Home Alone: Negotiating Domestic Life by Young Urban Solo Dwellers in Berlin and Seoul During the COVID-19 Pandemic1

Abstract

Not only isolation but also the expansion of digital social connectivity have led to radical changes in young urban solo dwellers’ everyday life at home in the pandemic. Comparing Berlin and Seoul, we found that contrasting pandemic policies and socio-cultural contexts of living alone implied different challenges related to “staying-at-home”. This interview-based study focuses on a period early into the pandemic 2020, and explores experiences of young urban solo dwellers in two cities, with the aim to identify changes in the meaning of home and implications for wider social patterns. Using the spatial figures of territory and network as conceptual basis, we identify contradicting logics in the pandemic policies and modes of domestic life, which posed distinctive challenges for young solo dwellers in each city. The findings suggest that renegotiating domestic life by solo dwellers in Berlin has led to compressed digital transition, and to compressed individualization in Seoul.