerable growth in recent years (see
Walper, 2016; Bjarnason and Arnarsson, 2011). However, related studies within
family research are scarce.
Starting from the perspective of an interpretive family sociology (see Gubrium
and Holstein, 2009; Bösel, 1980), this chapter asks how members of the newly
formed family nuclei after separation and the children living in both places
establish and stabilise group cohesion, belonging, and family identity. Particular
attention is paid to the territorialisation practices of the actors involved. These
considerations are based on a study of five multi-local post-separation families
carried out between 2010 and 2015 (see Schlinzig, 2017). The empirical material
derives from narrative-problem-centred interviews with children living in multiple
places of shared residence arrangements, their parents and corresponding partners
 Between convergence and divergence 135
(see Nohl, 2010; Witzel, 2000), focus groups in both family households (see
Bohnsack, 2010), ego-centred network maps (see Hollstein and Pfeffer, 2010),
and photo documentations of the families’ everyday lives (see Jorgenson and
Sullivan, 2010). Within the framework of a reconstructive qualitative approach,
these were analysed by means of Bohnsack’s (2010; 2008) documentary method
for the interpretation of texts and photos.

Two-family households – two worlds? Family

life after separation and divorce
For the description of residential practices and how everyday life is organised
across several locations, research on dwelling and migration introduced the term
multi-locality (see Hilti, 2016; Weichhart, 2015). The phenomenon itself is noth-
ing really new. But these days, it is far from uncommon that family everyday
life is pursued with alternating physical presence and absence of its members,
among other things as a result of migration, mobility due to employment reasons,
as well as in the course of separation and divorce (see Aybek et al., 2015). From
the perspective of the household residents, this in turn means that the composi-
tion of members at the common place of residence and thus everyday life changes
recurrently. The way translocal families conduct their lives exceeds the borders of
single households as territorially defined and fixed units and relates them to one
another. The shared residence families after separation or divorce of the parentel
couple focussed on in this chapter are temporally, spatially, and materially char-
acterised by a multi-locational configuration. One originally mono-local family
household is reorganised into two spatially separated family nuclei in which chil-
dren regularly live alternately (see Zartler and Grillenberger, 2017; Schier, 2015;
Ahrons, 1979). Despite their contours and everyday lives differing physically and
materially, as well as in terms of personnel and identity, there are numerous inter-
dependencies and active references between the two residential locations. In many
ways life and its dynamics in one place does not remain without consequences for
the other. The growing up of multi-locally living children can be described on the
one hand as ‘dual-socialisation’ in two ‘social arenas’ or ‘sociotopes’, each with
different interacting logics, an idea borrowed from Dencik (2001). Doing family
and family identity are closely linked to ideas of a personnel ensemble, member-
ship of a family, and a set of ritual and everyday practices typical to the group,
supported by locally bound social orders. On the other hand, from the perspective
of recurring commuting children, home and family represent a mental fusion of
both households into a coherent whole.
Separated parents in a new relationship and with common children are ulti-
mately provided with a double mandate. A sense of family must be generated
and maintained in one’s own place. At the same time, the fathers and mothers are
required to refer to each other’s household – in an everyday practical sense and
with respect to a joint whole. The periodically commuting children can thus be
interpreted as the focal point of a Gemeinschaft [solidary collective] that spans
both households. This structure promotes distinctions and references that find
136 Tino Schlinzig
their expression in practices of physical and symbolic territorialisation, provid-
ing access to a sociological reconstruction of familial formations of cohesion and
solidarity in these arrangements (see Schlinzig, 2017).

Territorialising the familial household

According to Nippert-Eng (1996), specific ways of thinking and behaving – as
well as ideas of the self, which serve different roles in the various arenas – are
closely bound up with the physical demarcations of lifeworld-relevant territory.
This can be grasped when examining how feelings of belonging and solidary col-
lectivity are produced in multi-local families. Territorialisation as a ‘relational
ordering’ is ascribed here a twofold meaning: ‘an action dimension and a structur-
ing dimension’ (Löw, 2008, p. 38), it comprises a cognitive, performative, social,
symbolic, and not least a material component of space. This is always linked to
the defence of one’s own (spatial) requirements. The specific characteristic of a
territory is that it ‘is not so much a [claim, TS] to a discret and particular mat-
ter but rather to a field of things – to a preserve – and because the boundaries of
the field are ordinarily patrolled and defended by the claimant’ (Goffman, 1971,
p. 29). This includes controlling who has access and who is excluded, as well as
how the territory is used. In multi-local families, ‘no-go areas’ are thus imposed
by means of territorialisation on the ‘micro-level of the home’ (Montanari, 2016,
p. 155). Beyond the sheer defence of access rights, marking physical territory is
linked with ‘normative-prescriptive accords (…), that lay down the expectations
of behaviour in a certain context: “You can do that here, but not there”’ (Werlen,
2008, p. 298). Accordingly, social action is normatively bound to specific spatial
contexts and in this sense defined locally. This is accompanied by attitudes, man-
ners of socialisation, (everyday) practices, and assertions of social order specific
to the location, constituting specific patterns of familial households. How these
are produced and stabilised will be discussed in what follows on five levels that
are empirically observable in the everyday life of the families: (1) communica-
tive, (2) spatial, (3) personnel, (4) material, and (5) habitual.

Ambivalences of communicative closure

Parent-child relationships are characterised by the presence of extensive personal
knowledge, i.e. the ‘knowledge bound up in the person’s uniqueness’ dominates
a typology embedded in social roles (Lenz and Nestmann, 2009, p. 11). Children
who live multi-locally with arrangements that involve regular periods of absence
and presence in both family locations are required to have a dual orientation of
two households and thus two social spheres. These are not communicatively inter-
woven to any great extent, as would be necessary to keep the commuting children
in the loop about what is happening in the other family. Despite, or perhaps pre-
cisely because of the temporary absences, the shared conjunctive knowledge that
is so important for the family requires a continual updating about everything that
has been happening and the news regarding customary practices of the locality.
 Between convergence and divergence 137
Through this the latter are increasingly discursivised and become an anchor of
family identity. The individual knowledge of family members is overwhelm-
ingly bound up in each location’s family life. Parents and children alike bemoan a
chasm in their knowledge or, as Duchêne-Lacroix (2009, p. 94) puts it, an ‘infor-
mation asymmetry’: being present in one household means having only scarce
information about the other one, or that this information is – despite extensive
medial communication options (see Schier and Schlinzig, 2016) – only sporadi-
cally actually sought out.
For the parents, the life of the other family remains a black box that can only be
rarely illuminated and which only takes on form through rather austere manage-
ment of information. The (social) parents’ need to close this gap in their knowl-
edge has to contend with an unspoken convention not to consult the children for
such purposes, or if so then only to a limited extent, tactfully, and without discred-
iting the other parent.

Well, we’re also in agreement that we don’t bad-mouth the others, or spy
on them via the kids and so on. That’s what other parents always like doing
but we have no need for it since the kids mostly suffer in such situations
and circumstances, and that’s what we want to avoid, that the kids suffer in
some way.
(Miriam, mother, family NTF7)2

The interviewed parents describe a mode of communication that prohibits pass-

ing judgment on life at the other location, which would mark out difference in the
children’s mind, and that pushes such (parental) discussions offstage. From the
interviews with adults and children, it becomes clear that passing on information
about their lives follows strict guidelines. Children whose reports are too extensive
may fall under the suspicion of being in a sense indiscreet, which would endanger
the enclosed privacy of the familial household by passing unauthorised knowl-
edge from one location to the other. The empirical results indicate that ensuring
the scarcity of personal knowledge about the typical course of events or conduct
can be viewed as a highly functional closure of communication. The repertoire of
practices, values, and attitudes that each family nucleus secures for itself is pro-
tected from interference and the challenges for a family of seeing its own peculi-
arities with the regular return of its children. At the same time, talk among parents
and children offers the possibility of strategically putting out information without
directly referring to the other group, the other family household. This shows that
the desire to transfer knowledge and look into the others’ lives stands in highly
ambivalent relation to the need for intimacy and the exclusivity of one’s own doing.

Spatial closure and establishing belonging

Although family cannot be reduced to a household unit and the principle of neolo-
cality guarantees a spatial closing off of one’s own current family from that of
one’s birth, living together assumes great value for establishing the family unit.
138 Tino Schlinzig
Multi-local families, characterised by a doubling of their living locations after
separation or divorce, are distinguished by a general domestic lifestyle that lies in
tension between convergence and divergence. From the mono-local perspective
of the natural parents and their partners, spatial territorialisations can be recon-
structed that are of great importance for how families see themselves and establish
their sense of belonging. Spatially establishing one’s own home and demarcating
it off from the other household and residential location forms a practice of terri-
torialisation for multi-local children, one decisive for belonging to the family, for
whom it has a highly symbolic importance.
The home is zoned, so to speak, and ascribed various access rights. Such
‘markers’ of territory (Goffman, 1971) can also be found in the interviews in con-
nection with access rights and the segmentation of homes into semi-public and
private domestic spheres. The hallway, from which the adjoining private rooms of
a home are accessible, is one place that facilitates encounters between inhabitants
and outsiders whilst at the same time restricting access to the place of the family.
By means of this micro-territorialisation, belonging to the family, or precisely
exclusion from it, is signalled and enforced. The physical quality of the home, its
spatial contours, thus becomes a medium for staking claim to or denying member-
ship of a family alliance. Similarly, in her narrative interviews with grandparents
of children who live multi-locally after separation or divorce, Montanari (2016,
p. 154f.) finds indications of ‘constellations of social power that are fought out
in the home’ and are revealed in the metaphor of the ‘control room, the home
as (no longer) the family location, and [in descriptions of] being available to be
present’. She also sketches out negotiation processes that ‘make clear, especially
in situations rich in conflict, the great importance of access to spaces and thus
finally of processes of territorialisation on the level of family space’ (Montanari,
2016, p. 155). How these territories are constructed and, not least, their fragility
and vulnerability can be seen in the different ways territorialisation is interpreted,
and become clear precisely in its negation, for instance in the case of unauthorised
entry. The following interview extract illustrates a different way of handling the
marking-off of space, and how this is recognised and disregarded.

I: How free are you to move around the mother’s place, for instance when you
drop off the children?
J: That’s the difference. I’ve never been any further into the home. I don’t know
what the rooms look like apart from the hall, see?
I: But she can move around here relatively freely?
J: She makes herself right at home here. I’ve got a problem with that. I’ve
brought it to her attention a couple of times. I’m not allowed to walk in her
home with shoes on either. But she does that all the time here.((…)) I mean
she simply comes right in with the kids.
(Jonathan, father, family BFF1)3

This is an account of an infraction of territorial boundaries by the interviewee’s

former partner and mother of their children. Rights of access and information
 Between convergence and divergence 139
are awarded high-handedly. This breach and intrusion, in the form of entering
a space reserved by another individual for themselves, as already outlined by
Goffman (1971, p. 82), is described as jeopardising the ritual practices of keep-
ing the home at each location clean and in order – shoes are to be removed on
crossing the threshold (see Douglas, 1984 [1966]). The assertion, recognition,
and violation of territorial integrity is evidently not equally binding for all persons
involved in each case. Setting and imposing one’s own spatial boundaries is thus
not necessarily accompanied by recognising those of the other location with the
same scrupulousness.

Membership configurations and personnel closure

For Tyrell (1983, p. 365), family is ‘a group that is sensitive in a very particu-
lar way to the selectivity of its personnel make-up’. With stepfamilies in mind,
Peuckert (2012, p. 389) notes the observation of various studies that there are
‘often very different ideas among the members of a stepfamily as to where the
outer boundaries of the family lie’. Objectively the same personnel, be it of one
dwelling location or of the location-spanning family system, turn out to be con-
siderably different in composition when subjectively defined by the family. The
individual perspectives of family members only partially overlap. In the minds of
the children, belonging, and with it the family’s self-image, is strongly connected
to the original configuration of biological parents and children living together in
one mono-local household. Even though this setup no longer actually exists and
has been reorganised in favour of a multi-local living arrangement with fathers
and mothers living separately, the original ensemble with its one-time members
forms a significant reference point for classifying who is in the family. In fami-
lies, belonging is founded upon repeated interactions, and yet it is the common
consciousness as it were that provokes these regular interactions for the family
(see Tyrell, 1983, p. 369). The circumstance of children living together with
step-­parents in tight-knit common households over several years evidently can-
not prevent social parents from being awarded a lower rank by the children in
determining the family make-up. And this despite step-parents, with ‘procuration
conferred on them by the natural parents, being deeply involved in the day-to-day
care of (step)children who live multi-locally and act as neutral referees.
In contrast to children’s multi-location perspective on their family unit, the
view of parents and their partners living in each family household is mono-
locally oriented. The parents of children commuting rhythmically between
two places of residence thus assume a special position. They see themselves as
obliged to be a mediator between children who can be seen as hybrid members of
both families and the temporospatially continuous family unit. On the one hand,
the integrity of their local social order, practices, and concomitant group self-­
identification – the family’s self-image – must be assured. On the other, there is
a need to guarantee membership of the family and integrate the regularly present
and absent children, even in the absence of physical co-presence. This tension
does not appear to be satisfactorily resolvable, as can be seen in the formula
140 Tino Schlinzig
‘family 4+1’ of one mother interviewed, or also in a father’s following stated
fears of disintegration, when he stresses it must be borne in mind that his multi-
locally-living daughter is not

‘((...)) the third wheel of a cart, but REALLY belongs to our family and our
circle, ALTHOUGH she certainly stands at an intersection, ((…)) yes, it’s
obviously important to us all ((…)) that she really is FULLY involved.
(Zacharias, father, family BFF3)

The mechanism that, according to Tyrell (1983, p. 364), is operative in fami-

lies to establish who is a member ’selectively’ and exclusively’, with its inher-
ent binary logic as belonging or not-belonging, is diluted in these families. The
children’s multi-local life and repeated absences provoke degrees of membership.
One mother, for instance, introduces the term ‘part-time membership’ to describe
her daughter’s position. In depicting their families’ expansion and contraction,
other parents in the sample reconstruct and problematise repeatedly varying con-
figurations of the family ensemble and the resulting modes of daily life, different
tempos, family moods, and rituals. Despite all the deep-rooted routine and nor-
mality when dealing with the conditions of multi-local family life, the dynamics
of such arrangements become visible to the family members through regular dif-
ferentiation. Questions of belonging, marking off one location from the other, and
the resultant establishment of family identity are thrown up through this process
again and again.

The world of things and material closure: Family self-identification,

perception by others, and making absentees present
As a synonym for family, the home can be understood from a relational perspec-
tive on space as a symbolic nexus of the material world of things and social goods
in relation with each other (Löw, 2008). The material composition and features of
a family household, as well as how it deals with material things, constitute a spe-
cific aesthetic space (see also Schmidt in this volume). This world of things, writes
Bosch (2011, p. 40), ‘offers possibilities for the symbolic formation of communal
living [that, TS] structure common practices and symbolise common worlds of
thought’. It is a visible medium of self-identification, of displaying one’s orienta-
tion, and the internal and external reference point for forming social groups and
giving them cachet (see also Holmes, 2018). In this respect, the objects surround-
ing people are not the (culturally bound) interpretations of pre-existing matter, but
rather obtain meaning through their owners’ symbolic practices of ascription and
appropriation (see also Neumann and Hahn in this volume).
The empirical material suggests that goods and objects have the function of
a material medium of demarcation. The interviews reveal how objects in living
spaces, such as furniture, art objects, floor coverings, wallpaper, etc., are com-
bined by multi-locally living children and adults in different styles and structures
in their own specific way into local characteristics of places, allowing the (partial)
 Between convergence and divergence 141
families to differentiate and distinguish themselves. With this in mind, one of the
interviewed children gave a succinct outline of the differences she saw in the two
families and their homes:

It’s really different at Papa’s house than it is here. ((…)) At Papa’s it’s like,
everything is wood-coloured. Everything is much more colourful here,
because Papa makes most things himself. Also, there are no rugs lying around
at Papa’s. It’s all a bit ((laughing)) older.
(Jasmin, multi-locally living child, family BFF3)

The enquiry as to whether both households can be distinguished between or if they

must be thought of as a single entity was batted away by the interviewee with an
observation of difference. As indications of the perception of and reasons for this
otherness, she cites the homes’ respective fittings and furnishings: their material
quality, aesthetic aspects, and the way they are arranged – purchasing furniture is
contrasted with making it oneself. The material configurations of both living envi-
ronments serve as a local means of marking them out, which can be experienced
sensorily and references their aesthetic practices and assertions of order. Things
serve firstly as a means to perceive oneself and to be perceived by others, and thus
as a means of closing off both family nuclei. On the other hand, objects find use
as a bridge between disparate lifeworlds, thus producing presence in absence. For
one thing, clothes, toys, cuddly toys, and the like make present for the mono-local
family members the ownership and usage habits of the absent children. In this
respect they represent a tried and tested method of making oneself, or being made,
present. They serve to some extent as placeholders and enable those absent to be
experienced. Taking up Marcel Mauss’ (1966) considerations that gifts can be
understood by their recipients as incorporating absent others, the things the chil-
dren bring with them on their return can be interpreted as a crystallisation point
for experiencing the other household and its particular character from without.
Although the children who regularly commute between both dwellings know
to differentiate and appreciate the advantages of the differing spatial furnishings,
they face the challenge of establishing continuities as they swap places of resi-
dence. Things and people of one location are missed at the other. Of help here
are ‘beloved objects’ (Habermas, 1996) which, as ‘bridging items’ (Nippert-Eng,
1996), help in negotiating transitions and are ascribed a symbolic value besides
their practical one. Alongside utterly pragmatic notes they bring with them with
the week’s relevant information and upcoming appointments, important docu-
ments, and a selection of toys, all children interviewed reported objects that
act as mementos and potentially represent physically absent reference persons.
Baldassar (2008, p. 252) put this observation in conceptual terms as ‘co-presence
by proxy’. One of the children gives an idea of this:

I always used to take this with me ((shows a small cushion)). I’ve had it since
I was a baby. Very frequently repaired ((laughs)). I had various versions of
it, because I lost the first one and ((…)) when Grandma made me a new one,
142 Tino Schlinzig
I didn’t want to accept it. But then Mama had the idea of spraying her per-
fume on it and then I accepted it, because it smelt of Mama.
(Jasmin, multi-locally living child, family BFF3)

Jasmin describes the cushion accompanying her, that has been personalised by
being perfumed, as allowing the mother to be associated with it and thus made
present. More than simply remembering, objects such as the cushion offer their
owner haptic or even physical sensations – by lying one’s head upon them or
wrapping them in one’s arms, for example. This phenomenon can be further
explained by using Winnicott’s (1953) concept of transitional objects. Even
though the psychoanalytical fixation on the mother as primary reference person
and her assumed constant presence is open to criticism, this idea makes for a
fruitful starting point. Such objects in essence serve children in their individu-
ation and breaking away from symbiotic unity with the mother. Mitscherlich
(1984, p. 197) sees in transitional objects a substitute selected and created by
children themselves that allows them ‘to bear the absence of the mother’ and
to make her symbolically present. At the same time transitional objects have
a material quality and thus a facticity quite apart from their symbolic content.
In this sense, mobile or mobilised objects provide an anchor and stabilise per-
sonal relationships in the changing spatial arrangements of the children living
multi-locally.

Habitual closure and forming family peculiarity

Different logics of behaviour – in temporal, spatial, and sensory-aesthetic
terms – produce a familial habitus resting on specific attitudes, values, behav-
iour patterns, and modes of socialisation. Drawing on Norbert Elias and with
transnational families in mind, Lutz (2007, p. 131), speaks of family habitus,
which ‘is based on actively producing family, doing family, which also forms
the child within a family, helping to establish consensus, for instance between
generations, sexes, etc., and to establish and perpetuate mechanisms of inclusion
and exclusion’.
The phenomenon of conformity in habits, even between members of a fam-
ily household in a multi-local post-separation arrangement, can be seen in close
relation to practices of material closure and across all manifestations. The inter-
views with parents reveal how the assertion of a family’s particular character and
identity is also habitually founded, socialised, and perpetuated. When questioned
about his family’s quirks and characteristic occurrences, one of the things one
interviewed father describes is the group’s typical noise volume and how they
shout at each other:

I think ((laughs)), the racket we make. We are pretty loud. Tizian shouts,
Anton shouts, Papa shouts, see? ((…)) There are sometimes things, the chaos,
for example; yeah, one way or another we’re a little chaotic.
(Jonathan, father, family BFF1)
 Between convergence and divergence 143
The narrative that unfolds is one of a chaotic, noisily conducted father-son rela-
tionship giving a coherent picture of an ‘all-male household’ (Jonathan, family
BFF1) with stereotypical attributes. In the same fashion, the allusion to how
loud the three men become raises this to a legitimate means of communica-
tion employed by all household members, and establishes a habitually curdled
common praxis and belonging across the generations by a type of social inher-
itance. All three members of the ensemble are also early risers, a habituated
practice subsequently contrasted with the habitual way of life in the mother’s
household, from which this assertion of distinctiveness is deployed to mark
themselves off. Using Bourdieu’s (1984) concept of habitus as a structuring
and structured structure, it may be noted that lifestyles founded on different
familial practices and perceptual and evaluative schemata generate habitual
embedding that is incorporated, served, and at the same time – consciously and
unconsciously – repeatedly challenged by the children living at both locations.
The children are familiar with stocks of knowledge and behavioural expecta-
tions at each location and can apply and distinguish between them alternately.
Having different rhythms, routines, and rituals in their multi-local lives fos-
ters a duplication of belonging and a ‘habitus of dual orientation’, as Vertovec
(2009, p. 68) puts it. This is an ability that the parents interviewed see as giving
them an edge in skills over children in other family setups, thus normalising
the phenomenon.

Summary
In the vast majority of cases, parental breakup is accompanied by a temporospatial
separation and reorganisation of daily life for the partners in the relationship and
children alike. Recasting the original ensemble into two familial locations makes
life multi-local, particularly that of the children, who then live in joint residency
with alternating presence and absence in both households. This raises questions
of forms and practices of where, in this arrangement, the households share in
their collectivisation and assertions of order, and where they differ. Following
the thesis of the families’ actors, according to which the children living regularly
in both dwellings grow up in two different social spheres, an attempt was made
to reconstruct, from how order is established and life collectivised and organ-
ised across and in both households, the characteristic interplay tangled up in the
familial households’ setting of spatial boundaries. Five typical territorialisation
practices for families in living arrangements drawn up on equal terms were thus
focussed on: communicative, spatial, personnel, material, and habitual. This pro-
vides insight into how parents and children in multi-local post-separation families
relate to their respective other location and at the same time establish and stabi-
lise community locally. It is argued that local attitudes and social orders, ways
of socialisation, and (day-to-day) practices are formed precisely in this tension
between convergence and divergence, and it is their specific patterns that establish
habitus, identity, and thus collectivity.
144 Tino Schlinzig
Notes
1 This text is a translated and partly revised version of my article ‘Territorialisierungen
familialer Gemeinschaft. Multilokale Nachtrennungsfamilien im Spannungsfeld zwis-
chen Konvergenz und Divergenz’. In H. P. Hahn and F. Neumann (Eds.) (2019). Das
neue Zuhause. Haushalt und Alltag nach der Migration. Frankfurt am Main: Campus
(forthcoming). It is based on an empirical study as part of my Ph.D. thesis (2017)
‘Identity Politics of Multi-local Post-separation Families. Cohesion and Belonging in
Shared Residence Arrangements’ at Technische Universität Dresden.
2 The abbreviation NTF stands for Nachtrennungsfamilie, or post-separation family. The
data, processed in a secondary analysis in Schlinzig (2017), stem from ethnogaphic
case studies carried out under the auspices of the Schumpeter Research Group ‘Multi-
locality of family: The management of family life under spatial separation’ at the
German Youth Institute (DJI) in Munich from January 2009 to December 2014 under
lead of Dr. Michaela Schier (www.dji.de/multilokale_familie, accessed: 14.03.2018).
3 The abbreviation BFF stands for Binukleare Fortsetzungsfamilie, or binuclear blended
family. The data stem from my dissertation research project (see Schlinzig 2017).

