Absence Of Home Research Articles

“Where is Home?” Perceptions of Home and Future among Ukrainian Refugees in Norway

Abstract This article illuminates how Ukrainian refugees residing in Norway perceive “home” in spatial and temporal dimensions. By synthesising the “here and there” dichotomy with the concept of “home constellations”, the authors elaborate a theoretical scheme illustrating the nuanced and multifaceted notions of home that emerged during interviews conducted with Ukrainian refugees in Norway in 2022–2023. The variety of home notions reveals at least four possible scenarios of interactions between “home A” and “home B”: (1) Home “where I am from” (home A in Ukraine); (2) Home “where I am now” (home B in Norway); (3) Double home (both home A and home B); (4) Absence of home (no home). This article shows that Ukrainian refugees’ “homing desire” to create, feel, and believe in a home existing in the present serves to overcome the multilevel uncertainties of the future caused by the temporary nature of collective protection and the unknown prospects of a safe return to their homeland.

Finding Home: The Experience of Home on Journeys Away from Intimate Partner Violence

Abstract Violence in the intimate sphere can send women and children out of their homes and onto journeys over vast geographical distances and into various forms of temporary accommodation. When women and children are displaced like this, they have to settle and re-settle on their complex journeys away from intimate partner violence. This article shows that not all these places will be or become home and that the absence of home can entail different forms of distress, such as fear, alienation and despondency. The concept of home is (re)emerging in social work. By employing a threefold understanding of home as a physical place, a feeling and a practice, this article offers new insights into the role of home in the recovery process of women and children subjected to violence. Home is an essential place for adults and children. Therefore, this article argues that home is an important concept for social workers working with families subjected to violence, as finding home can be a central part of the recovery process. This article is based on data from two studies on families experiencing intimate partner violence, drawing on fieldwork at a women’s shelter and on semi-structured interviews with women and children.

Crafty Kids: "Hansel and Gretel" and the Survival of the Cleverest

Parental abandonment, starvation, and exposure to predators are well-known motifs in The Brothers Grimm's "Hansel and Gretel" (1812), which belongs to the ATU 327 tale type. ATU 327 tales pit young, vulnerable protagonists against the cruelty of parents and the brutality of strangers. These stories are usually framed as a celebration of children's craftiness and resourceful use of language. With the central theme of the power of language to persuade, various versions of the fairy tale "Hansel and Gretel" offer multiple ways to engage students as literary scholars and critical thinkers. This paper compares five classic ATU 327 versions with three contemporary retellings: Emma Donoghue's "The Tale of the Cottage" (1997), Megan Engelhardt "A Mouth to Speak the Coming Home" (2013), and Louise Murphy's novel The True Story of Hansel and Gretel (2003). In analyzing how the absence of home, food, and parental love and protection force Hansel and Gretel to become self-reliant in the classic versions, it is evident that contemporary retellings take a much more critical look at what parental neglect may mean for the child protagonists. Discussion of Bruno Bettelheim's interpretation of "Hansel and Gretel" in conjunction with more recent scholarship on this tale type provides perspectives on how students interpret ATU 327 stories in historical and social contexts.

Not a home: Shelter families living in Canadian motels

Given the precarity and mobility of neoliberalism, there has been increasing interest into constructs of ‘home’. In this article, the author defines ‘home’ as an active and relational process encompassing interactions between materiality and immateriality. Participant observation research conducted amongst shelter families in Toronto, Canada, living in motels can shed light on some of these larger global conversations about what ‘home’ is, and particularly, what it is not. These motels are utilized as part of the City of Toronto Shelter, Support and Housing Administration providing free shelter to impoverished families in need. Social workers, shelter managers and local faith group volunteers assert that the motels should be considered ‘home’ and the problem is that the women living in the motels with their children treat the physical space as transitory. In contrast, the women assert that the motel space is not a home and can never be made into one. The author argues that for these women, there are three critical elements missing in the motel: control over space, safety/security and privacy. The assertion that the motel space is not a home is a significant form of resistance to the regulatory bureaucratic structuring of daily life. However, despite this absence of home, the women feel strong identification as mothers and have formed systems of informal shared networks. This research helps to further illuminate not only our understandings of ‘home’, but also deepen and complicate normative associations equating ‘home’ with physical structure, domesticity and family.

