Governing homeless mothers: the unmaking of home and family

Abstract

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