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13 Living in two homes
Spatial appropriation and spatial
constructions by children in
post-separation multi-local families
Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier

In the majority of cases, parents in Germany – as well as other western countries

– going through a separation agree on multi-local living arrangements, whereby
children often live primarily in the maternal household but still spend significant
periods of time in the paternal household. Where this is the case, the way these
children conduct their lives on an everyday basis is characterised by recurrent
mobility between the parental households as well as living alternately and tempo-
rarily with one or the other parent. The children, therefore, have to relate to more
than one family location and position these in relation to one another, as well as
integrate existing differences and contradictions between these into their every-
day lives (e.g. Schlinzig, 2017).
Research on children in post-separation families usually analyses – predomi-
nantly on the basis of survey data – contact between children and the parent living
elsewhere, and tries to assess the consequences of this for the development and
well-being of the children (e.g. Smyth et al., 2012). Although such studies have
been useful for understanding children’s development outcomes and the adjust-
ment associated with living in different forms of post-separation families, they
emphasise children as vulnerable and powerless. They also rarely reflect the spe-
cific spatial dimensions of post-separation living arrangements, seldom focus on
anything other than dyadic parent-child relationships, and widely deny the social
agency of children living in these circumstances.
This paper aims to address this deficiency by using an everyday perspective
and introducing a residential multi-locality approach (Schier et al., 2015) to
investigate how children – understood as active and competent actors (Bühler-
Niederberger, 2010) – utilise, experience and appropriate their multiple familial
worlds, and to determine which factors play a role in this.
The first part of the paper briefly reviews current literature. The second
part explains central conceptual assumptions underlying the empirical study.
Following this, we provide information on the methodological design. In part
four we present and discuss our empirical findings on children’s multi-local eve-
ryday lives in post-separation families. The final section concludes the chapter
with some summary reflections.
148 Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier
Children and their post-separation everyday lives
A growing, but still small, body of research based on children’s own reports
regards children as active actors and (constrained) decision makers in post-sepa-
ration families: it explores their experiences of living in two homes and indicates
that parental separation requires children to make substantial adaptations (e.g.
Marschall, 2017). It also demonstrates children’s efforts and strategies in negoti-
ating family and time between two homes (e.g. Zartler and Grillenberger, 2017;
Haugen, 2010). Furthermore, it highlights the mobile nature of children’s post-
separation lives as well as their mobility experiences and practices (Schier, 2015;
Winther, 2015). Other studies focus on children’s sense of belonging to multiple
places, their constructions of home(s) and their homemaking practices (Schlinzig,
2017; Winther, 2009). Finally, some studies spotlight different ways in which
children construct their multi-local family worlds (Marquardt, 2005; Smart et al.,
2001; Schlinzig, 2017), but these studies greatly overlook the significance of spa-
tial circumstances as well as, generally, the complex social constitution of chil-
dren’s familial worlds.
In order to address this blind spot, we will take a closer look at how children
who live multi-locally utilise and appropriate multiple familial worlds on the level
of action praxis.

Children as active agents conducting multi-local everyday lives

We refer to the sociological concept of the conduct of everyday life (Jurczyk
et al., 2015) and link this with the concept of socio-spatial appropriation (Deinet,
2009). The basic premise of the concept of the conduct of everyday life is that
children (as well as adults) have to tackle all the different – and in some cases
contradictory – demands they encounter in the various spheres of everyday life.
The conduct of everyday life is the form of the activities carried out by children
on a day-to-day basis in the social spheres that are relevant to them (Dreier, 2009).
The concept allows us to focus on how children typically position themselves in
relation to the various social spheres, and the ways they arrange their everyday
lives in relation to a multitude of demands from various social contexts, activities,
and places (Jurczyk et al., 2015, p. 45f.).
The ways in which children conduct their lives are regulated and pre-structured
on multiple levels, for example through institutional integration or their parents’
way of life. Nonetheless, during the course of their childhood children develop
increasingly more independent ways of conducting their lives in relation to their
different family members (Dreier, 2009). Thus, children enter into debate with the
social and spatial circumstances and processes of their environment. They pursue
their own interests, explore and shape their everyday contexts, and change these
accordingly (Deinet, 2009).
Children today grow up in an ‘islandised’ environment, shaped by new media
and forms of communication. The locations relevant to the everyday lives of chil-
dren living in multi-local post-separation families – for example parental homes,
 Living in two homes 149
friends’ homes, schools, sports grounds, courtyards or recreational institutions – are
experienced as function-related ‘islands of activities’ (Zeiher, 2003), which are
not only scattered within one place of residence but are often distributed across
several geographical places of residence and territories. In this sense, only one
part of children’s everyday familial world lies within actual reach and is directly
accessible for children’s activities and experiences; the other part of the every-
day familial world lies, however, within potential reach and can – sometimes
only with help from adults – be reached through physical movement or made
indirectly accessible through media (e.g. telephone conversations) (Schütz and
Luckmann, 1973, p. 37). The challenge of children’s spatial appropriation con-
sists in establishing connections between different physical-material and social
spaces: between the place they are currently physically situated and the other,
geographically distant place.
We assume that children with multi-local living arrangements actively appro-
priate their regularly frequented ‘islandised’ family worlds in everyday situations
through social interactions via activities, routines and rituals. Appropriation here
means ‘unlocking, ‘grasping’, changing, converting and transforming the spatial
and social environment’ (see Deinet and Reutlinger, 2005, p. 295). During this
process of appropriation, children simultaneously perform practices of placing as
well as synthesising acts: on the one hand, children create spaces independently
by positioning themselves in relation to ensembles of things and humans; on the
other they connect the ‘islands of life’ relevant to them – things and persons –
to ‘their’ space by means of acts of perception, imagination and memory (Löw,
2008). In this sense, spatial appropriation refers not only to territorial, physical-
material, definable places but also to social spaces as spaces of action and inter-
action. This creative spatial practice gives rise to ‘personal archipelagos’ (see
Duchêne-Lacroix, 2015, p. 227); these encompass the totality of regularly fre-
quented and appropriated multi-local residential locations that are of particular
importance to a child and that are interpreted and utilised in a specific way.

Methodology and sample

This chapter is predominantly based on theme-centred interviews combined with
visual methods. The interviews were conducted with eight post-separation fami-
lies – comprising five girls, seven boys (aged six to 16) and their parents – for the
ethnographic study ‘Multi-Local Post-Separation Families in Germany’ (for more
information see Schier, 2015; Schier et al., 2015; Monz, Nimmo and Schier in this
volume).1 In five of these families, pairs of siblings are commuting between their
parents’ homes.
The everyday lives of the children interviewed differ in terms of time spent
at the parental homes, their institutional integration there, and the mobility
required of them. Four children spend alternate weeks in the maternal and pater-
nal households respectively and attend both school and recreational activities
from both homes because they are both nearby. Eight children, on the contrary,
spend most of their time at one of their places of residence, from which they
150 Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier
attend school; every second weekend they live with the other parent at their
place of residence. Seven of these children regularly have to cope with travel-
ling long distances by train or aeroplane between their parental homes. The data
analysis was conducted using the grounded theory methodology (Strauss and
Corbin, 1990).

Empirical findings: Patterns of multi-local spatial

appropriation and spatial constructions
Based on the empirical data we were able to reconstruct four patterns of children’s
multi-local spatial appropriation and spatial constructions.

Pattern 1: ‘I stay within the parameters here and enjoy the freedoms there’
In pattern 1, both familial worlds are constructed on the basis of contrasts and
emotionally evaluated as hierarchical. Nine-year-old Anna Müller, for exam-
ple, who mainly lives with her mother and spends every second weekend at her
father’s home 230 km away, describes this situation as follows:

A: And, I have to say, we like it better here [paternal home] than in place A
[maternal home] (…) because (…), well firstly, my mum doesn’t have that
much money and here we can just go and buy things every now and then (…)
It’s just, we have to go to school there, and that causes stress. And it’s just
calmer here, and we can actually do a bit more. In place A, Fabi [mother’s
new partner], well, he’s often fussy about his house. (…) And here it’s just
totally different, and often it’s because of Fabi that it’s nicer here.

Like Anna, the children classified under this pattern construct their two famil-
ial worlds as hierarchical, contrasting worlds by placing features they regard as
positive and negative in opposition to one another. They present one of the two
familial worlds as characterised by strong, rigid and comprehensive structures:
here, the children mention, inter alia, time constraints, e.g. due to school, and
behavioural constraints due to strict behavioural rules set by particular individuals
or due to limited financial resources. This familial world is often experienced as
being burdensome. It is, somewhat, characterised by inter-family conflicts. The
children’s room for manoeuvre and behavioural scope are defined and restricted
by strong, external structures. At the same time, there are positive aspects which
emotionally bind the children to this burdensome familial world. These primarily
include social aspects such as close relationships to the parent and friends, as well
as integration into school life.
In contrast, structures defining actions and behaviour are, to a large extent,
lacking in the other familial world. In comparison, it is characterised by sub-
stantial freedoms, self-determination and more room for manoeuvre. On an emo-
tional level, the children inflate its positivity. From the children’s perspective, it
is a ‘compensatory’ world in relation to the ‘other’ strongly pre-structured and
 Living in two homes 151
burdensome world. This pattern of spatial appropriation and spatial construction
can be described as asymmetrical and functionally complementary. The children
develop practices through which they conform to the temporal requirements, rules
and restrictions of the circumscribed familial world, thereby avoiding conflicts. In
the other familial world, on the contrary, they utilise the freedoms and possibili-
ties of self-determination, which they consider as being extremely positive. The
time spent there allows for much more spontaneity and flexibility.
The triangulation of the children’s interviews with the interviews conducted
with the parents of those worlds, characterised by more freedom, shows that this
pattern is reinforced by a typical parental practice of temporal outsourcing. Thus,
Mr. Müller, the father of Anna, says of his preparations for the weekends he
spends with his children:

The only thing I do is, I always go shopping before the children come. I don’t
like doing it when the children are there because it takes up too much time.

We see other parents, too, employing this practice of freeing up time spent on
doing everyday jobs in order to use the short time they have with their children
‘as well as possible’. This practice means parents can be spontaneous and flexible
in how they respond to their children’s wishes.
Further interesting aspects come to light if we consider in addition, the mate-
rial compiled from Anna’s 12-year-old brother, Alex. Alex has a significant role
to play in Anna’s spatial appropriation, for Anna appropriates space at both loca-
tions at least in part via the social resources (friends) of her brother. As the elder
of the two siblings, Alex himself is therefore a resource for Anna: Anna can
simply ‘follow’ him; he offers her a point of orientation, thereby making things
easier for her. By being available for her both here and there as a playmate and
conversation partner – particularly at times when Anna finds the challenges of the
multi-local living arrangements stressful – Alex represents an important constant
for her across both locations.
The reconstructed patterns of multi-local spatial appropriation, therefore, do
not represent the individual accomplishments of the children. It is rather the case
that, in the conduct of their multi-local lives, children actively appropriate their
familial worlds in everyday situations by doing things together with others, and in
interactive dialogue with their social environment, i.e. primarily with their parents
and siblings. In this respect, it is a practice of co-construction by children, parents,
and siblings.

Pattern 2: ‘I can get the best out of both worlds’

Pattern 2 is based on a construction of the relation between the familial worlds
which, again, places strong emphasis on the contrasts. In contrast to pattern 1,
however, the familial words are not placed in asymmetrical, functionally com-
plementary relation, but rather in symmetrical, functionally complementary rela-
tion, to one another. Twelve-year-old Sebastian lives mainly with his mother and
152 Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier
spends every second weekend with his father, who lives 20 km away, and he
describes this situation as follows:

I: You’ve just said you like coming back here – so, what is it you look forward to?
S: Seeing my mum again, and being able to do things here that I can’t do at my
dad’s. Watching television, for example. At my dad’s I can do different things
to what I can do at my mum’s; and at my mum’s I can do different things to
what I can do at my dad’s.
I: Can you give an example?
S: For example, my mum never buys a newspaper, or she doesn’t subscribe to a
newspaper, and at my dad’s, well, my half-brother is there, and at my mum’s
there are the cats.

The children who are classified under pattern 2 construct the relation between
their two familial worlds via their differences, which they evaluate as being pos-
itive. They refer to the different spatial structures, the material provisions, the
respective persons – and animals – present, as well as parental interests and abili-
ties. In this way, both familial worlds offer different options in terms of activities,
and the children therefore see them as positively complementing one another. In
terms of practices, the multi-local everyday lives of these children are character-
ised by a functional separation of their activities. They use the respective spatial
environment as well as the material and social resources available to them in both
places ((half-)siblings, friends, new partners, etc.) in different ways. The children
also adapt their activities to the two locations and the abilities and predispositions
of their parents. Like, for example, ten-year-old Melanie, who spends alternate
weeks at her mother’s and at her father’s. Whereas her father is very interested and
involved in music, her mother is very interested in literature. Whereas Melanie
dances, listens to music and sings a lot in her room at her father’s, she spends most
of her free time at her mother’s reading.
Here too, when we include the interviews with parents and siblings, we see the
co-constructive character of this pattern. The parents encourage their children to
take up specific recreational activities which correspond to their own predisposi-
tions. Melanie’s father, for example, who himself plays guitar in a band, primar-
ily encourages her musical side by helping her to play guitar. Her mother, on
the other hand, who has a degree in literary studies, focuses on keeping Melanie
supplied with books by visiting libraries. Melanie’s eight-year-old sister Sophia,
who commutes with Melanie between the two familial worlds, shares this spatial
construction. In Sophia’s interview it becomes clear that, for her, Melanie is a
unifying factor between the two familial worlds, and is, therefore, a playmate who
offers security and orientation, a constant as well as a resource.
The children who construct the relation between their familial worlds as sym-
metrical and functionally complementary express – irrespective of the actual dis-
tance between their parental homes – the wish that these were closer to one another.
They say the reason for this is that they want to be able to make more avid, flexible,
spontaneous, and self-determined use of the advantages of both familial worlds.
 Living in two homes 153
Pattern 3: ‘My daily life is the same whether I’m at my dad’s or my mum’s’
Contrary to patterns 1 and 2, pattern 3 is characterised by similarities in terms of
continuities. Sixteen-year-old Tom lives mainly with his father and spends every
other weekend at his mother’s, who lives a few streets away; his daily life is simi-
lar at both parental homes:

I: What kind of things do you do when you’re at your mum’s?

T: On Fridays she picks me up, then in the evening we go shopping for food.
The next day I always have to do my paper round. And then I usually have
football, around eleven or twelve.
I: And how are the weekends when you’re here [at your father’s]? What kind of
things do you do?
T: The Friday is normal, just like any other day – when I’m here, I mean. And
Saturday too. I do my paper round, then football. And otherwise, I must say,
everything runs to the around the same schedule at both places.

Irrespective of where they are staying, the children who are classified under pat-
tern 3 engage in the same activities at both parental homes. Their daily life is
characterised by a high degree of continuity. Because the parental homes are in
close spatial proximity to one another, the children’s institutional integration into
care, educational or recreational establishments, as well as their social integra-
tion, remains constant, irrespective of whether they are living with their mother
or father. Because the spatio-temporal and social structures remain constant, the
children do not have to develop many practices enabling them to integrate the
familial worlds into their everyday lives. Furthermore, because of the spatial
proximity, the familial worlds often overlap. In Tom’s case this happens when
both his mother and father attend his football matches.
The triangulation of parents’ and children’s perspectives shows that pattern 3,
too, is reliant upon the practices of parents allowing or promoting such overlaps.

Pattern 4: ‘I have the same social and recreational life at both places’
The fourth pattern is also based on similarities between the two familial worlds
that are constructed as congruent worlds. Thirteen-year-old Lara lives primarily
with her mother and spends every second weekend at her father’s home, 560 km
away. The way she spent her recent birthday demonstrates the congruence of her
life at her two parental homes:

On Saturday I celebrated at my dad’s; there’s a theme park there; I invited

all my friends to come; everyone went in one car, which we’d borrowed, and
stayed in the theme park until 7 o’ clock; then we came back, had food, so –
totally cool. And now – last weekend, I invited friends here [at my mother’s]
(…), we did go-karting – just girls, (…) and then at the end we came back
here and had pizza.
154 Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier
The children classified under pattern 4 have a strong social network of peers at both
their parental homes and are often institutionally integrated into recreational activi-
ties at both locations. The construction of both worlds as congruent worlds works
because the same activities are undertaken at both locations, even though, due to the
great distance between the parental homes, they are undertaken with different people
and in different institutional contexts. The children’s practices are geared towards
leading the same social and recreational life in both worlds. Furthermore, despite
physical absence and great distance, they demonstrate a multitude of practices aimed
at maintaining contact at all times with both worlds. In periods when they are physi-
cally absent from one place of residence, they are in constant contact with their peers,
siblings, and the parent there via text messages, telephone or online chat, so they are
permanently informed about what is happening in both places. These practices of
dealing with physical absence contribute, at the same time, to maintaining the chil-
dren’s own social presence at the other location – even if this presence is conveyed
via media (Licoppe, 2004). What these children demonstrate here in particular is
that they are able to establish continuity in local social relationships by creating their
own translocal, social space (of communication) spanning geographical distances.
Permanent communication via media is part of their everyday lives. This assumes
both that the children have access to communication media and that they are compe-
tent in using these. Here too, in relation to this pattern, the triangulation of perspec-
tives and data shows how parents co-construct the familial worlds through supportive
practices. Lara’s father, for example, set up a flat rate for her mobile phone, meaning
she can continue to maintain her existing friendships at the other location.
In contrast to pattern 1, despite the children’s temporary absence, the parents
manage, to a large extent, to maintain a normal everyday situation instead of
focussing all activities on the children. Everyday jobs are not saved for another
day. Mr. Hansa, Lara’s father, describes this as follows:

I have made sure from the beginning that it’s normal, that there’s a normal
daily routine, and this includes mowing the lawn, or doing something like
that, so that everything runs as normal. I thought it was important not to turn
this into an exceptional situation, but to make sure it’s a normal weekend.

Despite the short amount of time spent together, the intention is to ensure the
children lead an independent social and recreational life at this parental home too.
Mr. Hansa fosters this sense of normality, for example, by ensuring that, even
though Lara has relocated, she can continue to be active in the local tennis club.
Furthermore, the interviews that were conducted with both parents separately
indicate that the parents have similar priorities concerning the children’s recrea-
tional activities. The practices of both parents promote the continuity of recrea-
tional activities across the two familial worlds. Mrs. Hansa thus also participates
in a co-constructive way in this construction of worlds, when, where necessary,
she plans the weekends Lara spends with her according to her tennis tournament
commitments at the tennis club where her father lives.
 Living in two homes 155
Concluding reflections
Our results show that what is expected of the children, in terms of the content
and extent of what they need to accomplish, varies greatly. This is, for example,
the case regarding the distances they have to cover or the differences between
the two locations they have to integrate. Nonetheless, our findings convincingly
demonstrate the ability of the children to connect their multiple familial worlds
and places of residence in meaningful ways.
As our results – similar to those of Smart et al. (2001) – show, the ‘personal
archipelagos’ the children construct appear both as one-world-constructions (pat-
terns 3 and 4) and two-world-constructions (patterns 1 and 2). It becomes clear
that it is not only the structural aspects, such as the living arrangements or the
distances between parental homes, that determine which pattern of spatial appro-
priation and spatial construction the children produce through their actions. The
following aspects are more relevant to the children in this regard:

•• the pattern of activities the children undertake at each place;

•• the spatial-material appointment of the places of residence, e.g. the availabil-
ity of a garden, one’s own room, or particular things;
•• spatio-temporal aspects, such as the spatio-temporal structuring of the chil-
dren’s daily life through institutional integration into school and care sys-
tems, and resulting time conflicts or time pressures, or the amount of time
parents are able to spend with the children;
•• the rules and regulations applied at the different locations;
•• the ‘mood’ of the familial world (stressful/characterised by conflicts vs.
calm/relaxed);
•• the way the children are socially integrated at the different locations;
•• the way the parents conduct their everyday lives, as well as the parents’
characteristics (living their lives spontaneously and flexibly vs. planning and
organising their lives; parental preferences).

We have furthermore shown that the parents, whilst living apart, support the
spatial appropriation and the spatial construction of the children through their
everyday practices, e.g. by ensuring that in their dealings with one another the
focus is on integration rather than exclusion (see Schlinzig 2017). In order to
be able to deal with one another with a focus on integration, the relationship
between the parents must be non-adversarial, and both parents must adhere
to the principle of joint parenthood, despite the dissolution of the partnership.
However, there are also parents in our sample whose practices are characterised
by territorialisation and a distinct separation between familial worlds. This is
seen, in particular, in cases where the relationship between the parents is very
adversarial.
The structural aspects are framework conditions within which children indi-
vidually and actively appropriate space. They do so in dependence of the degree
to which their parents allow or promote this, as well as of other factors, e.g. their
156 Diane Nimmo and Michaela Schier
social and institutional integration into their respective places of residence. In the
course of their spatial appropriation in terms of practical action, children develop
routines of action which correspond to what is relevant to them and serves their
own interests. They thereby produce the kind of spatial construction which best
fulfils their needs, desires or preferences under the respective given conditions.
The result is that for some children, their places of residence have neither equal
importance nor equal meaning. This means children might experience the place
where they spend the majority of their time as being more positive, but the reverse
may also be true, i.e. they might perceive the place where they spend less time
as being more positive (typical of pattern 1). This individual and active spatial
appropriation by children also means that although siblings live under the same
conditions, they may draw on different patterns of spatial appropriation and spa-
tial constructions.
As already established, the reconstructed patterns of multi-local spatial
appropriation and spatial construction do not only represent the individual
accomplishments of the children. It is rather the case that, in the conduct of
their multi-local lives, children actively appropriate their familial worlds in
everyday situations by doing things together with others, and in interactive
dialogue with their social environment, i.e. primarily with the respective – or
both – parents, and with siblings. We have already pointed to the importance
of siblings as a resource for accessing friends. In addition, siblings are usually
available as playmates, communication partners or travelling partners, which is
particularly significant in the context that they are, without exception, the only
people who experience the multi-local living arrangements – with all their pos-
sibilities and challenges – first hand and likewise from a child’s perspective.
They alone share in the experiences at both locations, and they alone are ‘avail-
able’ at and en route to both locations in equal measure. They are a constant
local and mobile social resource – more constant than either parent – and, in
the cases we studied, their significance was clearly emphasised, primarily by
younger siblings.
Finally, this contribution has increased our understanding of how children
deal with the challenge of living in two familial worlds after their parents sepa-
rate. We have been able to demonstrate the ways children actively and – to all
intents and purposes – creatively relate the two familial worlds through their
actions, integrating them into a ‘whole’ and giving them meaning. This contri-
bution has shown that children who spend time in multi-local familial worlds
realise, as competent actors, a multi-local spatial appropriation and spatial con-
struction in accordance with their own needs, wishes and preferences, and that
they do so in – to a certain extent – strong co-construction with parents and
siblings and in debate with the respective structural settings. In so doing, they
deal ‘creatively’ with the given conditions through their actions. The patterns of
spatial appropriation and spatial construction are ultimately the result of chil-
dren’s ‘creative practice’.
 Living in two homes 157
Note
1 This work was financially supported by the Volkswagen Foundation, the German
Youth Institute, and the Evangelische Studienwerk Villigst. We are grateful to our col-
leagues Anna Monz and Nina Bathmann from the Schumpeter project group ‘Multi-
Local Families’ for discussing the issues in the chapter with us.