Mechanisms to Enhance Users’ Responsibility on Social Networks’ and Preventing Cyber Terrorism

This research aims to identify the effective mechanisms in enhancing the moral and social responsibility of users of social networks and practical steps to reduce the publications of extremism and terrorism. The research is a descriptive one, which adopts analytical research comparisons of the questionnaire tool distributed to 95 public opinion leaders. The research finds:
 
 1. One of the main causes of cyber terrorism is the lack of self-censorship and the absence of home and school roles in the control of children.
 
 2. One of the most important dangers of cyber terrorism is spreading the extremist ideas, especially among young for exploitation in terrorist operations.
 
 3. One of the most effective mechanisms for enhancing the ethical and social responsibility of users of social networks is carrying the State and the school the responsibility to promote social responsibility to counter the phenomenon of cyber terrorism

Making sense of absence

Based on Tsai Ming-liang's cinematic portrayals of cities, I argue for consideration and appreciation of artistic devices in our thinking and writing on cities. Specifically, I look into four types of absence the Taiwanese director engages with: absence of movement, absence of speech, absence of home and absence of infrastructure. Tsai depicts absence by extrapolating what seem to be inherent elements of an urban situation or an urban setting thus disrupting their taken-for-grantedness. Tsai's multi-layered preoccupation with the notion of absence and the visual language he develops to talk about it may be inspiring for urban researchers, especially those among us working with visual methods. After introducing his work and elaborating on its urban contexts, I will investigate Tsai Ming-liang's use of absence as a method of inquiring into various aspects of urban life, particularly those involving interactions with infrastructure. In the spirit of interdisciplinary and inclusive thinking promoted by City, I will conclude by reiterating the validity of cinema—among other arts—as a tool for critical reflection on cities.

No way home: silence, slowness and the problem of authenticity in the cinema of Lisandro Alonso

In his trilogy, comprising La Libertad (2001), Los Muertos (2004) and Liverpool (2008), Argentinian director Lisandro Alonso employs a distinctive narrative motif, namely the journey of solitary individuals through desolated landscapes in rural Argentina. From a comparative view, the key to understanding these introverted trajectories is to consider Alonso’s construction of narrative space around the misery of a stark void, namely the absence of home. For Alonso, home is not a peaceful destination, connoting the intimacy of a family, serenity or simply a place where one is allowed to dream in peace (Bachelard). The absence of home becomes the blind spot of these journeys: home turns out to be a broken horizon. In this essay I will mainly focus on the film Los Muertos and the way in which it radicalizes narrative space through the combination of cinematic silence (absence of words and dialogues) and cinematic slowness (static long-takes) while formulating a void which coincides with the protagonist’s homelessness. Moreover, this essay tries to consider how Alonso’s radical cinematic realism problematizes the concept of authenticity in its modern formation, and also in the context of Rancière’s notion of documentary fiction and the relationship between aesthetics and politics.

Imaginary ‘Homeland’ and Constitution of a Collective Identity in Diasporic Experiences: An Analysis of The Hundred Secret Senses by Amy Tan

In most contemporary memory narratives that deal with diasporic experiences, the concept of ‘home’ becomes a semiotic site, in which the fluctuating images of past are in a perpetual conflict to make sense. Absence of home generates a rich ground of creativity for migratory subjects to construct an imaginary homeland, based on their present contingent socio- cultural paradigms. Formulation of fluxing, disintegrated sets of imagery of native land would transcend the national geographical boundaries; thus, a new communal identity is constructed amongst migrant communities, which is fashioned by a universal, humane sense of belonging; generally, it is a diasporic individuality that is liberated from absolute national prejudices. In diasporic portrayal of remote homeland, unlike the exilic mystified or stigmatized presentation of precedent, ‘home’ is constructed by creative innovatory, progressive interaction of past, present and future to gratify the social and individual demands. Usually, diasporic picture of home is exposed to a conscious strategy of oblivion; whereas, in the case of exilic subjects, there is a rigidified image of homeland. This would intensify the proliferation of falsified, invented picturing of home, in migration genre. These pictures are the product of a confused sense of moral commitment to preserve national heritage and a desire to be part of the dominant host culture. The present essay seeks to explore the heterogeneous procedure of constitution of collective identity in Amy Tan’s The Hundred Secret Senses, based on the artistic representation of homeland. This fabricated pristine, identity defies the national borders and enjoys a certain amount of autonomy from established definitions of homeland, which are geographical- bound. DOI: 10.5901/mjss.2013.v4n14p385

