Search/ing for missing people: Families living with ambiguous absence

Hester Parr,Olivia Stevenson,Penny Woolnough

doi:10.1016/j.emospa.2015.09.004

Hester Parr, Olivia Stevenson + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.emospa.2015.09.004

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Abstract

Families of missing people are often understood as inhabiting a particular space of ambiguity, captured in the phrase ‘living in limbo’ (Holmes, 2008). To explore this uncertain ground, we interviewed 25 family members to consider how human absence is acted upon and not just felt within this space ‘in between’ grief and loss (Wayland, 2007). In the paper, we represent families as active agents in spatial stories of ‘living in limbo’, and we provide insights into the diverse strategies of search/ing (technical, physical and emotional) in which they engage to locate either their missing member or news of them. Responses to absence are shown to be intimately bound up with unstable spatial knowledges of the missing person and emotional actions that are subject to change over time. We suggest that practices of search are not just locative actions, but act as transformative processes providing insights into how families inhabit emotional dynamism and transition in response to the on-going ‘missing situation’ and ambiguous loss (Boss, 1999, 2013).

Highlights

Families of missing people are often understood as inhabiting a particular space of ambiguity, captured in the phrase ‘living in limbo’ (Holmes, 2008)
This paper considers what emotive actions accumulate in the space of absence for the people left behind, drawing on a funded research project in which UK families1 were interviewed about their experience of living with the absence of, and search for, their missing people
In this paper we recognise that there are different spatialities of search/ing which are related to the ambiguous loss that accompanies the search for a missing person

Summary

Introduction

“His last words to us were ‘I'm off, see you tonight’ ” (Charlotte, mother of Paul, missing for 3 years and still missing). We disrupt a straightforward story of the freezing capacity of loss in relation to missing people, identifying the many ways whereby families are active agents in responding to this particular kind of absence In this way we are highlighting how people might manage ambiguity, and elaborate Boss's work ( explored further below) as she rejects ‘stages’ or ‘steps’ of recovery from ambiguous loss, while pointing researchers towards ‘movement, paradoxical possibilities of change, and diverse paths to resiliency’ The paper concludes by suggesting that families of long term missing people find new ways to live with ambiguous loss closely connected to changing search experiences and evolving emotional geographies of human absence (and see Parr and Stevenson, 2014)

Ambiguous loss and missing people

Findings

Conclusion