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14 A room with a vacuum
Spatial perceptions and appropriations
of children’s rooms in the context of
shared residence1
Benoît Hachet

Introduction
In all European countries, in a large majority of cases after a parental separation
the children live with their mother and spend half their weekends and holiday time
with their father (Bjarnason and Arnarsson, 2011).2 Since the end of the twentieth
century, a form of post-separation organisation has emerged that, based on the
principle of co-parenting, brings about an equal division of the time that children
spend living in the homes of the two parents. An act passed in 2002 in France
to allow this practice uses the term résidence alternée, which literally translates
as ‘alternating residence’, emphasising the spatial dimension of this organisation
(Masardo, 2011). In most cases, children ‘commute’ weekly between the resi-
dences of both parents. In the following text, I will use the term shared residence
for the sake of adapting to international uses. I will deploy a strict definition of
shared residence, since in this study I will only consider parents who share living
time with their children equally.
Studies on shared residence usually focus on researching parents’ socio-demo-
graphic characteristics or on children’s well-being (Nielsen, 2013; Haugen, 2010;
Tinder, 2010). They often leave parental experience unaddressed, a few excep-
tions notwithstanding (Sodermans et al., 2015; Carlsund et al., 2014). Although
there are studies on children’s lived experience of their ‘two worlds’ (Decup-
Pannier and Singly, 2000; Nimmo and Schier, Schlinzig in this volume), it is rarer
for research to take an interest in parents’ experience of this pendular existence,
which simultaneously comprises both a temporal aspect of successive periods
with and without their children (Hachet, 2014b) and a singular spatial experience.
Whereas the parents live permanently in the same place, the children are intermit-
tent occupants whose existence alternates between the two parental homes. The
children’s bedroom is alternately inhabited and empty.
On the basis of an original survey of shared-residence parents,3 we have some
framing data. Only 1% of parents say that they are the ones who change resi-
dence on a regular basis, the so-called ‘bird nesting’ model. Shared residence is
primarily an organisational arrangement in which it is the children who change
residence. Three quarters of them report that their children have a room to them-
selves, and this is even more likely to be so when they live in a small town, when
the parents’ income is high, and when the family has fewer and older children.
160 Benoît Hachet
These results are entirely comparable with those obtained for all school-age chil-
dren by France’s National Institute of Statistics and Economic Studies (Gouyon,
2006). Children involved in shared residence are no less likely than others to have
their own room. In 90% of cases, the parents themselves have their own room
and thus do not sleep ‘on the couch’. This proportion is lower in large cities and
among those with the lowest income and the largest number of children.
My aim has been to make inquiries as to what happens to this space at times
when the children are not there, in terms of both how it is used and what represen-
tations are associated with it. Is it a space that becomes occupied and used as an
extension of the apartment? Or is it left as it is, without its having a practical use
for a week? Is there a right to use the children’s room when they are not there?
Use of the space is not just a material matter (Fuller and Löw, 2017). ‘Space (…)
cannot remain indifferent space subject to the measures and estimates of the sur-
veyor. It has been lived in (…)’ (Bachelard, 1994, XXXVI). The inhabited space
is lived and loaded with effects, representations, and taboos that constrain parents
in their relationship with the child’s room.

Capturing practices and feelings

To understand the place of the children’s room in the parents’ home and minds, I
used a qualitative and inductive method. This approach consisted of accumulating
empirical materials and ‘listening to the data’ (Strauss and Corbin, 1998) before
building up an interpretative framework. The data was collected by conducting
semi-structured interviews with parents, centred on practices and feelings related
to the vacant room. The way to analyse them was based on an emergent-fit process
described in the grounded theory (Glaser, 1992).
Between 2011 and 2017, I conducted interviews with 42 parents who were
living or who had lived according to shared-residence arrangements. With seven
interviews with both parents, my data set is therefore based on 35 cases in which
residence was shared equally. Part of the interview concerned the children’s
room.4 Recruiting was carried out by trial and error via various channels. Care
was taken to obtain participants with diverse profiles,5 in terms of age, gender,
number of children, income, education level, residential area, ex-marital status,
court decisions, and duration of separation.
The average age of the parents in shared residence arrangements at the time of
the interview was 41.5 years (with ages ranging between 32 and 54 years); their
children were on average aged 9.6 years (ages ranging between one and 16); and the
average duration of parental separation was 4.4 years (ranging between two months
and 12 years). The situations encountered involved only children in seven cases,
two siblings in 24 cases, three siblings in three cases, and four siblings in one case.

Approaching the vacant room step by step

To present the results of this research, I will gradually broach the matter of the
children’s room by first establishing whether the parents stay in the home when
the children are not there, whether the bedroom door is open or closed during the
 A room with a vacuum 161
children’s absence, and whether they go into the room or use it. I will finish by
focussing on long-term developments.

To be or not to be in the home, when the children are not there

In the rare situations in which children remain in the family home while the par-
ents take turns with one another to live there, the parents never encounter an empty
room. Every other week, they live elsewhere. Most of the time, it is the children
who move, and some parents in this situation behave as occasional occupants;
they do not stay in their home when the children are not there. Nadine (40, nurse,
Paris, Paris suburbs, D12, SR7, 2011)6 lives with her daughter one week out of
two in the suburbs and near the residence of her former partner. Every other week
she stays in Paris, and during this period she spends all her time working. Marie-
Pierre (37, nurse, Paris suburbs, D12, D9, SR7, 2011), Clara (32, self-employed in
the entertainment industry, Paris, D8, S6, SR2, 2013), and Fabrice (46, salesper-
son, Paris suburbs, S12, S12, SR2, 2015) have new partners, at whose home they
live when they are not with their children. Parents who reside permanently in the
same place may want to avoid facing the empty home. Sandrine, who was staying
temporarily with her parents, said,

I fill the vacuum by having a whole load of activities underway because to

come back after work, to go home to my parents’ place and to see their empty
room is unbearable. I’m doing sport again, I go to the cinema and I go and see
my friends so that I get home late.
(Sandrine, 36, nurse, Paris suburbs, S9, D6, SR2months, 2011)

Or, according to Lisa:

When they are there, the house feels like it’s being lived in because there are
toys everywhere, in the lounge, drawings lying around everywhere, the fridge
is full, the dishwasher is running, they make noise. And then they’re gone,
and everything goes silent. I do my best to treat the apartment like a hotel;
I’m just passing through when they aren’t there.
(Lisa, 41, journalist, Paris, D8, S6, SR2, 2013)

In these last two situations, in which the separation is recent, moments without
children are hard to bear because of the silence or the emptiness of the room, which
is a physical reminder of the absence. As a result, avoidance behaviours develop
in relation to this space that is no longer shared. Without children, the home is no
longer lived in but serves as a ‘hotel’, a place to lodge in or pass through. For these
two parents, the home is only a lived place when the children are there.

An open or a closed door?

Like in the Alfred de Musset play Il faut qu’une porte soit ouverte ou fermée
(A Door Must Be Either Open or Shut),7 participants of the study spoke of their
162 Benoît Hachet
day-to-day practices in relation to the unoccupied space of their children’s
bedrooms. These practices have a strong symbolic significance. A closed door
separates the bedroom from the rest of the home, making the space closed off,
invisible, and sanctuarised. An open door allows the room to be integrated into the
visible and lived space. The majority of interviewees leave the door open when
the children are not with them. They give different explanations for this. Some
related it to the need to let light into the hallway, some to the feeling of claustro-
phobia in small apartments, and others to the habit of always leaving doors open.
Claude and Philippe associate how they leave the door with the way in which they
experience shared residence.

I find that closing doors creates a chasm. It makes a big difference. I think
it’s already hard for parents not to have their children around all the time, all
the more so if – and this is my personal opinion – life changes completely
when they are not there. Having their personal space closed off, inaccessible,
is something that I find ridiculous. It’s not like, they’re not there and I close
everything just like that.
(Claude, 54, storekeeper, village in southwestern France,
S15, D10, SR2, 2015)

It is a key part of me, my life, my apartment, everything (…) If it’s closed, it

really means being somewhere else.
(Philippe, 50, restaurant owner, Paris, D8, S6, SR2, 2013)

These two statements from fathers who are of more or less the same age but from
very different social backgrounds reveal that the place of the children in the space
of the home cannot be erased when they are not there. Their children are part of
their lives, just as their room is part of the living space. For them, closing the
doors appears to indicate a strict separation of the moments with and without the
children, which they reject. Leaving the door open allows them to symbolically
continue to be with their children.
For some among the smaller number of respondents who close the doors, the
presence of pets dictates matters, but for others it is mostly a way of placing a veil
of ignorance over the absence of the children from the home.

Seeing the empty room creates a complete vacuum in me, it eats me up inside.
I do the housework on Saturday when they go, I tidy everything away, I clean
everything, I shut the door and, in general, I don’t go back in.
(Sandrine, 36, nurse, Paris suburbs, S9, D6,
SR2months, 2011)

In this experience from the very start of shared residence, not seeing the children
is very difficult. The way to not ‘see the absence’ is to shut the door to their
bedroom. Every other week, the children’s room is therefore amputated from the
rest of the home. Closing the doors seems to be an equally frequent response in
 A room with a vacuum 163
the case of blended families, where the idea is to protect the personal space of an
absent child from being intruded upon by other children in the family.8 Outside
blended families, parents who close the door of the children’s rooms have a short
experience of shared residence, whereas interviewees who leave it open have
been living in this situation for a long time. We might assume that the door opens
with time.

To enter or not to enter the room?

The threshold of the room is crossed mainly for logistical reasons and never with
the stated intention9 of engaging with the children’s absence. Some parents occa-
sionally go in to clean the room, put away clothes and change the sheets if there
is no cleaner who does these tasks, or sometimes they go in to retrieve forgotten
things. They may close the blinds and/or turn off the heating when the children
leave, before rejuvenating the space prior to their return. Their relationship to this
place is one of housekeeping, and after shared residence has been going on for a
certain period of time, brief incursions are not experienced in an affective way.
Other parents enter the absent children’s room every day to open the blinds, air it,
and ensure that it is not ‘a dead room’, ‘a sanctuary’, or ‘lifeless’, as the interview-
ees put it. On a day-to-day level, this second category integrates the children’s
room into the way in which space is inhabited. In my dataset, this category com-
prises parents who are often older, who have a longer experience of separation
from their former partner, and who have more time than other parents to take on
household tasks.10
No parent told me that he or she entered the room for a reminder of his or her
missing children or to engage with them. As Lisa put it:

I go in to put away clothes, but I’m not on a pilgrimage there.

In contrast to the rooms of dead children, the rooms of children who are subject to
a shared residence arrangement are not places for engaging with them. Through
the recurring experience of sharing custody that they become familiar with, par-
ents know that, although the rooms are temporarily empty, they will very soon be
occupied once more.

To use or not to use the room?

In small homes, the children’s room may be used more than it is in larger ones,
though this use is subject to precautions. Magalie described her domestic arrange-
ments in the 50 m² space that she shares with two sons:

I do a lot of laundry, but I don’t have much linen or much space for drying, so
I sleep in one of the children’s beds while I do mine. But it’s only because of
the practical limitations with the sheets. I wouldn’t go in otherwise. It really
is their room. I’d feel like I was going into their room. I free it up when they
164 Benoît Hachet
arrive (…) I prefer to let things air each day. I never close doors, and so they
are all open, including the one for their room. It’s where I put laundry for
ironing. It’s the only room with a wardrobe, and I have my clothes there. So
I go in there very often, twice a day.
(Magalie, 40, teacher, Paris suburbs, S13, S9, SR1, 2014)

‘Practical limitations’ are what lead Magalie to sleep in the bed of one of her
children and to store her clothes in the home’s only wardrobe. Were it not for
these things, she would not use the room, which ‘really is their room’. She lets
herself in, and she specified in the interview that she is aware that she is commit-
ting something of a misdemeanour, which she justifies by the fact that she has no
choice and that she vacates the room when the children return. Anne also chooses
her words carefully:

I go in for the laundry, to tidy up. When they aren’t there, it can be used,
not as a storage room, but I can put the laundry there when it hasn’t been
folded so that it’s not lying around in the living room, just so it’s out
of sight.
(Anne, 42, teacher, Paris, S9, S7, SR2, 2013)

Seeing the room as a storage space seems unthinkable. However, using a room to
leave unfolded laundry in it actually turns the bedroom into a storage room. This
simply cannot be said – or rather, thought – because seeing the bedroom as a stor-
age room is to transform the intimate space of childhood to give it a degrading
use. It is a violation of the room’s identity, which is a child’s bedroom in the par-
ents’ mind. Whereas Anne will leave laundry there but cannot see it as a laundry
room, Ludovic refuses to use the room in this way:

I prefer to put the laundry in our own room. I can’t do it, actually (put the
laundry in the children’s room). I want it to continue to have life, but not for
it to be used for something else.’
(Ludovic, 41, videographer, Paris suburbs,
D9, S6, SR1, 2013)

For Ludovic, it would not just be uncomfortable to put laundry in the children’s
room; it’s also not possible for him to do it. The room has to keep its identity and
its function in their absence.11
The other possible use of the room is to host friends when the children are not
there. I asked Ludovic if he lets friends stay in it when the children are not there,
and he responded,

No, if I host it’ll be in the living room; it has to remain a child’s room. It’s still
their room and it doesn’t actually change.
(Ludovic, 41, videographer, Paris suburbs,
D9, S6, D9, S6, SR1, 2013)
 A room with a vacuum 165
His 110 m² apartment offers other possibilities for hosting friends. This is not
the case for parents who live in small homes and who can only host friends in
their children’s room. However, spatial constraints are not everything. Clara, who
lives half the week in a 45 m² apartment and spends the other half at her friend’s
home, explains:

I do happen to accommodate friends when I’m not there, but I never lend
them the children’s room, it’s the couch for them. Because it’s their room.
Unless it’s their godmother or whatever, otherwise it’s their room, I can’t let
people use their room.
(Clara, 32, self-employed in the entertainment industry,
Paris, D8, S6, SR2, 2013)

These interview excerpts were chosen to show the taboos that the children’s room,
and in particular their beds, are subject to when they aren’t there. Other parents
say that they have no problem with hosting friends in the children’s room when
they aren’t there. In terms of hosting friends and storing the laundry, rather more
closed ways of living can be observed that surround the children’s rooms with
many taboos; we also observe ways of living that are rather more open to the pos-
sibility of temporary intrusions. However, none of the interviewees changed on a
lasting basis the functional purpose of the space when the children were not there.
For none of the parents does the room belonging to absent children become an
office, a workshop, or an area for reading in, let alone a box room.

The effect of the duration of the shared residence.

When the shared residence arrangements begin, there are frequent reminders of
the children’s absence, and these are expressed in the relationship with the room.
For Sandrine and Lisa, the feelings connected to the empty room are physical:

I’ve stopped going in because when I see a teddy bear lying around, there’ll
be the smell of my children too. It’s horrible, you know, really very physical.
I miss them more if I go back in, so no, no, usually I avoid going back in.
(Sandrine, 36, nurse, Paris suburbs, S9, D6,
SR2months, 2011)

To begin with, it was an ordeal. I’ve got a big apartment, and when it was
empty and all that, to begin with I actually felt like hanging myself. At first
I felt like they were dead people’s rooms, that people had died, when I went
by them.
(Lisa, 41, journalist, Paris, D8, S6, SR2, 2013)

The expressions used by these mothers at the beginning of shared residence

employ the vocabulary of grief: the ‘ordeal’, a desire to hang oneself, the feel-
ing that the children are dead, or the horrible sensation from the smell of the
166 Benoît Hachet
teddy bear. These impressions crystallise around the room, which is experienced
as haunted by the absent presence of the children. This feeling of grief in relation
to no longer seeing one’s children on a daily basis is embodied in particular in
the empty room, because it is the children’s private world. Although this feeling
seems to mark the early days of shared residence, it fades over time. Bojan’s
account expresses the change in perception of the children’s room, a change in
the texture of the vacuum:

Empty rooms: it’s just that these rooms were far from empty at the beginning
of shared residence. They reminded me of the absence, missing them, the
guilt and all the baggage that goes with that stuff. The rooms reminded me
of my own loneliness and the feeling of missing my children that I had from
only seeing them every other week. Now, they’re just empty rooms and they
don’t remind me of all those feelings.
(Bojan, 38, teacher, Paris suburbs, D10, D14, SR7, 2011)

At the beginning of shared residence, the empty room is full – of pain, of missing
the children, of sadness, of guilt, and of loneliness. Then, as the parents become
used to it, the rooms lose this affective dimension, and the vacuum indicates a
vacant space without arousing particular emotions. On the question of what he
now feels when entering his daughters’ room, Bojan says:

No, I don’t feel any particular emotion, apart from slight irritation if the room
is too untidy.
(Bojan, 38, teacher, Paris suburbs, D10, D14, SR7, 2011)

We can see the path followed here. Very few interviewees reported a particular
feeling in relation to the absent children’s room after a year of shared residence.
Empirical psychological studies on the ‘empty nest’ (Bates Harkins, 1978), which
corresponds to the period following the departure of the children from the fam-
ily residence, consider it to disappear after two years. My investigation makes it
possible to consider a shorter duration for the feelings of loss caused by shared
residence to fade away, in keeping with results obtained in Sweden (Carlsund,
2014). After this period, the room most often loses this affective dimension, even
if it remains relatively unusable.

The vacant room is not a sanctuary

Occupied, then empty, inhabited, and then not inhabited, moved into, then
deserted, all at regular intervals, the children’s room in shared residence arrange-
ments changes in nature according to the period in time.
When the children aren’t there, their room is not a sanctuary, because the space
is not closed off – the door is open – and parents do not enter it with ritualistic
caution. It is not a dead child’s room. Although parents avoid it when shared resi-
dence begins, as though it were a ghost room, this is forgotten as shared residence
continues. If they go in, it’s for practical, ‘non-sacred’ reasons.
 A room with a vacuum 167
Nevertheless, this space is surrounded by taboos that mark the boundary
between the sacred and the profane in everyday life.12 The children’s room can-
not be appropriated by the parents; it’s theirs. To talk about the children’s room,
the interviewees systematically use personal pronouns: ‘his’ room, ‘her’ room, or
‘their’ room, rather than ‘the’ room. They do not have ‘a’ room at their mother’s
or father’s home, but rather ‘their’ room. It is protected against the unwanted
intrusions of laundry, or it can only be used as a place for friends to sleep in when
there are constraints on space.
Every other week, the children’s room is a space that is detached from com-
mon use. It is often separate, fenced off, unplugged, sometimes made invisible
and put on hold for a week. But this is not a dead space. It is on standby or waiting.
It is a room that can only find its meaning by welcoming the children who inhabit
it. In a complementary way, we should explore how parents occupy the space of
the rest of their home in relation to the periods of alternation.

Notes
1 This chapter is an augmented and re-arranged version of an article already published in
French (Hachet, 2014a), translated by Cadenza Academic Translations.
2 In France, the most recent judicial data indicate that 71% of judges’ rulings place the
children with the mother and 12% with the father, while shared residence is awarded
in 17% of cases (Guillonneau and Moreau, 2013). By their nature, these data do not
include parents who do not go through the justice system. They are also blind to how
rulings are specifically applied by parents.
3 France’s RA-CAF-2016 survey is based on a questionnaire given to 20,000 parents who
are recipients of child benefits from the state’s National Fund for Family Allowances
and who share the resources that they receive because they have shared-residence
arrangements or because they reported to their local office that their children alternate
between homes (Céroux and Hachet, 2019). 5,103 parents responded.
4 Moreover, the semi-structured interviews, conducted face-to-face, focused on the
implementation of shared residence arrangements, how they were organised, and on
the parents’ lived experience of them.
5 If the frequency of shared residence is higher among middle and upper-middle class
social circles, this does not mean that it does not exist in other classes (Nielsen, 2013,
p. 67).
6 Participants are referred to by an anonymised name, as well as by their age, profes-
sion, place of residence, children’s age and sex (‘D12’, for example, denotes a twelve-
year-old daughter), duration of the shared residence (indicated, for example, by ‘SR7’
for seven years of shared residence), and finally by the year in which the interview
took place.
7 Play by Alfred de Musset from 1888.
8 In her work on siblings in blended families and domestic space, Aude Poittevin quotes
the remarks of a respondent in a blended-family arrangement that involved children
who resided in the home permanently and others who would only be there every other
weekend: ‘During their absence, the door is symbolically closed. It’s true that some-
times X violates the doorway – and I say “violate” because that’s what it really is.
That’s how it’s experienced – reproachfully.’ (Poittevin, 2002, p. 302)
9 Not stating it does not mean an absence in practice.
10 This is not to say that they are mostly women.
11 This corroborates Aude Poittevin’s observations on interpreting sibling ties according
to space. She quotes an interviewee [Martine]: ‘Here’s a bad example today, there’s a
clothes drier with laundry drying on it [in the room of the eldest children]. But this is
168 Benoît Hachet
exceptional. It’s a bedroom! It’s open, but it’s unoccupied. It’s their room. Their names
are on the door for a reason!’ (Poittevin, 2005, p. 71).
12 ‘The sacred, in ordinary life, is expressed almost exclusively through taboos. It is
defined as “the guarded” or the “separate”. It is placed outside common usage and pro-
tected by restrictions to prevent any attack upon the order of the world, or any risk of
upsetting or introducing any source of disturbance into it. It seems essentially negative’
(Caillois, 1959, p. 100).

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15 Fatherhood post-separation
Practicing fathering from a distance and
in brief co-present phases
Michaela Schier

Introduction
Fatherhood and family are social phenomena that are bound by a specific spatial
organization in definite spatial contexts and at definite places or are constructed start-
ing from these places (Aitken 2009). Until now, studies on fathers and their practices
seldom observe their social and spatio-temporal situation (Marsiglio et al., 2005). As
a typical spatio-temporal structured and structuring context of the familial everyday
life after separation and divorce (Schier, 2016), residential multi-locality neverthe-
less involves specific demands on fathering; this is the focus of the present article.
In more than three-quarters of all cases, children in Germany spend more time
in the maternal home after a separation – in correspondence with a gender-typical
division of labour and concept of parenthood frequently experienced prior to sep-
aration – even if they also periodically spend their daily routine with their fathers
(Geisler et al., 2018). Fathers and their children live together only part-time after
a separation and live spatially separated from each other for, more or less, long
periods. Thus, fatherhood can obviously no longer be performed in copresence
but rather must be constructed intermittently from a distance and under conditions
of periodically shuttling children between the parental homes.
This article addresses the experiences, practices, and difficulties of the con-
struction of post-separation fatherhood based on the results of ethnographical
studies on the ‘multi-locality of families’. After a brief review of current litera-
ture, the second section explains central conceptual assumptions about fathering
as a social practice. Following this, information on the methodological design is
provided. In section four, results of fathering in brief copresent periods as well
as media- and mobility-based fathering practices are presented. The final section
briefly sums up the main points.