Children Dwelling in the Absence of Home

The lived experience of children dwelling in the absence of home is explored through the memoirs of Haddy, who as a child of four moved with her family from Fiji to Canada. The recollections of some refugee children along with situations from the author’s own life appear more nominally. The feeling of at-homeness, the act of leaving home, the experience of arriving in a new place, and making a new home are considered. Schutz’s (1971) notion of the ‘stranger’ is applied to children living on the margin as they learn to be at ease in their new world (Lugones, 1987). The significance of language in the everyday lived experience of home (Heidegger, 1971) is also discussed. Moreover, Husserl’s homeworld/alienworld dialectic as opened up by Steinbock (1995) is considered in some depth. The co-arising and interdependent nature of homeworld/alienworld is presented as essential to gaining insight into the lived experience of children between homes. Pedagogical considerations suggested for early learning and care settings include but are not limited to creating environments where homeworld/alienworld encounters can be lived out in rich and meaningful ways, promoting active engagement with difference and diversity, providing for home language and dominant language use, the establishment of homecomrade connections, and instilling a focus on the reciprocity of care for the other.

Transitions Through Homelessness: Lives on the Edge

Introduction In the Absence of Home: Understanding Homelessness Emotional and Material Landscapes of Life Becoming a Homeless Person Being a Homeless Person Homelessness, Social Welfare and 'Targeted Populations' Homelessness, Identity and Social Networks Conclusion: Lives on the Edge?

Home and child safety on reality television

Injuries, many of which occur at home, are the leading cause of death for children. With such an extensive problem, it is natural to look for outlets such as mass media to reach large numbers of families with educational messages about safety and injury prevention. Mass media has been widely used to educate people about health issues. While studies have examined the portrayal of topics such as substance use and sexual behavior, no study has looked at media content about home and child safety practices. A pilot study with a sample of 10 television shows about home renovation, children or families was examined using content analysis for the presence or absence of home and child safety practices and products and discussion of injury topics. Most practices, like checking the water temperature when bathing a child or having smoke alarms, were never discussed or shown. Results suggest these shows provide information about home or family life, but few role models are shown offering information or examples of safe practices. Promoting safety information in these television programs may be a potentially important way to educate a large number of people, and feasibility of adding safety information to such shows should be explored.

Hart, M. and M. Ben-Yoseph (Eds.). PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLITICAL AND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF HOME

