This commentary reflects on how the coronavirus has brought experiences of 'home' into public, policy and media debates. We suggest it has also revealed the significance of links between housing and home on the one hand and relationships and practices of care in the other. We explore these links and, in particular, the importance of intersectionalised inequalities in access to both home and care. We briefly discuss ways of conceptualising these linkages and seeing them as part of broader social and economic relations, arguing for further academic, popular and policy attention to be given to housing and care. KEYWORDS Home; housing; care; intersectionality; pandemic
Care, housing and home in a pandemicDuring the Covid-19 pandemic, 'home', has been brought to the centre of public, policy and media debates as never before (Brickell, 2020;Jupp & Bowlby, 2020), as governments across the world have asked populations to 'stay home'. Whilst figured as a simple instruction, the more complex and troubling realities of home have begun to seep into media discussions (eg, Taub, 2020) as well as being experienced within everyday lives in different and unequal ways. As we will go on to discuss, these complex and troubling realities of home are often tied up with questions of care.In considering 'matters of care', Puig de la Bellacasa (2017) suggests the need to think 'with touch' as a way to explore the ethics and politics of care. An appropriate metaphor to use at this moment might be thinking about how pressing down onto a surface can reveal its qualities, as when printing or rubbing (see Figure 1). As the home comes under pressure, as it becomes a more intense site of our everyday lives, qualities and aspects CONTACT Sophie Bowlby