Post-separation fathering
In international studies looking at fathers and their involvement with children
in post-separation families, great emphasis has been placed on the degree to
which they meet and communicate with their children, provide financial sup-
port, participate in decision-making processes regarding their children and are
involved in their children’s daily activities (see Geisler et al., 2018; Natalier and
 Fatherhood post-separation 171
Hewitt, 2010). In addition to studies primarily concerned with periods of aban-
doned contact, the disappearance of fathers from the children’s lives, and the neg-
ative consequences of this phenomena (see Tazi-Preve et al., 2007), other studies
point to a vast diversity of involvement of so-called ‘non-residential fathers’ and
to active relationships between fathers living elsewhere and their children (see
Kalmijn, 2015; Cheadle et al., 2010). Among other things, the literature reports
fathers increasingly reflecting on their own role. For non-residential fathers, the
question is often posed as to how they are able to practice their father role within
the framework of comprehensive institutional provisions (incl. custody regula-
tions, visiting arrangements and child support and alimony arrangements) as well
as what constitutes ‘good’ fathering while living apart from one’s children (see
Troilo and Coleman, 2012).
Until now, little focus has been placed on either the daily practical challenges of
post-separation fathering due to new spatio-temporal conditions of multi-local liv-
ing or the question of how fathers deal with these new requirements on a daily basis.
With this chapter, I would like to contribute to minimising this gap. Therefore,
the question is posed: how do fathers experience the spatio-temporal conditions of
cohabitation after the dissolution of a partnership? Which daily requirements accom-
pany fathering that spans more households? And how do fathers deal with this?
The results presented here come from ethnographic studies conducted by the
Schumpeter Research Group ‘Multi-Local Families’ that explore the experiences
and everyday life practices of multi-local post-separation families in Germany
(see Schier, 2016). The empirical base is comprised of a set of 12 problem-centred
interviews (see Witzel and Reiter, 2012) with separated fathers conducted from
2010 to 2013. In some cases, problem-centred interviews with their multi-locally
living children older than five years and with their ex-partners were also used.
The sample features a broad distribution of attributes in regards to age (two to 16
years), gender, and living arrangements of the multi-locally living children (pri-
mary residence at mothers; shared residence; split residence) as well as the dis-
tances between parental homes (5 long distance: 130–560 km; 2 middle distance:
20–30 km; 5 short distance: <4 km).

Fathering as a social practice

In reference to practice theoretical approaches, I understand fathering as a process
and social practice (see Schatzki, 1996). In doing so, I concentrate on the various
lived activities, routines, and rituals with which personal relationships between men
and their children are developed on a daily basis (see Jurczyk, 2014; Morgan, 2011).
Fathering thus incorporates both direct and indirect, affective, and cognitive
activities and the engagement of men with their child(ren) or for their child(ren).
Fathering manifests itself in various communicative and emotional practices:
assuming responsibility and care for and of the children; planning, organising,
and coordinating everyday life together; making material resources available;
promoting childhood activities, competences, and interests; providing the ‘here
and available state’ for the children; giving them guidance, provision, and care;
and facilitating cooperative activities (see Pleck, 2012; Marsiglio et al., 2005).
172 Michaela Schier
Fathering is practiced in both public and private spheres, in very diverse situ-
ations and socio-spatial contexts, in one location or in various households and
also from a great distance (Meah and Jackson, 2015). Fathering happens both
situationally, unplanned in the course of daily activities, as well as purposefully
and reflectively (Jurczyk, 2014). The majority of fathering is performed as rou-
tine, which structures the joint everyday and gives security. In particular, ritu-
alised activities (e.g. celebrations, meals together, excursions) help to promote
mutual commitment and confirmation, familial community, and identity devel-
opment (Hepp et al., 2014). While fathering, fathers are confronted with spatial
constructions that are inscribed in the socially constructed models of post-sepa-
ration fatherhood and in models of ‘good fathering’. This pertains, for example,
to normative perceptions regarding the necessary spatial presence with their chil-
dren and spatio-temporal availability for their children (Halatcheva-Trapp in this
volume). The current normative ideal demands a stronger present, emotionally
involved provider-father (see Meuser, 2014). Since 1998, there have been fun-
damental changes in the legal framework conditions for parents in Germany that
have led to a legal anchoring of ‘post-separation cooperative parenting’ as well as
an enhancement of the rights of fathers (see Höbel, 2017).

Co-presence, absence, and mobility in fatherhood practices

Our empirical material demonstrates that time spent together between fathers and
their child(ren) in one location post-separation does not happen automatically. It
is often very limited in time, set to a rhythm and planned. It seldom occurs spon-
taneously or casually but is instead – sometimes accompanied by much conflict –
agreed upon and organised with the ex-partner. The father-child relationships and
paternal tasks must be arranged in the rotation of very brief periods of cohabita-
tion and longer periods of separated living, particularly when there is significant
distance between the parental homes, as is the case in five of the post-separation
families we interviewed. To this extent, post-separation residential multi-locality
not only alters the quantity but also the quality of the time fathers and their chil-
dren can spend together in one location.

‘One tries to use the small amount of time effectively’ – Fathering

in brief co-present periods
All fathers interviewed expressed time difficulties in one way or another.
Opportunities for face-to-face interaction with their children have decreased post-
separation. This also applies to fathers whose children live with them and their
mothers for equal periods of time; they must regularly deal with periods of up
to one week (also sometimes longer during vacation periods) in which they do
not see their children and access to them is limited. Fathers whose children have
their primary residence at their mothers are primarily missing out on the day-
to-day experience of being together that is ‘this very normal, throw-the-dirty-
socks-in-the-laundry life’, as Mr. Schneider expresses and, so to speak, with that,
 Fatherhood post-separation 173
the chances to be involved in the lives of their children in passing. In the eight
cases, in particular, in which the fathers and their children live together under one
roof every other or even every third weekend, the opportunities for casual contact
during a natural togetherness in the same place as well as community-creating
daily activities and routines, such as reading a good-night story or an evening
meal together, are extremely few. Frequently, these fathers structure – as similarly
described by Costa (2014) for fathers in southern Portugal – the brief amount
of time together with their children extremely reflexively and in a child-centred
manner. They want to use the time ‘qualitatively well’ and ‘effectively’, whereby
they organise ‘enjoyable and meaningful activities for the children’ that are ‘fun’.

So, I get him [my son], of course, now for just these… I don’t know, 36 hours
or something, right? This is twice in a month… and that is really very little….
So, of course, you try to use the little time you have effectively…. Yeah. So,
in that respect, this has changed because you are also focused on the hours.
Mr. Eckart lives 45 km from the mother’s home; his son lives with him
and his partner every other weekend.

In order to be able to use the brief period of time with the children ‘as well as
possible’, many fathers keep these times free of daily errands and housework by
completing them in advance. Instead, they promote spatio-temporal settings that
enable them to almost casually experience how their own children are doing, how
they are developing and what concerns, interests, and needs they have. Because the
time spent together with the children is often concentrated in weekends or vaca-
tion times, a wide range of recreational activities such as bicycling, swimming,
hiking, or gardening together, playing on the computer, or playing board games
at home dominate. Such oft-ritualised leisure time practices that offer cooperative
experiences but also involve daily activities, such as cooking together, enable this
group of fathers to share quality experiences with their children. These experi-
ences are integral to re-establishing closeness and a sense of belonging, ensuring
familial community, and maintaining close relationships with the children. Not
only the fathers but also several of the children we interviewed experienced these
times consciously spent together as ‘very intense times’.

We take a sailing course together. (…) And then I also just think, they some-
how get more from this, from such an experience. (…) And this, too, is just so a
little bit – yeah, the concept behind it that I want to do things with the kids, um,
when they are here (…) because I think this also does connect [us] very closely.
Mr. Müller lives 350 km from the maternal residence of his two children.
They live with him every other weekend.

While this first group of fathers arrange temporary visits with their children at
their homes as ‘special’ and child-centred ritualised time-spaces with coopera-
tive father-child(ren) activities, another smaller group of fathers from our sample
use, on the other hand, ‘as-if-normalisation’ practices (Hoffmann-Riem, 1984) to
174 Michaela Schier
organise these periods of time. In their opinion, these time-spaces should ‘not be
exceptional situations’ because they consciously live ‘everyday lives as always’
and do not completely adjust their own activities to the children but rather organ-
ise their schedules as they would if their children constantly lived with them.

I have actually thought from the beginning that it is, um, normal, that the
normal daily routine, even if it is, perhaps, mowing the lawn or something,
should continue on normally. (…) I mean, it was important to me that it, um,
is not an exceptional situation but rather it is a normal weekend.
Mr. Hansa has two daughters; one primarily lives with him and one pri-
marily lives with the mother 560 km away. The latter lives with him every
other weekend.

Nevertheless, these fathers support their children in leading independent recrea-

tional and social lives despite part-time presences at the paternal residence as
well. In doing so, they encourage their children’s contact to old and new friends
in the locality or enable them to be periodically active in local sport clubs or the
church community.

Telephone calls alone are not enough… Fathering through

medial communication
All fathers interviewed, with the exception of Mr. Hofer, face the challenge of
regularly upholding the father-child relationship despite one- or multi-week spa-
tial separations from their children. Even when the children are not physically
present, they remain present for the majority of fathers through infrastructure (e.g.
bicycles) and rooms reserved for them, through emotion-laden objects such as
pictures and other artefacts (e.g. toys, clothes), or through traces of child activity
in situ. These spatio-materially visible signs of absence are interpreted in var-
ied emotions by the fathers; the ‘emptiness’ burdens one, while, for another, the
absent children are at least symbolically present.
In these periods of absence in which they cannot casually simply participate in
the daily routine of the child, fathers use and combine the different communica-
tive potentials of the repertoire available to them in information and communica-
tion technology (ICT) to create the father-child relationship. Madianou and Miller
(2012) summarise this with the concept ‘polymedia’ and focus not only on the
diverse qualities of various media but on their relational use and how this creates
and stabilises specific social relationships.
The comparison with fathers who for professional reasons occasionally live
separated from their children (see Schier, 2016) or with migrant-related trans-
national living families (see Greschke et al., 2017) exhibits, however, that it is
dissimilarly more difficult for post-separation fathers to use telephone calls and
other media for direct contact with their children. In work-related multi-local
families, the parent on-site generally functions as the direct communicator of
information and emotional messages between the absent parent and the children.
He/she supports the mediated relationship between the children and the parent
 Fatherhood post-separation 175
living elsewhere – deliberately hands the receiver, for example, to the children;
alerts the children’s attention to the medially communicating parent; or helps with
technical difficulties or dialling the number. This is especially the case when the
children are still young and less competent in using media.
In the narratives of a majority of the fathers and their ex-partners in post-­
separation multi-local families, it became clear, however, that the communication
through media between children and spatially separated fathers is rarely sup-
ported by the mothers or the new partners on site who sometimes even listen in
on, obstruct, or control telephone conversations as gatekeepers. For the children
in several cases, this means having to precisely weigh what they could say on
the telephone. It becomes evident that fathers and children creatively search for
practices to deal with such problems: they agree upon, for example, ring codes
to show ‘All’s clear, you can call.’ Four of the interviewed fathers gifted their
children over ten years of age mobile phones or set up rates for them so they can
contact their fathers independently.
There are other barriers. In one of our cases in which the ex-partner principally
supported medial father-child contact, one of the sons strictly refused telephone
calls with his father because the calls made him sad. While older children are
frequently competent with modern information and communication technology,
long-distance communication for the interviewed fathers with young children
proves to be very difficult due to their still limited cognitive and communicative
competences. The attention of younger children is not normally held for long
during focused long-distance calls; it is difficult for them to abstractly convey
their experiences in the moment when the father’s call comes. Several fathers
described situations in which their – not only young – children evade the medial
situation with short replies or by hanging up quickly; they are distracted by com-
peting social situations where they are. With Greschke et al. (2017, p. 72), the
issue here is problems with attention security and presence management.
Despite these difficulties, the fathers we interviewed find various medially
communicative practices of distance parenting and promotion, often in the form
of telephone calls, sometimes also through text messages, email or other forms
of media. First and foremost, these long-distance contacts have informational and
organisational functions serving the arrangement and planning of the children’s
next visits to the paternal residence or the validation of the children’s mobility
between the parental residences. In the course of the telephone conversations,
sensitivities and feelings are often exchanged and children are comforted or
encouraged. This affirmation of being here and available for the children on the
telephone also stabilises the father-child relationships, in this respect emotion-
ally. Some of the fathers have even established ritual forms of contact with their
children: they regularly send each other ‘love messages’ on WhatsApp, profess
that they miss each other, cultivate ‘good night stories’ on the telephone or have a
postcard ritual like Mr. Hansa and his daughter Lara:

We talk on the telephone once a day. I write [a postcard] to her once a week
and text, I would say, five to ten messages a day (…) so there is also always a
text message before she goes to bed, always very affectionate, so I notice that
176 Michaela Schier
she also seeks the contact. (…) Over the years I have always [when we still
lived together, supplement author] told her a so called ‘True or false story’ at
night, it was a kind of ritual. (…) and I continued to do that [post-separation,
supplement author), so I write her a postcard every week with a true-or-false
question. (…) From very different disciplines. (…) I also try to familiarise
her with cultural things at the right time. (…) And the agreement is that she is
not allowed to look on the Internet, she must try to solve it as such, and then
she thinks, and then we discuss it on the telephone. (…) so that’s kind of a rit-
ual that awakens her interest but should also show her: ‘I’m thinking of you!
Mr. Hansa has two daughters; one primarily lives with him and one pri-
marily lives with the mother 560 km away. The latter lives with him every
other weekend.

The postcards that Lara has positioned centrally in a collection stand on her desk
in her room function as a symbolic-material sign of the absent presence of her
father. This way he remains, despite his physical absence and the great distance
between residences, emotionally present for his daughter in her everyday life.
Mr. Hansa often seizes topics in the postcard images that he encounters in his eve-
ryday life or that he would like to culturally communicate to his daughter. In this
way, he lets Lara not only participate in his daily life, despite distance, but also
meets his educational responsibilities. The postcards provide conversation topics
during the ‘Wednesday telephone call’ ritual in which Mr. Hansa also conversely
obtains impressions of what his daughter thinks, what moves her and what she
does daily. Furthermore, this example shows that fathers sometimes build on edu-
cational practices in their long-distance fathering practices that they had already
established when they had still permanently been living under the same roof with
their children. Post-separation, these practices are developed further and adapted
to multi-local living conditions. In doing so, they create continuity, stability, and
reliability in the father-child relationship despite the spatial distance.
An additional practice to observe is that fathers watch the same video or play
the same computer game together with their children although each is in his/her
current home, and they later discuss this on the telephone. In this way – as with
the postcard ritual – a reason and topic for a communicative exchange is also cre-
ated. Additionally, a common bond is fostered through engaging medially in the
same activity. Learning and finishing homework together with some fathers over
the telephone works similarly, binding despite the spatially separated residences.
The technical infrastructure (scan, fax) for the transfer of school material from
one place to another is made available by the fathers.
Furthermore, in order to avoid conflict-laden direct contact with the ex-partner,
the fathers interviewed prefer and use specifically text-based asynchronous tech-
nologies – such as electric calendars or emails – to plan personal visits with the
children or to learn important things concerning the children or to exchange infor-
mation. The following example convincingly demonstrates how fathers and their
ex-partners explore the different qualities of various media in daily life and adopt
them for their own parenting routines.
 Fatherhood post-separation 177
In the beginning, quite a lot was done on the telephone. Then my wife didn’t
want to do that anymore because she said it was too emotional for her and
whatnot. And then it was over emails that, however, lead to us writing page-
long emails to each other almost daily which disrupted every setting. (…)
Then it was her suggestion, there’s something in the Internet, (…) a Meeting-
calendar, (…) >sigh< but I never understood how it really functioned, (…)
and then at some point she created an Excel list and sent it to me and asked if
this would be okay. And I am able to handle it a lot better too.
Mr. Schneider lives 400 km from the mother’s residence; his two sons
spend every second to third weekend with him.

‘The children’s world would otherwise be lost to me…’ – Mobility-based

fathering practices
A problem expressed by nearly all fathers interviewed, especially with respect to
long residential distances, was the inability to participate in the child’s daily life
(e.g. no opportunities to attend school events, dance recitals, to pick up children
from school) and to share the same experiences or even the same environment.
Their opportunities to gain glimpses into the children’s daily lives and thereby col-
lect specific knowledge about them are not only restricted on account of the great
distances, in five cases, between the parental residences. In many cases – even with
shorter distances between residences – existing conflicts and a silence between the
ex-partners or a deliberate exclusion of the fathers from information as well as a
ban on access to child-relevant places (such as kindergartens, schools, friends) by
the mothers complicate the paternal access to personal knowledge of their children.

It is not so easy. I often no longer know her friends and because I now live
so far away, I don’t know what the places look like where they always spend
their time. Now the weekend after next is parents’ night, I always go. At least
I get an idea of the classroom where they sit daily and of their teacher.
Mr. Kress lives 130 km from the maternal residence of his two daughters.
They live with him every other weekend.

The fathers express that they no longer know the places and the streets where their
children hang out and move every day or the persons with whom their children
spend time (e.g. friends, teachers, educators). They express feelings of the loss of
the father role (e.g. with respect to the daily support), anxieties about estrange-
ment or, prior to that, becoming only a ‘visitor’ in the lives of their children ‘like
a good uncle’ and therefore an ‘outsider’ to their worlds.
All long-distance fathers interviewed have developed practices to confront
these difficulties. They have made an effort to learn about the everyday lives of
their children in the other location and tried to participate in special locally-based
events. One father, for instance, who lives over five hundred kilometres away,
informed himself about his daughter’s new school and her route to it and also
took photos of the surroundings; another father travelled hundreds of kilometres
178 Michaela Schier
to attend the parent-teacher conferences and thereby became acquainted with the
parents of his daughter’s classmates. Additionally, in rotation with the children’s
stays at their homes, some long-distance fathers spent some weekends in the area
of the maternal homes. These findings show that, in addition to media-based prac-
tices of close communication over distance, mobility practices that enable the
fathers to familiarise themselves with the children’s social and physical everyday
environment are very important for post-separation fathering, especially for main-
taining intimacy with their children.

Multi-local fathering: Being present while absent

Post-separation, fathers frequently see themselves confronted with the widespread
notion in our Western societies that men are uninvolved and ‘absent fathers’ when
they do not reside permanently with their children. Both in research and public
discourses, a concept of fathering appears to dominate that closely links active
fathering with (permanent) co-residence and physical co-presence (see Troilo,
2016). Conclusions are often made about the father-child relationship and the
(non-)existence of active fathering from the fact of fathers living together or not
living together with their children. In an implicit geo-deterministic argumenta-
tion, a causal effect on social processes is thereby attributed to residences as well
as a specific spatial organisation of father-child relationships (living under one
roof). The perceptions behind this can be summarised in a simple formula: spatial
proximity through co-residence of father and child = social closeness and exist-
ing ‘good’ fathering (‘present father’). The underlying container space perception
leads to the fact that relationships not organised within the territorial unit (resi-
dence) are devalued and problematised and active daily fathering routines beyond
household borders are ignored (‘absent father’). At the same time, the children’s
stays with their fathers are generally construed communicatively as ‘visits’ in
the academic and social discussion of post-separation families. Belongings and
emotional connections to place, the ‘natural’ sense of home, of children – also – to
the paternal residences are thus questioned. Negative stereotypes of post-separa-
tion fathers (keyword ‘Disneyland Dads’) additionally draw on the fact that these
fathers intensively use the time spent together with their children for collective
recreational activities (see Stewart, 1999).
If one empirically looks – as we have done in our study – more precisely at
what fathers, regardless of how they and their children live, do with, and for their
children, it becomes clear that these prejudices and assumptions must be urgently
rethought and reviewed. Our findings have demonstrated that fathers in multi-local
post-separation families are confronted with specific spatio-temporal problems,
among others, with ‘absence problems’ characteristic for multi-local everyday
lives (Duchêne-Lacroix, 2009, p. 89) which they attempt to face with various
strategies. Stereotyping fathers as ‘Disneyland Dads’ trivialises, for example, the
recreation-based practices of post-separation fathering and fails to consider that
these recreational interactions are often shaped by legislation, specific spatio-
temporal structures of the family arrangements and a range of other variables that
may act as constraints to fathers engaging with their children (see Jenkins, 2013).
 Fatherhood post-separation 179
Because, on account of the specific rhythms of the presence and absence of their
children, fathers are faced with constraints associated with limited time and time
pressure during face-to-face contact, recreational activities serve as intimate time-
spaces for developing and maintaining strong and healthy relationships with their
children (see Jenkins 2013). Media-based fathering practices play a significant
role in creating, among other things, a ‘connected presence’ (Licoppe, 2004) dur-
ing the periods of physical absences of the children as well as an identity as an
actively involved (long-)distant parent, in generating knowledge about each other
and in coordinating and organising the daily routine together. In this, the vast
palette of media fulfils organisational and coordinating, communicative, emo-
tional, conflict moderating, community-promoting, and symbolic functions (see
Schier and Schlinzig, 2018). While such remote parent-child relationships and
parenting practices, in particular in migration research, have increasingly been
researched and discussed in recent years (see Baldassar et al., 2016; Greschke
et al., 2017; Madianou and Miller, 2012), a lack of substantial research in this
area exists in post-separation studies (see Ganong et al., 2012; Yarosh, 2012).
Media-based practices can, however, generally only temporarily replace spatial
co-presence or only function well when they are based on repetitive face-to-face
contact (see also Döbler in this volume). Precisely physically-based familial prac-
tices (e.g. exchanging affection, giving comfort) are difficult to realise remotely.
Alongside media-based practices, mobility-based practices in multi-local post-
separation families which enable face-to-face contact and becoming familiar with
the children’s social and physical everyday environment are also significant for
the creation of father-child relationships. Generally, our findings support existing
research that fathers living part-time at a distance from their children do want to
be good fathers (see Jenkins, 2013) and try to develop fathering practices suitable
for the new living situations, which is not an easy thing to do.