Hart, M. and M. Ben-Yoseph (Eds.). PSYCHOLOGICAL, POLITICALAND CULTURAL MEANINGS OF HOME. New York: Haworth Press, 2005.The analysis of has received relatively less attention in the social sciences than in the arts where literature, painting and music have given voice, colour and sound to the meaning of in different cultures throughout the ages. For that reason, I was keen to read what the contributors (all from DePaul University in Chicago) wrote about the psychological, political and cultural of home.The two editors, Mechthild Hart, a Professor of Education, and Miriam Ben-Yoseph, also an education specialist, wrote the introduction Shifting meanings of home and put together this collection of ten papers. The book was published concurrently as a set of articles in the Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community (Volume 30 Numbers 1 -2,2005). addition to the introductory chapter there are nine substantive chapters.Chapter 2 Facing aliens under globalization: changing meanings of for employers of foreign domestics is a discussion of the situation of 12 foreign domestic and their employers in Taipei by sociologist SJ. A. Cheng. While the 12 cases were described in detail, they do not justify Cheng's generalization of her findings to all Taiwanese employers of domestic workers (p.24).Chapter 3 Home as a locus of work and career by management specialist Lisa K. Gundry is a review of selected studies and statistics on the American trend to locate one's office at and offers some suggestions on pitfalls to avoid and things to do when moving your office home. Unfortunately, this orientation of the chapter sets it apart from the other contributions as it is the only chapter that addresses potential home-office owners and offers recommendations.The fourth chapter presents an unusual and absorbing topic: Convents as homes. The author, Enrique A. Arias, writing as a music historian, wrote a well-documented historical depiction of the convent or monastery as centre of Gregorian music and convent inhabitants as people dedicated to the artistic expression of worship through music. The author's erudite comments gave me the impression that he had much more knowledge to share. The editor indicated that this piece was part of Arias' larger study on the role of Gregorian chant. Regrettably, E.A. Arias passed away when the volume went into print.Educationist Ann F. Stanford discusses the prison as in Chapter 5 Where love flies free: women, and writing in Cook County Jail. Stanford relates her own experiences running creative writing (mainly poetry) workshops for inmates mainly in terms of the impact that the close contact with prison life has had on her own ideas of house and home.Chapter 6 follows the same theme of creative writing. Entitled In the absence of home: the meaning of homelessness it was written by Susanne M. Dumbleton, also an education specialist. This chapter focuses on how imaginative writers can give voice to the (pp. 58-59) in the way they present the homeless in fiction. Dumbleton illustrates her point with numerous lengthy quotations from a few celebrated American fiction writers. …

In the Absence of Home

SUMMARY Sociologists, economists, social workers, and psychologists provide data and analyses of the human calamity of homelessness. The general public can seem indifferent to such reports, perhaps overwhelmed by the intractability and scope of the problem. This essay describes how writers can give voice to the homeless by telling the story of individual people. Novelists, who use imagination to envision the interior life of the single homeless person, are particularly powerful. They create a negative image that contains all the essential elements of home, enabling readers to create in their own imagination the reality of what it means to live on the outside.

Cost savings from home and community-based services: Arizona's capitated Medicaid long-term care program.

The Arizona Long-Term Care System is the first capitated, long-term care Medicaid program in the nation to operate statewide. It promotes an extensive home and community-based services program intended to lower long-term care costs by substituting home care for institutional care. Because the program is statewide, finding a suitable control group to evaluate it was a serious problem. A substitute strategy was chosen that compares actual costs incurred to an estimate of what costs would have been in the absence of home and community-based (HCB) services. To estimate the likelihood of institutionalizing clients in the absence of HCB services, coefficients for institutionalization risk factors were estimated in a logistic regression model developed using national data. These were applied to characteristics of Arizona clients. The model assigned approximately 75 percent of the program's clients to a category with traits that were determined to resemble nursing home residents' traits. A similar methodology was used to estimate lengths of nursing home stays. Lengths of stay by the program's nursing home patients were regressed on their characteristics using an event history analysis model. Coefficients for these characteristics from the regression analysis were then applied to HCB services clients to estimate how long their nursing home stays would have lasted, had they been institutionalized. These estimated nursing home stays were generally shorter than these same patients' observed home and community stays. Risk of institutionalization was then multiplied by estimated length of stay and by monthly nursing home costs to estimate what costs would have been without the HCB services option. The expected costs were compared to actual costs to judge cost savings. Home and community-based services appeared to save substantial amounts on costs of nursing home care. Estimates of savings were very robust and did not appear to be declining as the program matured. Savings probably came from several sources: the assessment teams that judged client eligibility were employed by a state agency and thus were independent from the program contractors; clients were required to be in need of at least a three-month nursing home stay; a cap was placed on the number of HCB services clients contractors were allowed to serve each month; the capitated payment methodology forced managed care contractors to hold down average HCB services costs or lose money; and the HCB services and nursing home costs were blended in the capitated rate, so that plans that failed to place clients in HCB services would lose money by using more nursing home days than their monthly capitated rate allowed.