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16 ‘How can I be at home again?’
Family (dis)continuities concerning
Polish remigration in the context of digital
communication technologies
Jagoda Motowidlo

Introduction
Partners returning home from work, calling ‘Honey, I’m home’, can expect to
encounter the home they left a couple of hours before. But not all families share
a single domestic household. More and more families organise their everyday
life in spatial separation across borders as so-called ‘transnational families’
(Bryceson and Vuorela, 2003). Migrants returning to their home country after
weeks, months or years, expect the same home they left. Yet, they experience
a shock, finding neither the homeland they left, nor the one they remember or
long for (Schütz, 1972). In his article ‘The Homecomer’, Alfred Schütz (1972)
expounds the problem of the recursive nature of we-relationships; that is, the pos-
sibility of restoring a relationship after an interruption or break, is easily taken
for granted, despite there being no guarantee. An arrangement of time and space,
mutually shared by all parties involved, is lacking, eliminating the experience of
a shared present as well as access to events and their development. Therefore, the
possibility to adapt one’s knowledge to changes diminishes. Even the memories
of the people and places are not based on experiences but rather on generalisa-
tions and typologies at the moment of saying goodbye (Schütz, 1972). Leading to
a discrepancy of the systems of relevance, a seamless transition to the previous
we-relationship is hindered because ‘the states of consciousness on both sides
are subject to the irreversibility of inner time, they have aged separately, so there
cannot be a return to the ‘old’ place or state.’ (Hanke, 2002, p. 74, translation by
author). Hence, as Schütz argues, a return home demands an exhausting process
of adjustment on both sides, for the returnees as well as for those who stayed
at home.
In remigration research, the return home is often described as the last stage of
the migration process, although short-term visits are increasingly gaining impor-
tance within the inner-European migration context. Developments in travel, com-
munication technologies, and the integration of Central and Eastern Europe into
the European Union since 2004 enable regular returns. Migrants return home for a
short period of time to visit their families, invest in business, or partake in festive
celebrations. Returning may also be a part of seasonal migration or circular move-
ment, as in the case of Polish workers at the centre of my research.
182 Jagoda Motowidlo
The chapter is based on my PhD project1 which deals with Polish families living
in circular migration, that is to say either the father or mother travels to Western
Europe for periods of two to three months for work and, after that, returns home
for one to two weeks at a time. Hence, families are confronted with the difficulties
of reoccurring and alternating phases of physical presence and absence and, con-
sequently, with the problems, as depicted by Schütz, of a reciprocal reunification
of the family members who migrate and the ones who remain at home. However,
the ideas and expectations of re-integration can vary as they may be accompanied
by a new distribution of power and responsibilities in family life. Further changes
and discontinuities within the family arise, for instance due to the growing up of
children, which changes daily routines as well as space and movement practices
in a household. Digital communication technologies create polymedia environ-
ments (Miller and Madinaou, 2012). This is central for the emergence of care
practices at a distance: so-called ‘remote parenting’ (Brown and Grinter, 2012).
Communication technologies turn out to be a precondition for the continuation of
intimate relationships in geographically separate families, because they produce
feelings of emotional closeness and intimacy as well as make possible concrete
family care and bringing up children in spite of geographical distance (Miller and
Mandianou, 2012; Lutz and Pallenga-Möllenbeck, 2011). As a result, a mutual
perception of a shared space-time structure is constructed, thus allowing new
stocks of knowledge to be activated in times of physical absence. This can make
a return to familial routines more bearable.
In the present contribution, answers to the following questions will be sought:
how is it possible for the migrating parent to pick up daily family routines after a
physical absence of several months? On the other hand, how do those who stay at
home succeed in re-integrating the migrating parent in order to foster joint coop-
eration? Which mediated and physically present (face-to-face) ‘cultural practices
of reactivation [kulturelle Auffrischungspraktiken]’ (Duchene-Lacroix, 2009, p.
93, translation by author) do migrants pursue to re-enact changes in family occur-
rences to avoid feeling like strangers in their own family spaces? To what extent
could mediated forms of communication assist in this process and where are their
limits in the integration of migrating family members?
The following chapter aims to demonstrate how – against the backdrop of
omnipresent new communication technologies – family systems of relevance
achieve congruence during periods of remigration. Thus, the following sections
will outline approaches to remigration research and advocate a transnational per-
spective on remigration as a set of transnational processes in which temporary
returns and visits are central, demonstrating circular mobility rather than stages in
a linear migration process. As a result, return will be conceptualised not solely as
a return to the home country but also as a return to home and one’s nuclear family.
An introduction of the case study of Polish circular migration will be followed by
a comparative ethnographic description and analysis of the two families involved,
emphasising the intersection of mediated and physical family spaces during remi-
gration. Finally, the conclusion will discuss homecoming in the context of medi-
ated family spaces.
 ‘How can I be at home again?’ 183
Approaches to remigration
In their research interest, studies on migration often focus on the integration pro-
cesses of migrants concerning the receiving society. Yet, ever since migration
came into existence, there have also been observable acts of returning,2 which
have to be described as an integral part in the experience of migration.3 Within the
ongoing scientific debate, reaching back to the 1960s, the return to the country of
origin is signified as homecoming. Therefore, it is also set as the telos of migra-
tion (Olivier-Mensah, 2017). Nonetheless, it would be misleading to comprehend
homecoming as a smooth process characterised by finality (White, 2014). Hence,
in transnational studies, remigration is not considered the final aim of migration
but as part of the migration circle and a result of socio-economic interrelations
(Cassarino, 2004). For this reason, circular migration is increasingly becoming
the focus of research (Olivier-Mensah, 2017).
New empirical studies increasingly assume a transnational perspective
(Olivier-Mensah, 2017; Olivier-Mensah and Scholl-Schneider, 2016; Pustułka
and Ślusarczyk, 2016; White, 2014; Krumme, 2004). Krumme (2004) examines
the circular migration of Turkish pensioners that are former guest workers in
Germany. Their transnationality leads to an experience of ‘constant homecom-
ing’ (Krumme, 2004, p. 150) similar to the circular migration caused by employ-
ment in the Polish context, in which mostly one working and one family location
is chosen. While emigration is associated with the new, unknown, and maybe
even dangerous, remigration is often linked to the native and well-known, and
equated with family reunification. Remigrants are often imbued with a false sense
of confidence, assuming complete knowledge of their place of origin (Szymańska
et al., 2010), which, in reality, changed in their absence. Especially highly subsi-
dised countries, such as Poland, exhibit an immense diversification of urban space
(White, 2014). In fact, remigrants – in spite of their assumed ethnic ­similarity –
often experience the same problems as other (non-ethnic) immigrants in their host
society (Tsuda, 2009), becoming strangers in their own culture with a need to
be reintegrated.
Depending on the form of remigration,4 the initial expectations concerning
social integration may not be met; the remigrants are excluded as cultural foreign-
ers due to their non-successful cultural transmission, resulting in the feeling of
being a stranger back home (Schnurr and Stolz, 2010; for Poland: Szymńaska et
al., 2010). White (2014) describes the return of the remigrant in stages, with initial
optimism succeeded by a period of depression and frustration (‘reverse culture
shock’), often resolving into acceptance even if ‘there can be no return to the sta-
tus quo ante’ (King, 2000, p. 20, as cited in White, 2014, p. 34).
The question ‘Do people usually return to, from, or with their families?’
(Olivier-Mensah and Scholl-Schneider, 2016) is rarely asked and, when it is, then
only in terms of a description of how migrants return from or with their families.
The arrival in one’s own family cannot be compared to a smooth transition as if
no time or space had passed by; it rather poses challenges for both sides – the
migrant and the person who has stayed at home. Especially in the moment of
184 Jagoda Motowidlo
reunion, the migrants recognise to what extent they have picked up new social
and cultural norms and values with regard to gender roles, work ethics, urban
life, and independence. Hence, they get the impression that their home is ‘nar-
row and old-fashioned’ (Oxfeld and Long 2004, p. 10). Schnurr and Stolz (2010)
describe a twofold shock for Ecuadorean mothers who migrate to Spain. Firstly,
these migrants experience an economic shock, with less money at their disposal
than in the host country. Then they also suffer from an emotional shock due to
disappointments during the family reunification. In this case, the authors go so
far as to view the return to the family as even more problematic and emotionally
destabilising than leaving their home and migrating to another country. For this
reason, they end up concluding: ‘Re-migration is like a new migration’ (Schnurr
and Stolz, 2010, p. 70).

Family life in short-term returns in the context of Polish

circular migration
For decades, Polish migration has been shaped by processes of emigration, either
because of two world wars or the following period of immigrant workers in
Germany. Until the transformation process starting after 1990 at the end of the
socialist regime, and concluding with accession to the EU in 2004, remigration
was a rather marginal phenomenon in Poland. The newly adapted political cir-
cumstances, such as the creation of a shared job market, led to more freedom of
movement within the European Union. According to the OECD ca. 555,000 peo-
ple migrated to Great Britain in the first two years of the EU’s eastern expansion.
Here, Poles represented the biggest group of temporary labour migration (Bendel
et al., 2008). These circumstances have made short-term visits and circular and
return migration attractive to many Polish workers. It was thus no longer possible
to regard remigration as a peripheral phenomenon (Smoliner et al., 2013).
In the Polish context, circular migrants regularly return to their families for
short-term visits, so as to combine their labour migration and family responsibili-
ties. In my case study, migrants work abroad for two to three months at a time,
with each work period followed by a return home to their families in Poland for
one or two weeks. From their work place, they call or Skype with their families
on a daily basis. During their stays at home, the migrants try to talk to and spend
time with all of their family members, which does not always work as planned
due to several obligations. The routines of the stay-at-home families are subject
to constant changes, such as continual changes of playing, clothing, and eating
habits in the everyday life of children and adolescents. As soon as a parent starts
the circular migration, the other family members are challenged to reassign tasks
in the joint household. The return of the migrant worker temporarily sets back
newly established routines.
Next, practices of homecoming will be reconstructed based on the description
of the Urbanski and Kowalski5 families, who have partaken in the study. Both
families will serve as examples to illustrate the significance of the mediated fam-
ily space for remigration.
 ‘How can I be at home again?’ 185
Case 1: The Urbanski family
While the father of the Urbanski family commutes to Austria, his wife and chil-
dren (nine months and two years old) live the whole time in the joint household
in a village in Poland. Grandparents and the great-grandmother live nearby and
assist the mother in housekeeping activities daily, simultaneously functioning as a
support network for the migrating father. The use of communication technologies
in the family is aligned with the father’s working cycle. In his lunch breaks, he
calls his wife and they talk for about five minutes. Sometimes they call each other
again in the afternoon or evening, depending on the father’s working hours. When
the father Skypes with his children on the weekends, he also casually talks to the
children’s grandmother or mother.
Time and again, longer conversations occur in which the grandmother gives
accounts of home renovation activities, including detailed descriptions of the work
processes involved as well as her assessment of them. In the context of circular
Polish migration, this type of supporter who eases the workload of the migrants
as well as of their stay-at-home families is a typical phenomenon. While grand-
parents, for example, mind their grandchildren and thereby support the mothers
back home, they simultaneously Skype with the migrating fathers. Throughout
these Skype conversations, they casually inform the fathers about the latest occur-
rences at home or in the neighbourhood. Updating their knowledge requires an
extensive amount of exchange concerning all the small everyday experiences, and
represents a central dimension in ensuring that the migrants are able to update or
maintain their family participation. Interestingly, their work on knowledge is not
restricted to a mediated space, but also takes place during the home visits of the
migrating parents. The exchange with these bridge-building members6 between
mediated and physical family spaces enables continual opportunities – and, not
only isolated ones during visits or Skype conversations – to update the family’s
local states of knowledge. Therefore, the family is able to coordinate itself and
facilitate the adaption process during home visits – despite their complexity and
diverging dimensions of experience.
Correspondingly, the father reports on material orders or telephone calls he
has made for the house renovation during the Skype conversations. Similarly,
detailed conversations occur between the mother and father over topics such as
joint vacations, grocery shopping, and other souvenirs the father has bought, rang-
ing from children’s toys and clothes to cleaning supplies. Throughout the Skype
session, the father usually watches his children play. While he is leading smaller
conversations with his two-year-old, he is trying to teach his younger child to
talk or is watching his first attempts at walking. Hence, he is able to follow new
incidences or stages of his children’s development, either in a mediated form or
through the accounts of the bridge-building members, in this case the mother and
grandmother. Back home, he tends to take care of both home renovations and
home repairs as well as household tasks. Additionally, he accompanies the family
on shopping trips or tries to support them with caregiving tasks, in which he does
not always succeed, as per the following observation protocol7 (Figure 16.1).
186 Jagoda Motowidlo

Figure 16.1 Observation protocol, Urbanski family, July 20, 2015.

What is striking about this situation is that, despite the father taking over care
work, it does not seem to be a relief for but rather a burden for the mother. While
paying attention to her daughter and niece, she is simultaneously attending to her
son over the phone – thus moving in two care scopes of action at the same time.
Why does the mother find herself in situations of a double burden, which do not
support her in her care work?
To use Finch’s (2007) approach, family practices are ‘displayed’ to a relevant
audience and to each other by conveying the message: ‘this is my family and it
works’ (Finch, 2007, p. 70). Therefore, the father’s adoption of caring practices
hardly serves the purpose of productively contributing to the household but rather
of inwardly presenting himself to his wife and children as a good father. Outwards
to other family members, e.g. the grandmother, the father’s actions simultaneously
demonstrate that ‘[w]e are a functioning family despite migration’, whereby the
challenge of representing a family unit is mastered. In addition, the mother is offer-
ing the father access to family care, which enables him to perform his role as a par-
ent, while integrating him into everyday family routines and thereby allowing him to
enter into and participate in family life. The father’s calls even underline the moth-
er’s competence, who accomplishes all these responsibilities. Moreover, the father’s
lack of knowledge of caring practices for his son become apparent, as is the case in
other parts of the material, e.g. when he cannot tell which shoes are his daughter’s
playing shoes, which is certainly not connected to a lack of cognitive abilities.
Following Schütz’s problem of remigration, every space comprises specific
responsibilities and obligations that are subject to changes which cannot be traced
in geographic distance. In the case of the Urbanski family, the father’s lack of
knowledge of family practices can be interpreted as signs of his physical absence
in the family, leading to adjustment problems during remigration. From this point
of view, however, potential intersections with mediated family spaces are not
considered here.
Comparing the father’s mediated and physical family spaces, correspondences
as well as discrepancies concerning the father’s responsibilities can be identi-
fied. In both family spaces, the father attends to the renovation of the house,
arranges appointments, and looks after the children. Regarding his mediated car-
ing practices, his responsibilities lie with shared play time and exchanging expe-
riences of their everyday life rather than the children’s nutrition and clothing.
 ‘How can I be at home again?’ 187
Considering the example of clothing, it becomes apparent that the father does not
know what kind of shoes his daughter wears to which occasion, while nonetheless
being aware of information on clothing sizes, as he from time to time brings cloth-
ing items with him. Still, this is not information that could not be communicated
to the father medially. A contrasting example would be the ‘intensive mothering’
(Miller and Mandianou, 2012, p. 71) practices of a mother who, during our con-
versations at the work place in Germany, was not only aware of her son’s location
in Poland at that particular moment but also knew about the store he was visiting
and that he could not decide which shirt to buy.

Case 2: The Kowalski family

Similarly, intensive mothering can be witnessed in the case of the Kowalski fam-
ily, who live in in a small village. The household consists of the migrating mother
(30 years old), her daughter (six years old) as well as the maternal grandparents. The
mother has been working for four years as a Polish care worker in private house-
holds in Germany. In this constellation of rotation-based labour migration, there are
alternating phases of the mother continuously working with her clients in German
households for about two months on the one hand and family time of three to six
weeks in the joint household on the other. The parents had already split up before
their child was born. During the mother’s working time, the daughter remains in
the custody of her grandparents, whereas in times of the mother’s physical presence
both daughter and mother share a house with the grandparents. When the mother
is at home, she takes over the entire caring responsibilities, occasionally discussing
grocery shopping and meals as well as bigger events, such as the daughter’s birth-
day, with the grandmother. Mother and daughter Skype with each other on a daily
basis, usually in the evening before bedtime. Apart from the regular bedtime story,
which the mother tells, the conversation mostly centres on the daughter’s recollec-
tions of her daily routines. However, the daughter’s recounting is mostly prompted
by the mother’s explicit questions as the following transcript of a typical Skype
conversation between mother and daughter shows (see Figure 16.2).

Figure 16.2 Transcript of a Skype conversation, Kowalski family, October 25, 2013, time:
05:36–05:55.
188 Jagoda Motowidlo
During Skype conversations, one of the thematic focuses is on the daughter’s
health, since the mother is worried that she might, in times of her absence, eat and
move or exercise poorly, leading to weight problems. Consequently, exercise,
nutrition, and the amount of time spent playing computer games are central topics
of the mother and daughter’s communication. What is striking is the high level of
detail, as the daughter is not only supposed to tell what she has had for breakfast
and whether she has eaten sandwiches, but also what kind of sandwiches. This
precision also becomes apparent in other topics, such as what and with whom she
was playing in kindergarten, what clothes she was wearing in kindergarten, and
whether she changed when she returned home. In times of the mother’s physical
presence, both daughter and mother share a house with the grandparents – mother
and daughter living on the first floor and the grandparents living on the ground
floor, so that there are two separate households. At home, the mother attends to
all educational, household, and caring responsibilities and is thus not only spa-
tially separated from her mother’s household. By means of these strong bounda-
ries and the adoption of tasks, the mother restores her position as a single mother
and secures her autonomous participation in her daughter’s everyday life, making
clear that this autonomy is only possible when the mother fulfils her responsi-
bilities, even when geographically distant. Therefore, the amount of information
the mother inquires after via Skype is necessary to secure her role as mother,
her autonomous participation in everyday family life, and a successful transition
when returning home.
Comparing both case examples, incongruences in restoring the we-relation
during return home are more apparent within the Urbanski than the Kowalski
family. The Urbanski family shows more interferences of the parents’ areas of
responsibilities. For successful participation in family life, tasks which are beyond
the father’s usual area of responsibility are assigned to him when he returns home.
Consequently, he does not pursue them in mediated family situations, leading to
a discrepancy in stocks of knowledge, mirrored in the reintegration of the father
whenever he visits. The Kowalski family exhibits a clear distinction between the
responsibilities of the mother and the grandparents, who remain at home, main-
taining a congruence of responsibilities in mediated and physical family spaces
and securing a successful reintegration of the mother into everyday family life.
Due to the mediated family space, adjustment problems during remigration are
not necessarily caused by incongruent systems of relevance (Schütz, 1972). The
problem of homecoming apparently seems to shift as the congruence of mediated
and physically present family responsibilities and shared knowledge comes to
the fore.

Conclusion
Remigrating home does not have to become permanent. Since the integration of
the Eastern European countries into the European Union, inner-European migra-
tion movements have become increasingly circular. As a consequence, new types
of mobility evolve, based on more frequent returns, such as ‘visiting friends and
 ‘How can I be at home again?’ 189
family’, temporary returns or, as in the example above, commute migration. The
processes of homecoming no longer reflect a revival of the past. Rather, they
are characterised by fluid mobile patterns that result from the regular contact
migrants maintain with their families in their countries of origin, using digital
communication technologies and back and forth movements which illustrate
transnational mobility.
The present contribution does not solely consider family spaces as physi-
cal spaces; instead it describes space as socially constructed (Löw, 2001).
Transnational family research has been increasingly pointing out the significance
of not only the destination and homeland but also of mediated spaces. Here is
where familial closeness as well as care arrangements are constituted. New forms
of digital communication technologies as part of migration create new familial
spaces, in which parts of familial responsibilities and obligations can occur in
mediatised fashion (Greschke, 2014; Miller and Madinaou, 2012). Family life in
transmigration movement has to be considered in a field of tension of locality,
mobility, and virtuality. Therefore, neither type of space – mediated or physical –
can be understood in isolation; they must instead be seen in relation to each other.
Thus, Schütz’s problem of homecoming is shifted: as the chapter has shown,
using the example of familial responsibilities and familial supporting networks,
it is not the resumption of former family practices that is crucial for the family
reunion but their continuation in mediated and physical family spaces. Due to the
relation between mediated and physical family spaces, the aim of remigration is
continuity between both. Bearing digital communication technologies in mind,
remigration into family spaces cannot be compared to a ‘new migration’ (Schnurr
and Stolz, 2010, p. 70) but has to be considered as a constitutive part of the trans-
national family life.
Expectations and ideas of power and task distribution within the family may
change due to migration as well, causing interruptions of newly formed routines
when a parent returns home. Similar phenomena certainly become apparent in
other family contexts as well, whether it be sudden unemployment or retirement,
which cause a change in established patterns of absence and presence and corre-
sponding family responsibilities. For this reason, remigration is not only a useful
analytical category (see also Oxfeld and Long, 2004) when researching social
practices of mobile people across national borders, but also when studying mon-
olocal families in situations of crisis or fundamental change such as unemploy-
ment, pension, or retirement, not to mention the daily moments when partners
call: ‘Honey, I’m home.’

Notes
1 My PhD project is an associated study as part of the DFG project ‘The Mediatisation
of parent-child-relationships in the context of transnational migration’ (2015–2017).
The corpus consists of ethnographically compiled data (protocols of observations, field
notes, interview recordings, video, and sound recordings) of the shared life and com-
munication of 11 Polish families, in which one parent has to migrate to another country
for work-related reasons.
190 Jagoda Motowidlo
2 In Germany the number of migrants moving away has been increasing. In 2010
530,000 migrants moved; in contrast, 860,000 moving migrants were recorded in 2015
(Destatis, 2017, p. 51).
3 Even if remigration, like migration, is yesterday’s news, research only started to con-
sider remigration in the sixties (Smoliner et al., 2013).
4 For an overview of the literature, see Lang et al. (2014, p. 8ff.). There is no typology of
return of seasonal, temporary, or circular labour migration; these are rarely mentioned
in the literature (except Poland: White 2014, p. 200).
5 All names have been anonymised.
6 Helfferich (2012, p. 69) uses the metaphor of a ‘bridge building family [Brückenfamilie]’
(translation by author) in order to describe generational relations in families with
migration background as connectors between the culture of origin and the culture of
the receiving society.
7 The study is based on a multi-sited ethnographic approach. Polish circular migrants
and their families were interviewed and observed in their daily lives. Considering their
media practices, computer software allowed the recording of the participants’ Skype
conversations with their families, so not only the physically present (face-to-face) but
especially the mediated family practices were gathered.

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17 The playground and the pub
About the merging of age-specific
urban domains into family spaces
Lia Karsten

City children as out of place

In this chapter I will argue that children and cities have an inconvenient
­relationship. Children’s everyday life in cities is often overlooked and full of
obstacles (Chawla, 2002). Cities and children are referred to as two contrasting
and mutually exclusive concepts (Table 17.1). Cities can be described as big
urban areas, locations of work and public life. The urban environment is char-
acterised by apartment buildings that create a certain density and stony appear-
ance. Children are defined in adversative terms. They are ‘only’ small creatures,
who are not engaged in work, but play. They are supposed to thrive in the pri-
vate domain of the single family home and the green outdoors. The dichotomy
between definitions of the city and the child basically refers to ideas of the urban
jungle as opposed to the rural idyll (Valentine, 1997).
Different connotations as put together in Table 17.1 ultimately define city
children as out of place. Nevertheless, many children live in cities and precisely
because of their contested position in cities, a strong tradition has developed
to build children-only spaces. Children should need specific attention in cities;
they are not being served in mainstream urban planning. There is a need to do
something extra to accommodate city children’s lives. This idea is most clearly
manifested in the creation of the playground. Playgrounds have been built as age-
specific children’s spaces where they can play without being bothered by motor-
ised traffic and complaining neighbours. Adults are supposed to handle more
easily the many challenges of urban life. They can profit from the city as place
to work, and cities also have a rich history as places for adults to recreate and to
relax after work. The pub as the traditional leisure place for the working class and
the coffeehouses and restaurants for the well-to-do citizens are good examples
of amenities serving (male) adults (Rogers, 1988). In general, those adult urban
consumption spaces with their sometimes high use of alcohol were closed for
minor-aged citizens like children.
Over the last few decades, the age specific character of the playground and the
pub has started to change. As I will argue, the playground has changed character
because of ongoing parental safety concerns that have had strong impact on chil-
dren’s shrinking freedom of movement (Witten et al., 2013; Fyhri, et al., 2011;
 The playground and the pub 193
Table 17.1 Connotations city/child.

City Child
Big Small
Work Play
Public domain Private domain
Apartment building Single family home
Stony and dense Green and spacious
Urban jungle Rural idyll

Freeman and Tranter, 2012; Bouw and Karsten, 2004; Gaster, 1991). Parents
increasingly accompany and supervise their children in urban public space. As a
consequence, playgrounds are populated not only by children but also more and
more by adults. The children’s playground has transformed into an adult inclusive
(intergenerational) place. A reverse development is taking place at pubs, cafes
and restaurants. These urban consumption spaces used to be for adults only but
some of them are now changing into a family place that welcome children. Today,
parents with babies, toddlers, and young children populate certain pubs, bars, and
restaurants in European capital cities (Lilius, 2017). In this chapter, I will describe
the merging of traditionally age-specific urban spaces in more detail and give
some explanations related to current urban and social processes.
Empirical examples come from three studies recently carried out in Amsterdam,
the Netherlands. The first is on the transformation of coffee shops, restaurants,
and lunchrooms from adults-only spaces to family welcoming places (Karsten
et al., 2015). The second is a neighbourhood case study on family gentrification
with a focus on the changing commercial infrastructure towards a growing num-
ber of family welcoming shops and services (Karsten, 2014). The third is a recent
study among Amsterdam parents and children and their everyday time-space
behaviour. This study focuses on the transformation of outdoor play from a chil-
dren’s activity to a family outing (Karsten and Felder, 2015). The methodological
details of these studies can be found in the three papers cited previously in this
paragraph. All three studies make clear that the highlighted changing character of
urban childhood is strongly class-informed (Bourdieu, 1984). It is particularly the
(upper) middle classes who are most active in attending and constructing mixed-
age urban domains.
After this introduction, I will first go into the history and changes of the
public playground and its development to a mixed child-adult space. Then, the
focus is on the urban consumption spaces of pubs and restaurants and how these
have changed into mixed-age family welcoming spaces. Both empirical exam-
ples are derived from historical studies done in the Dutch context. If available,
literature from a broader European context has been added, but their number
is limited. This chapter ends with a reflection on the transformation processes
described: what does this merging of age in urban space mean for children,
adults, and families?
194 Lia Karsten
The playground
It is hard to imagine, but the Dutch public playground has only a short his-
tory. Before World War Two, there were only some incidental public play
spaces, mainly in parks. Outdoor play facilities for children used to be private
initiatives. In the Netherlands at the end of the nineteenth century, civil soci-
ety organisations started to build fenced off play gardens for children (Nuso,
1992). These play gardens were enclosed supervised spaces directed to work-
ing class children, mainly. Play gardens were not only meant playl children
were also educated and instructed to behave properly (for the US see: Gagen,
2000; Schenker, 1996). Play gardens were founded by various NGOs, often
with a religious denomination. Families had to become a member of the play
association in order to get permission for their children to enter the play garden
(Karsten, 2002).

The rise of the public playground

In the Netherlands, the public playground, as we know it today, came into being
after World War Two (Verstrate and Karsten, 2011). The first decade after the
war, the number of city children had raised tremendously. The high birth rate was
referred to as a baby boom that not only happened in the Netherlands but in many
more European countries. In Amsterdam in 1950 about one quarter of the total
residential population was under 12, a percentage that was never reached again.
The high number of kids that populated the streets raised the question of what all
those kids should do after school, and where they could go. The lack of possibili-
ties to play outdoors was considered to be problematic. Apartments in Amsterdam
were often cramped for the big families of that time. There was a huge shortage of
decent family housing. The city was facing a big challenge to build new appropri-
ate family housing for all the newborn kids and their families. Architects, engi-
neers, and urban planners worked together to think about the city in new ways and
to (re)create a city that was future-proof. The city should provide enough space
for its different functions (working, living, recreation, and traffic) and for differ-
ent population groups. Children were distinguished as an important group and
within urban planning their play needs were taken very seriously. Aldo van Eijck,
an architect working at the municipality of Amsterdam, and Jacoba Mulder, head
of the Amsterdam Department of Public Works, together were strongly engaged
in the new project of providing public play spaces for children (Kessel and Ottes,
1995). The public character of the playground was very much supported by the
local socialist government of that time; they wanted to develop an alternative
for the private (often religious denominated) play gardens. Between 1947 and
1978, Amsterdam built over 700 playgrounds (Lefaivre and De Roode, 2002).
The so called Van Eyck playgrounds consisted of relatively small spaces with
limited play equipment: most often a concrete sandbox, some concrete stepping
stones, some aluminum frames and one or two benches for parents to sit. Most of
 The playground and the pub 195
the time, however, children played independently without much interference of
parents. The newly-built playgrounds were open spaces, not fenced off and well
visible from the street. In a very short time, the Amsterdam public playground
became very popular (Lefaivre and De Roode, 2002).
The first decades after WW2 can be considered as the high tide of public inter-
vention when it comes to children’s outdoor play. With the building of the pub-
lic playground, the positive discourse of playing outdoors as healthy and good
for children was materialised. Children were seen as resilient; they were play-
ing outdoors frequently and had considerable freedom of movement. Oral history
makes clear that in the 1950s and 1960s this quote was applicable for children:
‘Playing was playing outdoors’ (Karsten, 2005). Children used to play outdoors
a lot, not only on the playgrounds but also on the street where they could wander
around over big (in today’s eyes) distances. The small apartments were not inten-
sively used for children’s play. The family home was a mother’s imperium, with
mothers mainly responsible for cooking, cleaning, and other household chores.
Children were a hindrance indoors and so they were send outside to play: ‘Our
house was very small. We didn’t have any windows at the back, only on the street
side. I cannot remember playing inside much of the time. When we came home
from school, we had some tea and something to eat, and then we were supposed
to go outside and stay there till at least six o’clock.’(Karsten, 2005). Class dif-
ferences in outdoor play among children were only minor. Children from lower
and middle classes all reported the same high levels of outdoor play. At that time,
there existed only one type of childhood: outdoor childhood.

The fall of public attention

From the 1970s onwards, public attention for city children’s outdoor play started
to fade away. After a high tide of public interference came the low tide, for sev-
eral reasons. First, families became smaller. In 1968 the anti-conception pill was
released in the Netherlands and the birth rate quickly began to decline. Second,
from the 1970s, onwards a massive suburbanisation process started and many
– particular middle class families – were leaving the city. Notwithstanding the
arrival of new migrant families (mainly with Moroccan, Turkish, and Surinamese
backgrounds), the number of children living in the city decreased dramatically.
The new focus in urban planning was on the suburb and the suburban spaces for
children. Third, at the end of the 1960s income levels were rising and families
became able to buy new consumption goods like televisions and cars. The arrival
of the car and of the television would have substantial influence on children’s
everyday life Table 17.2.
The arrival of the car and the television contributed to both a less attrac-
tive outdoors and a more attractive indoors for children. Outdoors in the streets
children had to compete with parked cars and also with dangerous motorised
traffic. But indoors they got access to a completely new way of spending time:
196 Lia Karsten
Table 17.2 Number of cars and children in Amsterdam 1950–1975

1950 1975
Number of kids 186,245 113,139
Number of cars 16,143 192,436

Source: Bouw and Karsten (2004).

watching television became very popular among children. In addition, smaller

families created more space for children indoors. One sleeping room for each
child became more common. The indoor private home space was developing
into a place where children could spend their time in more pleasant ways than
had ever been the case.

Outdoor play as family outing

From the 1970s onwards, the suburban focus in urban planning became stronger.
Cities suffered a lack of attention and developed into poor islands in rich (sub-
urban) regions. Many families considered the urban environment as the urban
jungle: not the right place for children to grow up. Demographic and economic
changes in city children’s everyday life became reflected in a changing discourse
on childhood: from resilient to vulnerable. With only two or three children to
take care of, parents started to guide and supervise their children in and through
urban public space. Parents wanted to protect their children. Children started
to become dependent on their parents for outdoor play. But as parents do not
always have time and energy to go outside, the figures for outdoor play started
to decrease. Playing outdoors became not only less frequent, but also more often
supervised. This development can be recognised globally in many urbanising
regions (Alparone and Pacilli, 2012; Freeman and Tranter, 2012; Chawla, 2002;
Valentine and McKendrick, 1997).
Outdoor play transformed from a children’s activity into a family outing.
Playgrounds started to welcome higher numbers of supervising parents while
the playground was changing from a children’s space into a space for differ-
ent age groups, most notably adults in their role of parents. Over the years the
number of supervising parents at playgrounds, in parks and on the street has
only grown (Figure 17.1). In some Asian contexts, there are often far more
adults than children at playgrounds, including grandparents (Karsten, 2015)
Figure 17.1.
At the playground, parents are not only supervising their kids but also pur-
suing their own activities. They use their time at the playground for emailing
and phoning, and also for networking with other parents. Playgrounds have
become important neighbourhood meeting places not only for arranging play-
ing dates with children but also to discuss work with neighbouring colleagues,
to talk to neighbouring friends, and in general to connect with neighbouring
residents.
 The playground and the pub 197

Figure 17.1 Intergenerational spaces (own picture).

The pub and beyond

While the age-merging process of children’s playgrounds towards mixed chil-
dren/adults meeting places took place in a period of well over half a century, the
transformation of adult urban consumption spaces to family welcoming urban
spaces has occurred in less than 20 years, and particularly from the 2000 onwards.
In the Netherlands, pubs have never been considered to be appropriate places for
children. In some working class neighbourhoods children were sometimes toler-
ated and/or were made little workers/waiters, but it was obviously not something
generally supported. Adult behaviour in pubs was thought to be sometimes dis-
graceful and possibly harmful to children. In Southern European countries this
was certainly different; dining out as a family has always been more common in
Mediterranean cities.

Young urban professional parents (Yupps)

The change of adult consumption spaces into family welcoming spaces has a
strong relationship with gentrifying cities. Cities are transforming from land-
scapes of production (work) to landscapes of consumption. Zukin (1995; 2011)
describes the changing commercial infrastructure of cities as related to gentri-
fication processes. In many capital cities, inner city neighbourhoods became
198 Lia Karsten
wealthier areas with a commercial infrastructure that better accommodated the
taste of the new middle classes, including middle class families. The urban jun-
gle became civilised and cities became more attractive places to live. Gleaser
(2011) even wrote about the triumph of the city. Again the changing urban demo-
graphics were important. Cities were growing again in terms of the number of
residents. Gentrification processes not only affected the young and the childless,
who wanted to live urban (Yuppies) but also families who decided to stay after
the birth of children. Families that deliberately choose the city as a place to work
and to live were indicated as Yupps: Young urban professional parents (Karsten,
2014). After all the years of strong family suburbanisation, the number of (mid-
dle class) families and children in cities started to grow again. The new trend
of families reclaiming the city as a place to raise children can be considered a
­re-conciliation of former divided world (as described in Table 17.1). Mothers
and fathers in the company of their children again populated the urban landscape.

Babyccino
Yupps not only decided to stay in the city, but were also convinced that their
before-children way of life should continue. With the arrival of the Yupps a new
demand emerged that the market could not ignore. Eating out as a family helped
busy parents to save time on cooking and washing, or was simply a way to secure
quality family time. Urban consumption spaces tried to attract families by offer-
ing children welcoming spaces to drink, eat, and play (!). It was clear that the new
group of urban consumers had its own family specific requests (Karsten et al.,
2015). Menus were changed to incorporate children’s taste. Coffee shops opened
their doors to serve not only cappuccino but also babyccino (coffee with lots of
milk). Simple but healthy food, often ecological, became more important. And
many urban consumption spaces not only changed the menu, but also the furniture
with easy sofas for parents and children to relax. Also, children’s need to play was
not forgotten. Some establishments provided a play corner with a variety of toys
while others opened up an inner court or a basement as a play space for children.
In so doing, former adult spaces became mixed-age spaces. This new trend has
changed whole neighbourhoods, albeit only specific neighbourhoods (Karsten,
2014). It is the family gentrifying neighbourhoods with their growing numbers
of middle class families who see their specific taste rewarded. And if that is not
exactly the case, then families organise it themselves. Middle class families are
well represented among the self-organising citizens who open their own place for
eating out or drinking in case it is not yet there.

Segregated city
Research shows that the new family populations in pubs, cafes, and restaurants
belong to middle and upper middle classes, predominantly native Dutch, expat
families and tourist families. The whole transformation of adult consumption
spaces towards family welcoming spaces turns out to be much more class specific
 The playground and the pub 199
(and exclusive) than the transformation of children’s playground into age-mixed
spaces. While lower and lower middle class families continue to attend the public
playground (as a family), these urban families do not appear very often in the new
drinking and eating establishments. The family welcoming urban consumption
spaces are frequented most by the (upper) middle class families (Karsten and
Felder, 2015). The conclusion is evidently clear, that the rise of the new family
welcoming consumption spaces, however nice, exiting, and family friendly, also
contributes to a more segregated city.

Mixed-age spaces reflected

This chapter is mainly based on Dutch studies: additional European studies will
be needed to justify generalisations, while specific contexts will add further
nuances and reveal not yet recognised trends. Nevertheless, Amsterdam and the
Netherlands are not isolated cases. Families’ return to the city is visible in many
capitals in Europe, from Helsinki to Stockholm and from London to Paris and
Berlin. Family gentrification is a global phenomenon (Lilius, 2017; Authier and
Lehman-Frisch, 2013; Jarras and Heinrichs, 2013; Rerat, 2012; Boterman et al.,
2010; Hjortal and Bjornskau, 2005; Butler, 2003). While in Germany over the last
decades the number of new born children is decreasing, cities like Berlin, Leipzig,
and Hamburg show above average birth rates. On the geographical scale level
of a specific neighbourhood, changes are even more outspoken. A walk through
Prenzlauerberg in Berlin makes it evidently clear that parents/children’s spaces
are part of the gentrifying city and the merging of adult and children’s spaces
is part of the gentrification process. Yupps and their children are very visible in
today’s cities; with their iconic car bikes they have become new urban figures like
the flaneur and the hipster before them (Lilius, 2017). As a result of their urban
lifestyle, the number of family serving facilities and shops is expanding too.
How can we explain the rise of mixed-age intergenerational spaces (Vanderbeck
and Worth, 2015)? In this chapter it has become clear this new phenomenon can
be related to the gentrification of cities and the upgrading of the urban environ-
ment. But we should also consider the increase of time spent on children by par-
ents. It is remarkable that despite the growing participation of mothers on the
labour market, the time spent on raising children has increased in many western
countries (Craig and Mullan, 2012; SCP, 2011). For sure parental time for chil-
dren is not always quality time. Today parents are very good at combining dif-
ferent activities in time and space, not in the least by the existence of the mobile
phone. But there seems to be an urge by families today to spend time with the chil-
dren, precisely because parents, particularly mothers, are more absent from home
than they used to be. Working parenthood, separated and newly assembled fami-
lies, and dual location-families all contribute to parents not always present and to
families that are ‘not a matter of course’ (Bakker et al., 2015; Van der Klis and
Karsten, 2009). Today, family is not a pre-given, but is the actively constructed
outcome of everyday life. In their everyday activities of ‘doing family’, families
construct their ‘unique’ entity of a family (Van der Burgt and Gustafson, 2013).
200 Lia Karsten
As a consequence, supervising the children as an everyday routine can be con-
sidered to be rewarding in terms of building family and bonding family ties.
Everyday routines with children help experiencing family, but it is particularly
the ritual now and then of the family outing that offers possibilities for ‘display-
ing family’ to the outside world. Family outings to playgrounds and pubs are
performed in the urban public domain and therefore are the perfect activities to
present the different actors engaged as belonging to the same family (Finch, 2007;
DeVault, 2000).
What does this all mean for children? The picture is diverse and unequal. On
the one hand, more spaces open up for children with parental care as an impor-
tant dimension. Children are not left alone. The result is a widening of children’s
spaces, both culturally and socially (Zeiher et al., 2007). On the other hand, chil-
dren lost their freedom of movement and somehow also their privacy. They are
always in the company of adults. In addition, the reduction of outdoor play made
the urban outdoors less attractive for the remaining outdoor children. The group
of outdoor children has become less diverse in terms of class, and is now mainly
belonging to the lower class. This development has serious consequences for chil-
dren’s social capital. In very general terms, it can be seen that over time children’s
bridging social capital has decreased (Karsten, 2011).
And to become more specific, each class of children pays its own price. For the
lower (migrant) class children it is clear that the city doesn’t offer many alterna-
tives. They are either ‘left alone in public’ (as an outdoor child) or locked up at
home (as an indoor child). Over time indoor childhood has grown, particularly
among lower class children. Lower middle class children, who in Amsterdam also
mainly have a migrant background, explore the urban public outdoors together
with their parents. Their parents are the second generation migrants who feel
streetwise, because they are raised in the city themselves and know many of the
newly built attractive greens, playgrounds, and squares. These are all urban public
spaces that are free to enter and do not cost money. The new family welcoming
commercial spaces, however, remain closed for this group. They are reserved for
the (upper) middle classes, mainly white, who have the knowledge and the money
the new urban consumption spaces require. For the children of the (upper) mid-
dle classes the inner city has become one big playground, although also for these
privileged children the socially mixed outdoors doesn’t exist anymore. Compared
to some decades ago, urban consumption is much more informed and segregated
by class (Bourdieu, 1984). This chapter cannot end with anything other than a
negative comment: among city children and urban families, social inequality has
grown (Putnam, 2015; Lareau, 2003).

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18 The ‘authentic’ family
On the aesthetic representation of family
and living spaces in Mom lifestyle blogs
Petra Schmidt

‘Stefanie is living the Berlin loft dream!’

Together with her husband and her 4-year-old son, Stefanie lives in a large
former factory that is awash with light in a backyard in the wild part of
Berlin Kreuzberg. A dream come true! Stefanie, the creative thinker, used
to design big campaigns for an advertising company. She wanted to continue
doing so after the birth of her son – whose ideas of time and sleep did not
match very well with agency life. These days, Stefanie lives her creative life
through her work for her charming label likemotherlikeson. And, of course,
in her apartment!
(Salgado Robles, 2017)1

This is the introduction to the family portrait of the Häussler family in the Berlin
mom lifestyle blog Littleyears, an online magazine in which two authors present
photographs of and interviews with families about their everyday lives. The por-
trait is representative of a great number of current illustrations of the so-called
‘creative family’ both online and in print media which are presented in family-ori-
ented lifestyle blogs, mainly by parents who work in cultural and creative indus-
tries.2 The mom lifestyle blog Littleyears serves as a typical example of blogs in
which the topics of family and lifestyle are stylistically linked. Mothers play a
prominent role in this. They are the creative main acts on the digital ‘stage’ of the
lifestyle blog and are appointed as the symbolic figureheads of a modern version
of parenthood and family by the bloggers.3 This corresponds to a trend towards
the ‘creativisation’ of the family, which has been observed since the early 2000s
and in which creativity is styled as the point of reference of family life. Cultural
sociologist Andreas Reckwitz (2012a) encapsulates this phenomenon by pointing
out that nothing would be more absurd today than to claim not to be creative.
By means of lifestyle portraits, references to Berlin as a city of creatives (see
Reckwitz, 2009), and mom-blog tags ranging from ‘nursery decor’ to ‘interior
design’, snippets of the ‘real’ home life of families are given which spark associa-
tions of creativity and a specific cultural and social scene.4 Almost without excep-
tion, the readers get to know the families through their living arrangements from
which, according to European ethnologist Johanna Rolshoven (2013, p. 45), almost
204 Petra Schmidt
all activities of daily life and societal transformation processes can be deduced.
The (home) portraits are thus an expression of the importance of creativity in and
for families and simultaneously constitute representations of this creativity.
This phenomenon is taken up in the present contribution5 in which the inter-
play of living space, family, and creativity is investigated. Based on a selected
photograph and an interview, I enquire into the contemporary representation
of family in lifestyle blogs using the example of living style with the aid of
iconographic methods: which stylistic and aesthetic means do the bloggers use
to conceptualise families as creative? Which (image) motifs do the bloggers
prefer in visualising family? Which aesthetic means such as image detail, colour
or composition are used, and how is family ‘creativised’ rhetorically? The pur-
pose of these research questions is to make a cultural-analytical, ethnographic
contribution to the research complex of family and aesthetics and discuss trans-
lations of the creative dispositif (see Reckwitz, 2012b) into the everyday life
of families.
To do so, in a first step, the field of family lifestyle blogs in general and par-
ticularly the blog Littleyears, as well as the aspect of ‘living’, are described. The
second section takes up the theoretical framework of the research question, in
which medial representations of family and the phenomenon of an aesthetic capi-
talism are considered alongside one another. This is followed by the empirical
section in the form of a detailed image description with the aid of an iconographic
interpretation scheme following Erwin Panofsky. Subsequently, the image and
text material are analysed and, in a conclusion, central findings as well as further
considerations are summarised.

Family lifestyle blogs as a field of research6

In this study, lifestyle blogs are seen as digital platforms on which bloggers
can stage their lifestyle and that of other actors or groups. Through blogging,
blog actors are involved in a digital, internet-based infrastructure, for instance
by means of blog entries in social networks which generate a communicative
and cooperative social field characterised by mutual exchange and shared ideas
of aesthetics and family. Cross-linking is a fundamental principle of the blogs,
increasing their range and facilitating audience growth. From a market economy
perspective, lifestyle blogging can also be classified as content marketing financed
by advertising partnerships, sponsorship, or product placement (see Broschart and
Monschein, 2017).
According to market research reports, the trend of marketing lifestyle as a com-
mercial good and/or as content began in the early 2000s (Markenzeichen Gruppe,
2014). The analytical view of (mom) lifestyle blogs has shown that lifestyle and
family are linked by the categories of fashion, living, beauty, fitness, food, leisure
time, work, children, and travel. The area of ‘living’ as a basic theme of everyday
life (Rolshoven, 2013, p. 45) and a category of lifestyle incorporates, for instance,
topics such as residential dwellings, architecture, or furnishings.7
 The ‘authentic’ family 205
In Littleyears, such domestic stories can be found in the ‘portraits’ section,
an image gallery with up to 20 professional photographs accompanied by an
interview.8
The blog concept is reflected in terms such as creativity, cosmopolitanism,
diversity, emancipation, progress, play, and liberality, and represents a tendency
to increasingly conceptualise ways of life. The following diagnoses from the
social sciences also indicate this.9

Theoretical concepts: Family and aesthetic capitalism

The aesthetic representations of family in blogs are reflected before the back-
drop of sociological and cultural anthropological research on family as well as an
increasing societal process of aestheticisation which aims to stylise the originality
of subjects as something special and to commercially exploit it (see Reckwitz,
2017; 2012b).
British sociologist Janet Finch’s approach of ‘displaying’ offers an appropriate
framework for researching the construction of family from one of the depicted
perspectives: ‘Display is the process by which individuals, and groups of individ-
uals, convey to each other and to a relevant audiences that certain of their actions
do constitute “doing family things”’ (Finch, 2007, p. 67). Following Finch, we
can ask how the bloggers aesthetically express how family should be lived these
days, how they imagine family, and what constitutes family today.
As the (creative) identification of families in the blogs is mainly constituted
via lifestyle, this aspect becomes the focal point. Lifestyle, here understood as
an expressive depiction of values, norms, and aesthetic orientation, takes on a
distinctive function in order to make an ‘inside’ and an ‘outside’ classifiable
from a stylistic point of view (see Rolshoven, 2012; Bourdieu, 1987, p. 287ff.).
Lifestyles are articulated in a particularly strong manner via the living space, from
which, according to Rolshoven, the representative dimension, ideological ascrip-
tions, and societal conventions can be read (Rolshoven, 2012, p. 164f.). Living
space is thus also understood understood as a stage for the lifestyle of families,
performatively created by specific techniques of selection, combination, and pres-
entation/display (see Finch, 2007). In this sense, the practice of staging taken by
the bloggers who present family as something special, something that make an
appearance (see Lewald, 1991, p. 306ff.), moves to the centre of attention. The
performative space is characterised by the fact that, according to Fischer-Lichte,
it also permits a different use than the one intended, and that it is this particular
use which constitutes the performative space and brings forth a specific spatiality
(see Fischer-Lichte, 2014, p. 189f.). In this context, space is thus understood as
a performative space or stage on which the ‘creative family’ is directed and from
which a specific atmosphere originates. This atmosphere, according to Gernot
Böhme, is not just caused by individual elements of the space, such as the interior
design, but develops its effect in the sense of a mise-en-scène only in the interplay
of an ‘ecstasy of things’ (Böhme, 2013, p. 33).
206 Petra Schmidt
The commercial staging of lifestyle practices as performed by lifestyle blog-
gers, however, is also to be classified against a backdrop of substantial processes
of transformation in the world of labour and must be understood as a form of
work practice (see Manske, 2015, 2005; Schönberger, 2003). Here, several diag-
noses play a role, such as immaterial or cognitive work and services becoming
increasingly important for making a living and work routines (see Lazzarato,
1998). According to Reckwitz (2012b, p.11), standardised and routine employee
and worker tasks, as well as an objectified interaction with objects and subjects,
are dissolving in favour of mental labour and creativity. Blogging as a new form
of working practice therefore means being able to recognise the immaterial added
value of the topic of ‘family’, to commercially exploit it, and to aesthetically
process it.
Beyond the world of labour and concerning all areas of everyday life, lifestyle
blogging in this research approach is analysed in light of societal processes of
aestheticisation and an aesthetic capitalism (see Reckwitz, 2012b). According to
Reckwitz, there is a dominant creative dispositive – a social network of prac-
tices, artefacts, discourses, and ways of subjectivisation – which coordinates our
order of knowledge (see Reckwitz 2012b, p. 49). Reckwitz defines a creative and/
or aesthetic practice as a creation of uniqueness as well as its visualisation (see
Reckwitz 2012b, p. 244). What is characteristic of this aesthetic practice is its
orientation at the production of something new which is described as singular,
special, different, authentic, or even original. In order to do so, a common prac-
tice is for actors to place objects, texts, bodies, roles, or, such as in this example,
‘families’ into a new context in order to create a jarring effect irritation. This
irritation (sensual affixation) creates attention and constitutes the actual creative
practice – an aesthetic, affective, and sensual stimulus in an interested audience
(see Reckwitz 2012b, p. 25).
Digital stages such as lifestyle blogs are identified in this study as spaces of
production and performance of these aesthetic practices in order to generate a
ready-to-consume public (see Reckwitz 2012b, pp. 25–30). As in the blog pre-
sented here, family is stylised mainly with visual methods; a representative pho-
tograph10 was selected as empirical data and analysed.

Empirical analysis: Creative spaces? Creative family?

The analysis follows the iconographic method, a three-stage model of interpreta-
tion by art historian Erwin Panofsky (see Panofsky, 1994, pp. 205–227). At the
first level, that is, the pre-iconographic description, factual parts of the image
such as shapes, colours, events, objects, motifs, and expressional connotations in
the image are described in detail. At the second level, the iconographic analysis,
motifs and/or combinations of motifs (compositions) as secondary or conven-
tional signifiers are associated with themes or concepts. Symbols or attributes and
compositions can thus be identified as personifications, allegories, or anecdotes.
At the third level, an iconological interpretation is undertaken in which a con-
temporary cultural sociological background serves as a frame of interpretation.
 The ‘authentic’ family 207
This is further complemented by a historical approach to the topic of family
and aesthetics.
In the initial pre-analysis, visual patterns from the selected image and the
photographic aesthetics of the blog were isolated. These are then explored in
greater detail with the iconographic image description and final interpretation
(Figure 18.1).11
In the centre of the image, a woman shows herself kneeling on a sofa with a
small boy at her side. Both face the camera while each looks through a shared
pair of binoculars with one eye. The woman hugs the boy with her left arm. The
binoculars hide the face of the boy while the smiling left half of the woman’s face
is visible.
The child sports a grown-out short haircut and is wearing grey sweat pants and
a red undershirt, the lower edge of which can be seen under a dark blue sweat-
shirt. The cuff of the sweatshirt pokes out from an ochre furry jacket which, upon
closer inspection, has ears sewn on to it. The woman has shoulder-length brown
hair with a fringe. She is wearing washed-out denim jeans in which the right leg is
worn and has a small hole, and an orange-yellow knitted sweater.
In terms of furniture, the dominant element is a royal blue cubic-shape sofa
with a velvety fabric. It is at a right angle, like a reverse L, extending from the left
corner of the image into the centre. In the background, a wall is decorated with a
dried branch which forms a delicate pattern of twigs. On the windowsill, which
continues as a shelf along the wall, there is a small indoor plant, two colourful toy

Figure 18.1 Family portrait of the Häussler family in the Littleyears blog.

Source: Littleyears.de (http://littleyears.de/) and Photographer: Lina Grün.
208 Petra Schmidt
birds facing each other, and a knitted bear with yellow overalls and a burgundy
body. On the right side, at the end of the sofa, two book towers are placed which,
judging from their format, appear to be art, architecture, design, and/or photogra-
phy books. On the left side, the border of the room is defined by a window pane.
The end of the window partition meets the outer wall of the house on which a
large, light-giving window can be seen.
By means of its reduced furnishings and the strict shape and colour language of
the sofa, the image transports an orderly and clearly structured atmosphere which
is repeated in the well-placed ornaments (birds, knitted bear, a flower) and the
neatly stacked art books. The colour and fabric of the sofa create plasticity, which
has an effect on the room. Through the scattered positioning of the objects, they
are given special importance. Because of the museum-like display of the objects,
the objects’ function seems to be primarily to impress.
From an architectural point of view, the lavishness of the room, combined with
the merely rendered walls and a large amount of daylight coming in through the
large windows and the glazed partition, communicates the atmosphere of a studio,
a space in which artists work and where creativity reigns.

Results: Ways of staging the familial

In the iconological interpretation, the space and family-related image elements
which have been identified at the first levels of research (forms, motifs, moods)
are recognised as culture-specific symbolic values and contribute to cultural scien-
tific insights.12 Following Panofsky, the individual elements and the entire ‘work
of art’ as well as statements in the interviews are transferred into a sociocultural
macro context (see Panofsky, 1994).
In the interpretation, a differentiation is made between the practices of lifestyle
work by the bloggers and the performative lifestyle practices of the families (dis-
playing family) to assert their (familial) identity. Both types are closely related
to each other as the lifestyle of the selected families is the processual base of
the bloggers. Nevertheless, the representation of family by the bloggers is at the
centre of these considerations and results in the following analytical conclusions.

Family – design-oriented and authentic

If we compare and contrast family images in women’s magazines of the 1950s
and 1960s with depictions of the Häussler family, a new depiction of family
becomes apparent.
The difference of today’s parenthood and family is expressed in several ways
in the portrait: for instance, the casual clothing style or the grown-out haircut of
the boy. Another thing that can be seen as ‘new’ in the historical comparison is the
father figure, which only appears in a textual and not in a visual manner, bringing
forth a late modern family image strongly characterised by the idea of emanci-
pated motherhood. However, a change is apparent which is characteristic of the
photographs: the snapshot technique. It is intended to provide an unobstructed and
 The ‘authentic’ family 209
spontaneous insight into the life of the family and aims at showing the family ‘as
it really is’ – genuine and distinct because, according to Reckwitz, the late modern
subject needs to be authentic and true to itself (see Reckwitz, 2017, p. 246f.).
This making visible of an uncontrived family lifestyle is also expressed in
the interview with the mother in which the family’s design-oriented style of
furnishing and living is intensively discussed using the subject of the sofa. The
question ‘Where did you find this blue sofa?’, for instance, is answered by the
mother, showing detailed knowledge: ‘the sofa is by the Danish designer Erik
Rasmussen.’ The relevance and an expert view ‘all about design’ is passed on to
the visitors of the blog, which also becomes apparent in the answer to the ques-
tion ‘Where do you look for inspiration, where do you buy your furniture?’ – the
answer being that it is the stylistically confident husband, who is less needs-ori-
ented but equipped with good taste, who intensively looks for furniture while she
is in charge of decorations, plants, and rugs (see Salgado Robles, 2017).
From this conversation it becomes apparent that it is not the functionality of
the furnishings which is discussed and visualised but rather the aesthetic dimen-
sion. Design knowledge, form and composition, style, and taste dominate both the
interview and the selected image detail, and illustrate the relevance of aesthetics
and composition in everyday life – both among the bloggers and the families.
The reasons for this seem to be in an increasing desire for finding and inventing
oneself with the aim of self-growth (see Rorty, 1992). The sofa, the art books, the
systematically decoration, or also the long search for the right piece of furniture
convey an atmosphere which symbolically stands for authenticity and the self of
the subject of the family because, as Clifford writes, the things of daily use are
part of our personality and have an important influence on the structuring and
becoming of our self, our subjective sense of order (see Clifford, 1988).

‘Less is more’ – on the technique of ‘letting it become apparent’

Within the blog, as mentioned above, family is not reflected in a reality-oriented
or documentary manner – even if it is precisely this impression which is to be gen-
erated. Rather, the portraits are staged depictions of the true life of the families.
By means of the blog team13 styling and working on the depictions of the families
through lighting, colour schemes, composition, subtext or also the selected image
detail, they direct the attention towards objects or persons (e.g. the sofa, mother,
and child).
These directorial tasks are reminiscent of the practice of curators, whose task
is the independent design and instalment of exhibitions in order to convey the
distinctiveness of selected objects and themes. For the presentation, the bloggers
draw on the blog and the family living space as a performative space. The living
context, such as the location and the design of the apartment, creates a specific
atmosphere which, following the philosopher Gernot Böhme, is produced through
an ‘ecstasy of things’. Ecstasy here means that not only colours, smells, and
sounds but also the shape of objects has an effect and lets objects appear present in
a particular way (see Böhme, 1993, p. 80). The aesthetic presentation of the ‘real’
210 Petra Schmidt
life of the family in the blog is considered from this point of view. When viewing
the image, it is fundamentally the reduced style of furnishing which is notice-
able and seems to be stylistically oriented towards minimalism. Strong reduction,
purity of shape, clear geometry, cubic shapes, or also a reduced selection of shape
and colour, as can be found in the interior and the decoration of the living portrait
of the Häussler family, are characteristic for this aesthetic style, triggering asso-
ciations with the field of arts and creativity (see Hensen, 2005). At the same time,
the bloggers also orient themselves on minimalist lines – on the one hand by the
sheer selection of the ‘creative families’ and their minimalistic lifestyle, and on
the other hand through the manner of their aesthetic presentation.
Two techniques that are characteristic for the bloggers’ practice of curating
and exposing family are setting apart and reduction. The image elements of the
room here have a mutually reinforcing effect. Through a specific arrangement of
objects and the characteristic style of reduction, objects and subjects appear in a
particular manner and an atmosphere of the creative is generated which is also
transmitted to the family. This technique aims to create the exceptional or also
deviant, which causes a sensual affixation in an audience (see Reckwitz 2012b,
p. 142), and it seems to be a common procedure, as is evident in a multitude of
other photographs in the blog, as can be illustrated in Figure 18.2.
Within the portrait series, the image can be understood as an accompanying
document to creatively portray the Häussler family in the blog. This photograph
also shows a form of decoration which operates with a reduced and well selected

Figure 18.2 Photograph from the portrait series of the Häussler family, Littleyears 2017.
Source: Littleyears.de (http://littleyears.de/) and Photographer: Lina Grün
 The ‘authentic’ family 211
presentation of objects (reduction) and which is described by Reckwitz as a prac-
tice of curated living, a sophisticated combination of the heterogeneous in its
diversity and interestingness from which, nevertheless, a coherent whole and spa-
tial uniqueness of significant internal complexity results. It is a space of the self in
which both a clear, calm, and simple elegance and cultural diversity can be found
(see Reckwitz, 2017, p. 317).
The images from the portrait thus allow for the hypothesis that the design of the
apartment, in Reckwitz’s terms, becomes a permanent task in which self-­realising
subjects stage themselves in front of themselves and others (see Reckwitz 2017,
316). Additionally, lifestyle blogs turn the work on the self into a commercial
concept by making the lifestyle of their protagonists visible in the manner of a
curator, through practices of setting apart, arranging, and differentiating.

Family and cultural economy

Based on the insights gained, the blogging community discussed here can be
located in Richard Florida’s Creative Class (see Florida, 2004) and in a continu-
ously growing creative and cultural industry dealing in the production, distribu-
tion, and dissemination of creative goods and services (Deutscher, Bundestag,
2007). The related practices of the lifestyle bloggers also generate interesting
questions for the ethnography of work, as it is a constant of work in the creative
industry that the creative product differs, varies, generates attention for itself, and
thus follows the logic of an economy of difference. The families presented in the
blog and the blog team seem to be linked by a common aesthetic understanding
of lifestyles, an implicit stylistic agreement which condenses in a textual, photo-
aesthetic, and vestimentary manner. At the same time, an agreement both on the
side of the families and of the blog team becomes apparent about this lifestyle
being something worth showing and communicating. Blogs constitute an ideal
stage for this.
Family, staged via its lifestyle in the blog, is to be presented as authentic and
‘just like it really is’. The bloggers achieve this effect stylistically with motifs
and images which suggest a high degree of proximity to everyday life and avoid
instructions for pretences or disguising the protagonists such as ‘dressing up
nicely for the photo shoot’. The staging of the ‘authentic family’ is linked to the
emphasis of a design-oriented self-image of the families and presents a typical
visual pattern in the blogs. Design orientation, i.e. to intensively deal with design
and taste such as the families appear to be doing based on their style of living, is
stylised as a mark of authenticity to which an examination of the self is inherent.
The living space becomes a location of the self and shows the aesthetic patterns
of a cultural cosmopolitanism where interior design is assigned to the creative
environment of cultural practitioners (see Reckwitz, 2017, p. 317).
Yet it is also the minimalist style of interior design which exemplifies the por-
trayed taste of the families and which spans a nexus of creative connotations. This
impression is further emphasised by means of specifically selected image details
and motifs. It is through the sum of the image elements that the aestheticising
212 Petra Schmidt
procedures (reduction and isolation of image elements) and the entire aesthetic
arrangement of the bloggers, the objects, and the families take effect and become
visible in a particular way. The ‘creative family’ emerges.
The living space and its interior design are refashioned into a performative
space in the blog, a kind of stage with set design on which the representation
of authentic and thus creative families is directed. From the perspective of the
observer, the impression oscillates between real depiction of the families’ eve-
ryday lives and an exhibition of family reminiscent of a museum. This ambi-
guity, the staging of an authentic situation of the bloggers, is a jarring practice
which generates tension and attention and which, in research, is located before the
background of an increasing ‘economy of attention’ (see Reckwitz, 2017; 2012b;
Franck, 1998). In this connection, the presentation of family in lifestyle blogs, the
staging of their culture of living, which is described as singular, is understood as
a form of cultural economisation (see Reckwitz, 2017, p. 148) in which the imma-
terial good of the ‘family’ and its everyday world is performed in a spectacular
manner with the aim of asserting oneself in the competition for the attention of the
public14 (see Reckwitz, 2017, p. 149).

Notes
1 This research refers to German language commercial lifestyle blogs.
2 http://www.littleyears.de [Accessed: 15.06.2018].
3 The families presented in the blogs do not generally diverge from the model of the
‘heterosexual normal family’, that is, the family constellation of father, mother, child.
One exception are single mothers. The blog is mainly directed at mothers and does not
explicitly address fathers.
4 http://www.littleyears.de [Accessed: 15.06.2018].
5 This contribution originated from my current dissertation project on blogging work.
The project is situated at the Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis at
the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Munich.
6 The online platform Brigitte MOM counts about 2500 family blogs (https://www.
brigitte.de/familie/mom-blogs/mom-blogs--alle-mamablogs-und-papablogs-im-ueber-
blick-10856294.html) [Accessed: 12.12.2017].
7 https://hauptstadtmutti.de/ [Accessed: 20.02.2019]
8 Littleyears here represents ten lifestyle blogs which I have investigated regarding the
visual patterns of representation of residential lifestyle practices.
9 http://www.littleyears.de/about/ [Accessed: 20.02.2019]
10 The photograph is representative of far more than 150 portraits which are shown in this
blog and in which the family is presented in their living space.
11 Generally speaking, the images aim to grant authentic insights into the living situa-
tion of the families (Interview Marie Zeisler, founder of Littleyears, October 2017).
Visual patterns and recurrent motifs include situations of play between parents and
child, plants framing the picture either at the side or in the foreground, and standalone
images of ornaments.
12 The iconological interpretation model by Panofsky is mainly interpreted with sources
from art history, while for this interpretation it is mainly sociological and cultural sci-
entific findings that are drawn on.
13 In the ‘photo shoots’, aside from their task as interviewers, the bloggers also act as
art directors who tell the photographers which motifs, moods and situations are to be
photographed (interview with blogger Marie Zeisler of Littleyears in October 2017).
 The ‘authentic’ family 213
14 Gaining publicity is the central currency in the digital fabric studied here. Range and
number of subscribers of the blogs mirror the following of potential consumers and
thus commercial success, for instance through advertising contracts with companies.

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19 Conclusion
Opening space for family studies
Maya Halatcheva-Trapp, Giulia Montanari
and Tino Schlinzig

It is certainly not an exaggeration to regard the family as one of the core categories
of sociology. Its social significance and different facets, dynamics, and the poten-
tial link to other research fields has produced numerous studies in the past decades.
But it has never been an exclusive domain of sociology. This is even more true for
space, which we have put next to the family at the centre of this book. The present
collection of chapters brings together scholars from different but related fields of
social sciences – sociologists, geographers, and anthropologists. The contribu-
tions differ not only in terms of topics addressed, such as migration, fatherhood,
pregnancy, mobile family communication, or multi-local family life, but also in
terms of conceptual backgrounds, empirical and methodological approaches, and
in their way of addressing family and space. To both give an overview of the paths
taken in this collection and address new questions that are opening up for us, we
want to give a brief analytical synopsis of the contributions presented here and
would like it – as well as the chapters themselves – to be understood as a continu-
ation of previous work in the field of family and space studies and an invitation to
further scientific and public discussion.

Studying family life: Theoretical considerations and

methodological paradigms
The two categories family and space are both theoretical heavyweights within the
humanities and social sciences. While family traditionally is a domain of soci-
ology, space is virtually a disciplinary constituent of geography. However, this
should not obscure the fact that the theoretical and conceptual considerations on
space of some classical sociological authors (e.g. G. Simmel, H. Lefebvre, E.
Goffman, A. Giddens) have been paving the way for its discussion in sociology
and beyond, and to which current debates are repeatedly recurring (see also the
Introduction in this volume). The chapters of the present book link these funda-
mental ideas with observations of a current change in everyday familial life –
always subject to dynamics – in terms of the organisation of everyday life; the
composition of a family’s members; their spatial location; their relation to other
social subsystems such as politics, economics, religion; their own reasonings; and,
not least, the family’s institutional foundations and the declining binding force of
216 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 
normative standards. The sociological observation of a growing diversity of the
family (see Maihofer, 2014; Smart, 2007, p. 6–31; Beck and Beck-Gernsheim,
2004; Wagner, Franzmann, and Stauder, 2001) suggests its complexity should be
examined from different perspectives, making use of sociology’s differentiated
theoretical approaches. However, family sociology is pushed to its limits when
attempting to gain a comprehensive understanding of current developments –
especially in connection with the spatial dimension. What is required of it, rather,
is to open up to the insights and theoretical bonds of neighbouring disciplines of
the social sciences. The reflections on family and space presented in this book
make use of this plurality of theoretical and methodological approaches. At the
same time, it has been necessary to restrict ourselves to theoretical frameworks
that are sensitive to the increasingly complex everyday practices of doing and
displaying family – a confinement inherent in the current dynamics of the family
itself (see Morgan, 2011; 1996; Finch, 2007). In the broadest sense, under the
umbrella of the interpretive paradigm, the contributions of this volume are unified
by a common reference to theoretical perspectives with a main focus on social
action, such as phenomenological sociology (A. Schütz), symbolic interactionism
(G. H. Mead, H. Blumer), dramaturgical approach (E. Goffman), ethnomethod-
ology (H. Garfinkel), the field of practice theories (T. Schatzki, A. Reckwitz)
and not least the (social-constructionist) sociology of knowledge (K. Mannheim,
P. L. Berger, and T. Luckmann). Following these approaches, the social can be
understood as a process of mutual interpretations in everyday interactions and the
incorporated routine practices of family members. First and foremost, the focus
is on the microcosm of the family, the creation of belonging and solidarity in
intergenerational relationships, the everyday conducts of life, and the formation
and negotiation of internal relations of its members (see Gubrium and Holstein,
2009; LaRossa and Reitzes, 1993; Bösel, 1980). In particular, family research
using qualitative methods with reference to the interpretive paradigm has been
able to gain considerable insights in recent years, especially into spatial mobil-
ity due to employment reasons (see Monz, 2018; Schneider and Collet, 2010;
Hardill and Green, 2003) and as a result of separation and divorce (see Zartler and
Grillenberger, 2017; Schier, 2016; Schier et al., 2015).
The contributions of this volume have applied interpretive theory and empiri-
cal methods to the everyday actions of family members, the manifold realities
of familial lifeworlds ‘constructed through symbols, meanings, and social rules’
(Bösel, 1980, p. 111). However, the constitution of family is not solely situated in
the micro-sociological sphere of interactions and individuals’ subjective produc-
tion of meaning but, as Maya Halatcheva-Trapp discusses in her chapter in this
volume, is also based on institutionalised ways of speaking about family observ-
able in diverse social arenas, organisations, and societal discourses. She stresses
the concept of family as a symbolic order by applying the sociology of knowl-
edge and discourse theory, and proposes an interpretation of family as being
simultaneously embedded in private and public spheres. It therefore ‘cannot be
conceptualised without its moral and political evaluations’, she argues (p. 23),
concluding that family can be analysed as a historically pre-formed, adaptable,
 Conclusion 217
and normatively charged construction, constantly produced through interpreta-
tion, and simultaneously available for interpretation. Following up on this from a
communicative constructivist perspective, Giulia Montanari strengthens the view
on the communicative production of relations between family and space by refer-
ring to Schütz’s and Luckmann’s ideas of the social genesis of knowledge and
the central role of language. Claiming that meaning is subjectively acquired and
processed through and by communicative practices – verbal as well as non-ver-
bal, including physical behaviour and material aspects such as consumer goods –
these ideas are further developed by authors of the perspective, predominantly
discussed in German-speaking sociology, of communicative constructivism (see
Knoblauch, 2016; Keller et al., 2013).
Likewise, practice theory, as the name implies, deals with practices, albeit with
a different connotation. Since this approach has gained increasing popularity in
recent years – not only in the context of family research – it is not very sur-
prising that in most chapters of this volume, practices are strongly emphasised.
In the course of a general rediscovery of everyday life – recognisable, among
other things, by the growing interest in ethnographic methods, also in this volume
(Monz et al.; Motowidlo; Pink et al.) – family studies is experiencing a practice
turn (see Lüscher, 2012) with a focus on the daily activities of family members
(see Schier, 2016; Jurczyk, 2014; Morgan, 2011). With reference to Finch (2007),
Petra Schmidt, in this volume, discusses empirical findings on processes of aes-
theticisation and lifestyle practices, and thus displaying practices as constituents
of ‘doing family things’, taking the example of Mom Lifestyle Blogs. She uses
Bourdieu’s theory of social practice and links it with Reckwitz’s approach to soci-
etal processes of aestheticisation and an aesthetic capitalism (see Reckwitz, 2012).
Michaela Schier’s chapter on fathering as a social practice also explicitly refers
to practice theory (among others Jurczyk, 2014; Morgan, 2011; Schatzki, 1996),
focussing on planning, organising, and coordinating practices as well as emo-
tional stabilisation and the production of belonging. This approach not only leads
to ethnographic research designs (see Monz et al., Pink et al.; in this volume),
but also allows for an understanding of families as a network, which is methodo-
logically discussed in the contribution of Kerstin Hein et al. Tino Schlinzig fol-
lows in focussing on practices of establishing and stabilising group cohesion and
family identity within shared residence arrangements by empirically observing
territorialisation practices that promote a social order and sense of family local
to the particular households. Furthermore, Anna Monz pays attention to mobile
media practices of job-mobile parental couples by employing an ethnographic
approach. Diane Nimmo asks how women, men, and couples deal with the poten-
tial for procreation in sexual activity, how pregnancies ‘arise’, and how space
and the spatio-material environment are involved in sexual practice. Referring to
Schütz’s phenomenological sociology, Jagoda Motowidlo’s ethnographic study
of Polish families offers a transnational perspective on circular migration, follow-
ing the observation that information and communication technologies generate
new spaces in the course of familial migration processes, in which parts of the
everyday life practices are mediatised (see Nedlecu and Wyss, 2016; Schier and
218 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 
Schlinzig, 2016; Greschke, 2014; Madianou and Miller, 2012). Although eve-
ryday practices are not infrequently the subject of consideration, references to
practice theory are less explicit but referred to when speaking of doing family, as
Lia Karsten does. She follows the idea of family as a process of doing when focus-
sing the merging of the playground and the pub as age-specific urban domains
into family spaces. Similarly, Benoît Hachet studies children’s and parents’ lived
experience in shared residence arrangements by capturing practices and feelings
in dealing with children’s vacant rooms during physical absence.

Family life and space

The way in which space is considered in this volume varies widely – not only
in theoretical but also conceptual fashion. But what kind of space are we talking
about, then? In 1996, the geographer Kirsten Simonsen wrote an article titled
‘What kind of space in what kind of social theory?’ in which she offered a prag-
matic overview on different ways of conceptualising space in social theory. She
complained that ‘the concept of space is mostly taken as given – each author
assumes that his or her meaning is clear and uncontested, and an ardent debate
is conducted regardless of the possible differences in underlying conceptions’
(Simonsen, 1996, p. 494). This claim was supported later by Thrift (2009, p. 85),
who – talking about the discipline of geography – found an ‘extreme difficulty of
describing certain aspects of the medium which is the discipline’s message’. This
can still be said to be true today, as geography and its sub-disciplines differ in
their theoretical and conceptual references more than ever.
A theoretical attempt to distinguish space brings us back to philosophical
accounts of space and place such as those from Aristoteles, Kant, and Leibniz, as
well as Newton and his absolute container-space in which things and people are
placed (Curry, 1996), a notion that has by now become notorious (Thrift, 2009,
p. 86), but still often thought of when talking about space, as Löw (2016, pp. 25
and 226) states for the case of sociology. While it is not always easy to detect
those different notions, Simonsen (1996) offers a rather practical navigation of
varying empirical approaches to space (that at times overlap theoretically). In the
following, we will build on that proposal and discuss three ways of thematising
space, namely as material environment, as difference, and as social spatiality. We
will show in what way all of these aspects are reflected in the contributions of this
book in the context of family life.

Space as the material environment of family life

Space as a material environment is often used in architecture and traditional
regional geography; here space is understood as a causally, or at least condition-
ally determined, background of social processes. In this thinking, it is a category
of thing or nature with its own facticity (Simonsen, 1996, p. 497). We can find
that understanding in Diane Nimmo’s chapter in which she discusses the influ-
ence, for instance, that a hotel environment has on getting pregnant. She refers
 Conclusion 219
to an account of embodied emotions and human corporeality that Simonsen later
elaborated on. In that view, ‘[t]he body is always in place; notwithstanding devel-
opments of “placelessness”, “disembeddedness”, mobility and “hyperspace”, we
cannot escape that fact’ (Simonsen, 2007, p. 173). Spatial environments, such as
hotel rooms, then, do matter in the conduct of human affairs such as procreation.
In Benoît Hachet's account, the physical living conditions are also thematised
when he asks how separated parents perceive – and deal with – the empty room
of their children that live partially with both parents. In a similar way, Jagoda
Motowidlo talks about strategies of dealing with absences and reintegration in
circular migration movements.
These contributions already take into account a less absolutist way of dealing
with the material environment (as Simonsen sees the danger of, 1996, p. 496)
when looking at the perception of space and social practices in space (for exam-
ple, when Lia Karsten explains how the perception of public spaces as proper
spaces for children has changed). An example of a straight-forward absolutist
way of investigating the environment of family life is cited in Marina Adler’s
contribution, in which she outlines the US-based studies of neighbourhood effects
on families. Here, it is space that influences social practices and structures – a
geodeterminist, behaviourist, and essentialistic perspective that has long been
subjected to criticism within geography (see e.g. Werlen, 1993, p. 8ff.; Gallaher
2009, p. 2ff.).

Space as difference in family identities

Another strand of concepts views space as difference: e.g. that in different places,
regions, or localities exist different orders that influence the outcome of social
processes (Simonsen, 1996, p. 499). It is exactly this perspective that appears
empirically when children reflect on the differences in their mother’s and father’s
apartments, as Tino Schlinzig depicts in his contribution.1 In another and deeper
understanding that parallels Simonsen’s poststructuralist version of space as dif-
ference as a form of politics of identity (1996, p. 502), Tino Schlinzig views
these territorialisation practices as a process of positioning oneself and others.
The examples in Schmidt’s contribution enrich this discussion, illustrating a vivid
example of how positioning processes are conducted through aesthetic practices
in and through family homes. Maya Halatcheva-Trapp and Giulia Montanari
complement the understanding of space as difference by focussing on a spatial-
ised language (Simonsen, 1996, p. 501) that uses spatial metaphors and discourses
evolving around questions of co-presence, in doing so revealing specific symbolic
orders and worldviews.

Space as the spatiality of family practices

The view that space is inherently connected to social practices and constitutes
a fundamental symbolic and existential dimension of the social itself is a third
way of dealing with space (Simonsen, 1996, pp. 502 and 505). Lefebvre is one
220 Maya Halatcheva-Trapp et al. 
of the theoreticians that elaborated this thought with a conceptual triad of space
(Simonsen, 1996, p. 503) that Friedemann Neumann and Hans Peter Hahn dis-
cuss in terms of migration processes. The way in which the children in Diane
Nimmo’s and Michaela Schier’s contributions construct their parental homes as
either two-island archipelagos or as being both part of one integrated world exem-
plifies Lefebvre’s idea of perceived space, one of the three conceptual spaces.
Similarly, couples in long-distance relationships construct spaces with blurred
or fixed boundaries, as Anna Monz explains. Marie-Kristin Döbler deepens the
discussion of social spatiality when talking about the closely connected category
of co-presence as a basic dimension of social processes.
As the understanding of space differs so dramatically, it becomes even more
evident that a space-sensitive approach to family cannot take the notion of space
as a given but rather needs to take into account different understandings and con-
cepts – and preferably make its own view explicit. And perhaps it is often even
more appropriate to not even discuss space itself but rather talk about related
concepts such as co-presence and absence, sensory encounter (Pink et al. in this
volume), distance or material culture (Neumann and Hahn in this volume) instead,
as this might be more precise when it comes to empirical phenomena.

Missing links and open roads

This volume brings together different perspectives on the link between family
and space, and represents a collection of topics that focus on theoretical, meth-
odological, and empirical endeavours. It is the empirically based theoretical
and methodological discussions that we consider innovative and promising in
exploring family and space. But, undoubtedly, this volume does not cover every-
thing. It is a proposal that complements work already done by other researchers
such as geographers, for instance Hallmann (2010, see also the Introduction in
this volume). Arguing in the sense of discourse theory, this book keeps hold of
what is sayable and what is not, with reference to the disciplines involved and
the specificity of the topic matter. We have to keep in mind that family studies
and space-sensitive social research offer elaborate analytical tools where either
family or space constitute scientific subjects in their complexities. The different
views that come with theories located within sociology, geography, and cultural
studies are already diverse within their respective disciplines. And if, as intended
in this volume, these interdisciplinary and international views are brought into
conversation and thus make visible their borders and potentials, missing per-
spectives of the subject matter become clearer – such as unsatisfactory concep-
tualisations of space within social research. There are also the dynamics and
structures of (nationally based) scientific disciplines such as ‘fields of power’
(Bourdieu, 1998) that constitute research topics and their invention, interpreta-
tion, and assertion.
Coming back to sayable and non-sayable aspects, we wish to point to links
between family and space that are not included in this volume. It is phenomena
outside Europe that are not covered here, such as the forming of specific family
 Conclusion 221
spaces by gated communities in Latin America and the US, or family conceptions
of indigenous communities or transnational family ties in Africa. Research on
non-heteronormative concepts of family is also lacking, as well as family poli-
tics and state regulations. Furthermore, emotions – a fundamental dimension of
family ties and still a neglected category in family studies – are taken for granted
while at the same time being crucial in understanding family and space in times of
neoliberal mobility imperatives (see also Valentine, 2008).
But it is also the level of the philosophy of science that could offer new
insights. For example, which theoretical approaches to linking family and space
are assumed to be established, and which ones are neglected? What impact does
this have on how research topics are defined? Which methodological approaches
are considered valid and can contribute to understanding the subject matter? What
are the challenges for empirically based theories when using notions of co-pres-
ence or transnational families? What empirical phenomena can we see with these
heuristics, and which can we not? In this sense, this book is an invitation to think
about, experiment, and unlock the link between family and space even further,
which we would understand as an ‘insecurely constructed building of meaning’,
following Berger and Kellner (1984, p. 70).

Note
1 This view is conceptually reflected in Löw’s conception of the intrinsic logic of cities that
explores ‘the hidden structures of a city as locally habitualised, mostly tacit processes of
meaning constitution and their bodily material embeddedness’ (Löw, 2012, p. 310).

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Index

absence, physical 29, 122, 130–132, 154, discourse 2–5, 23, 25–32, 43, 61, 64, 70,
176, 179, 182, 186, 218 74, 91, 120, 178, 195–196, 206, 216,
activity spaces 48–49, 50, 53–54 219–220
aestheticisation 6, 205–206, 217 displacement 47–48, 53
aesthetic capitalism 204–206, 217 display 25, 29, 76–77, 84, 96, 140, 186,
appresentation 17–19, 21 200, 205, 208, 216–217
artefacts 112–114, 116, 119, 174, 206 distance 12–13, 15, 17–19, 29, 39–40,
46–49, 51–54, 62, 68–70, 75, 77–78,
belonging 17, 43, 75, 78, 134, 136–140, 84–85, 88–89, 92–93, 95–96, 112,
143–144, 148, 165, 173, 178, 200, 217 122–123, 127, 131, 150, 152, 154–155,
body 14–15, 18–19, 36, 39, 63, 112, 170–172, 175–178, 179, 182, 186,
117, 219 195, 220
divorce 3, 6, 12, 24, 27–28, 31–32, 47, 51,
care 12, 14, 28–32, 43, 49–50, 52–54 54, 73, 77, 134–135, 138, 216
Chicago School 2, 24 documentary method 61, 64–65, 83,
child and youth welfare services 27 85, 135
circular migration dual earner couples 50
closure processes: communicative 136;
spatial 137; personnel 139; material 140; emergent phenomenon 111, 119
habitual 142 empathy 21, 96, 104, 106
communicative styles 67 empirical observation 88–89, 91–97,
commuter marriage 51–52 112–113, 185–186, 189
commuting 6, 11, 78, 89, 92–93, 135–136, ethnographical approach 4–6, 35, 37–38,
139, 149 43, 75, 88, 93, 95–96, 99–100, 103–104,
constructivism: communicative 63–64, 106, 112, 149, 170, 182, 189–190, 204,
69, 217 211, 217
contraception 111 experience 5, 12–18, 21, 25–26, 36, 38,
co-presence 11, 24, 28–31, 50–52, 62, 40–42, 46–47, 62–63, 65, 68, 76–77,
104–105, 117, 139, 141, 172, 178–179, 84, 88–89, 91, 95–96, 99–104, 107,
219–221; physical 29, 51, 139, 178 116, 124–125, 127–128, 130–131, 134,
counseling 23, 27–31 141, 147
couple relationship 115–116, 119–120, experts 28, 32, 84, 209
122–127, 129, 131
creative dispositive 206 family: authentic 203, 205–206, 208,
211–212; displaying 25, 200, 205,
decision 27, 47–48, 52, 54, 63, 78, 93, 95, 216–217; doing 13, 15–17, 19–21,
111–112, 119, 134, 148, 160, 170 25, 47, 49, 54, 96, 135, 142, 199, 205,
digital materiality 106 217–218; identity 24, 75, 134–135, 137,
digitization 122 217; multi-local 51, 75, 79, 80–82, 84,
226 Index
88–89, 123, 140, 148, 215; networks 5, job-related spatial mobility 73, 122, 126,
73, 75, 77, 79, 81, 84; post-separation 129, 131, 134
23, 27, 144; relations 31, 54, 75, 99, joint custody 27–28, 30
102, 106–107; time 30, 122, 131, 187,
198; transnational 40, 53, 106–107, knowledge 4–6, 18–21, 23–24, 26–28, 30,
189, 221 40, 61–66, 68–69, 85, 91, 99, 136–137,
fatherhood 6, 30–31, 170, 172, 215; 177, 179, 181, 183, 185–186, 188,
fathering 31, 54, 170–172, 174, 175, 200, 206, 209, 217; communicative
176–179, 217 64; explicit 64; implicit 64, 75, 77, 85;
femininity 28, 30 social 62; sociology of 4–5, 23–24,
focus groups 135 26–27, 31–32, 69, 85, 216; stocks of 16,
18, 26, 143, 182, 188; tacit 62, 75, 221
gender 5, 24, 28–31, 36–37, 40, 46–50, 52,
53, 61, 65, 70, 75, 160, 171, 184 lifestyle 25, 36, 51, 89, 128, 138, 143, 199,
gifts 66–67, 141, 175 203–206, 208–212, 217; lifestyle blog
grandparents 29, 32, 75, 138, 185, 203–204, 206, 211–212, 217
187–188, 196 lifeworlds 16–21, 41, 141, 216
grounded theory 28, 114, 124, 150, 160 linguistic turn 63, 69
group cohesion 134, 217 long-distance relationships 46, 51,
123, 220
habitus, family 142–143; of dual
orientation 143 masculinity 28, 30–31, 48
helicopter parenting 50 material culture 35, 37, 39, 41, 43, 220
home 3, 6, 11–12, 15, 16, 26, 35–37, 42, meaning 6, 17, 24–27, 32, 35, 38, 42, 47,
47–50, 52, 54, 80, 82, 88–89, 95, 99, 52, 54, 63–65, 68, 70, 74, 77, 80, 85, 89,
105, 118, 124–128, 131, 135–136, 96, 113, 116–117, 122–124, 136, 140,
138–141, 140–150, 152–155, 159–165, 154, 156, 167, 216–218, 221
167, 171–173, 176, 178 medial communication 137, 174
homecoming 182–184, 188–189 methods: mobile 4; qualitative 75–76, 216;
household 3–5, 11–13, 16, 20, 35, 40–42, visual 149, 206
51–52, 73–75, 78, 134–141, 143, 147, migration 3, 5, 35–36, 38–43, 48, 51, 53,
149, 163, 171, 172, 178, 181–182, 135, 179, 181–190, 215, 217, 219–220
184–188, 195, 217 mobile: apps 106; communication
technology 131; media 99–100, 217;
identity politics 6, 43, 73, 77, 219 technologies 99, 104, 106–107
imagination 19, 24, 29, 83, 100–103, 149 mobility 1, 3, 5, 13, 40–41, 47–48, 50–51,
information and communication 53, 73, 75, 77, 81, 88–89, 91–92, 96,
technology (ICT) 1, 46, 122, 174, 175 122, 124, 126, 129, 131, 134–135,
intention 25, 70, 100, 111, 154, 163 147–149, 172, 175, 177, 178, 179, 182,
interaction 6, 14–16, 18, 20, 24–25, 29, 36, 189, 216, 219, 221; mobilities: studies
39, 42, 52–53, 62, 74, 77, 91–92, 94–96, 91; turn 46–48
100, 112, 114, 117, 119, 122–127, modernity 23, 134
130–131, 139, 149, 172, 178, 206, 216 mother 6, 11–12, 14, 19, 28–31, 36,
intergenerational families 99 49–50, 52–53, 69, 78, 82, 135, 137–140,
interpretive patterns 26, 28, 31–32 142–143, 150–153, 159, 165, 167,
interpretive sociology of the family 24, 171–177, 182, 184–188, 195, 198–199,
31, 134 203, 209, 212, 219; motherhood 28–30,
interviews 4, 52, 65–66, 96, 124, 137–138, 50, 53, 208; mothering 54, 187
140, 142, 149, 151–152, 154, 203, 208; multi-local 2–3, 6, 46, 51–52, 73–75,
expert 28, 32; institution 13, 14, 20, 25, 79–82, 84, 88–89, 91–92, 96, 123, 134,
28, 31–32, 74, 76, 79, 149; narrative 20, 136, 138–140, 142–144, 147–152, 156,
65, 120, 123, 134, 138; problem-centred 171, 172, 174, 175, 176, 178, 179, 215;
134, 171; qualitative 65; semi-structured multi-localisation 134; multi-locality 1,
160, 167 6, 51, 54, 73, 79, 88, 96, 135, 147, 172
 Index  227
mundane 13, 18–19, 99–105; intimacy 99, room 116–117, 138, 155, 159–167, 174, 176,
103–104, 106–107 208, 210; children’s room 6, 150, 152
mythos 31 routine 38, 41, 49, 62, 75, 92, 102, 106–107,
112, 115, 140, 143, 149, 154–155, 174,
neighbourhood effects 46, 48, 219 176, 178, 182, 184, 200, 216
network 1, 4–5, 13, 17, 49, 73–88, 135,
154, 185, 189, 196, 204, 206; sanctuary 163, 166
(socio-spatial) game 73, 79, 80–84; sensory 100, 103, 107, 142, experience
maps 75–79, 83–84, 135 101; ethnography 99, 103–104;
normativity 112 encounter 6, 99, 107, 220
separation 2, 3, 5–6, 11, 23–31, 47, 51,
occupation 31, 52 53–54, 73, 75, 78–82, 89, 125, 129–130,
135–136, 138, 142–143, 147–149, 152,
parental relationship 157, 159–162, 170–172, 181, 216
parenthood 23–33; jointed 155 sexuality 6, 112, 114–120; sexual
participant observation 88 interaction/practice 112, 114, 117–119
partnership, dissolution of 171 shared custody 51, 134
personal relationship 1, 75, 134, 142 shared residence 6, 77–78, 80–81,
phenomenology 37, 43 134–135, 159–166, 171, 217–218
place 1, 3, 11–12, 17, 21, 24, 31, 37, 40, situatedness 37, 39, 112, 119
46–48, 51, 73–75, 78, 80–82, 88–93, situation 13, 25, 31, 35–36, 40, 69, 75,
101, 103, 107, 122–123, 125–126, 130, 89, 93, 95–96, 113, 127–128, 131, 149,
134–135, 138–139, 141, 148, 149–150, 161, 175, 212; everyday 151, 154, 156;
156, 160–163, 167, 176, 178, 181, face-to-face 18, 62–63; holiday 113,
192–193, 196, 198, 218 115–119; material 69; social 15–16, 18,
playground 192–197, 199–200, 218 63, 92; transitional 92
pluralization, plurality 2, 13, 134, 216 SKAD 27–28
polymedia 1, 174, 182 Skype 12, 15–16, 18, 106–107, 129,
postmigration 40–41 184–185, 187–188
practice 26, 28, 37, 40, 42, 64, 74, 91, social: arena 135–136, 216; construct 32,
103, 111,113, 143, 151, 171, 172, 176, 48, 73, 148, 189, 216; milieu 61, 63–64,
205, 209–210; aesthetic 206; bodily 69; space 1, 35–39, 41–42, 47, 74–75,
112, 118, 119; creative 156; material 88–89, 149, 154, 218
40; sexual 112, 115–116, 117, 119; socio-mental spaces 52
socio–spatial 88; spatial 38–39, 149; sociotope 135
territorialisation 138 space: cartesian 68; consumption 192–193,
pregnancy 6, 111–112, 119, 215 197–200; family 138, 188, 192; living 47,
presence 15–20, 53, 62, 91, 116, 122, 162, 204–205, 209, 211–212; mediated
124, 127, 136, 141, 154, 166, 171, 172; 185; performative 205, 209, 212
physical 12, 30, 123, 135, 182, 187; space semantics 67
situational 91 spatial: appropriation 82, 148–151,
procreation 111–113, 120, 217, 219 155–156; boundaries 143; constructions
pub 192–193, 197, 200, 218 151–152, 155–156; environment 37, 48,
113, 152; mismatches 48; turn 2, 46–47
qualitative methods 64, 73, 76–77, 84, 135, symbolic interactionism 24, 216
160, 216, 5 symbolic order 23–24, 26–27, 28, 31, 216
synthetic (social) situation 16, 18
rationality 111–112
remigration 181–184, 186, 188–189 temporality 14, 17, 106–107
remote parenting 179, 182 territorialisation practices 134, 136, 138,
representation 17, 25, 35, 38–39, 41, 47, 143, 155, 217, 219
100, 160, 204, 208, 212 theory: discourse 5, 23, 26–27, 32, 216,
response presence 16 220; family 25; practice 2, 4, 6, 61, 64,
reunification 40, 182–183, 184 111–113, 119–120, 216–218
228 Index
time-space distanciation 15 fathering 53, 54; social spaces
transformation 1, 41, 77, 184, 193, 5, 38, 41
197–199, 204, 206
transitional objects 142 video 88, 92–93, 94, 96, 99, 103–104,
transmigration 189 106–107, 129, 176
transnational, families 6, 40, 46, 53, videography 6, 88, 91–92, 94, 96
99–100, 105, 142, 181, 189, 221;
migration 3, 53, 182; mothering/ work and family intersections 49