FIVE

The Contested Home
Harriet Shortt and Michal Izak

While working from home is claimed to alleviate problems

including work–​life balance and commuting, the COVID-​19
pandemic has undeniably provided us with a more nuanced
understanding of using our homes for work. This enforced
live experiment has helped expose how we interact with our
private spaces. Thrust into appropriating dining rooms as
classrooms and kitchen tables as meeting rooms, we suddenly
found ourselves in a space with multiple meanings and uses.
What was once private was made (partly) public and the
boundaries of work and home were broken and re-​established.
These new ways of working have provoked questions about
how, why and where we work: how has being ‘on show’ in our
homes on Zoom positively contributed to our relationships at
work (or not)? How have control and monitoring measures
been reshuffled, and how has it affected boundary making
while working from home? How have the liminal spaces in
our homes –​stairs, hallways, rooftops –​offered newfound and
important places of work, rest and play?
This chapter explores the spatial complexities of working
from home in a crisis and how we can learn from this to
better enable people to work from home in the future. Using
stories from UK and European workers, we reflect on how
the COVID-​19 emergency forced many of us to set up home
working spaces overnight, and how this has fundamentally
changed how we understand and use our homes for work.
Some of these stories have been gathered from workers  –​
colleagues, networks and friends –​all of whom have shared

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photographs and narratives of their experiences with us over

the past nine weeks. Others come from our recent visual
analysis of images posted on social media platforms, such as
Instagram, during the crisis.

Visibility/​vulnerability

The domestic environment is more visible now and these

spaces are typically private, often places of care for ourselves
and others close to us (see Chapters Three and Four). During
COVID-​19, our homes have been opened as public spaces to
be shared with others –​particularly in relation to video calls
and the explosive use of Zoom and other communication
tools. This makes the home a contested space with multiple
meanings and in which competing interests play out.1 In the
images shared with us during our conversations with workers,
we have been struck by the juxtaposition of ephemera and
paraphernalia of all parts of our lives. Loaves of bread and
pets, laptops and children, schoolwork and garden hammocks
sit cheek by jowl in these photographs, each representing
the complexities of working from home and ‘juggling it all’.
And what is made visible in the home matters, and matters
to people for different reasons.
A quality leader working for an American corporate took a
photograph of his laptop screen during a Zoom call and told us:

‘I think Zoom is great, but you can tell we aren’t used

to this way of working. We’re all too interested in what’s
on the shelves of people’s homes, what our colleagues’
homes are like, what’s on the walls, where are they sitting.
We’re spending more time looking at the background
than listening!’

An academic working in Bristol took a photograph of his

desk at home, with his cat curled up on his shoulder and said:

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‘This sums it up for me really. I think it’s been great to see

people as people y’know. I’ve seen colleagues and their
kids, their pets, they’ve had to turn off beeping washing
machines in the middle of a meeting, answer the door.
It’s funny, but it’s real life and I like seeing that and I feel
like I’m getting to know my colleagues better now we’re
apart, which is really interesting.’

What is seen and heard in the backdrop of work-​based online

video calls gives the impression of everydayness and for some this
has been beneficial to workplace relationships. The vulnerable
‘real me’ has been revealed and there is arguably social value
in seeing the ordinary things of others. The disparate objects
of work –​such as drinks, clothes, animals –​are now on show.
From this extraordinary experience co-​workers have become
humanized and as a result we might argue that barriers between
people have been broken. A  post-​COVID-​19 world might
mean that previously formal, hardened relationships, where
bringing emotions and ‘life’ to work were discouraged, will
now be modified and contain an appreciation of the mess,
struggle and balance of everyday life.
However, this is a double-​edged sword –​this new wave of
visibility/​vulnerability has affected people differently. During
the crisis, the exposure of the home –​a place of shelter, retreat
and solitude2 and one that usually remains hidden unless we
are invited in  –​has meant lots of people have been invited
in, including those we would never choose to invite into our
homes: strangers, students and colleagues we might not like
very much.
As much as some may feel closer to colleagues, others feel
exposed and that their place of retreat from work has been
infringed. In addition, this flips the power balance: if you are a
manager, it may not be easy to lead a wide-​scale restructuring
project when you have a cat sitting on your shoulder and a
child coming into view every few minutes. Indeed, the new

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‘Room Rater’ Twitter account has just been set up to feed this
new sense of voyeurism –​people can (brutally) comment on
the backdrops and interiors of the rich and famous.3 We might
argue, then, that the (potential) legitimacy once found in the
office (or position of power) becomes contested through this
visual rebalancing of power relationships, now brought down
to the backdrop of one’s bedroom or kitchen table.
Even Harriet’s five-​year-​old daughter commented on the
home of her teacher during an online video lesson:

‘Is that Miss Hubbard’s kitchen? It’s a very pretty kitchen.

I like the colour of the tiles.’

Out of this experience, Miss Hubbard may emerge to be, to

Harriet’s daughter, more likeable and the rapport between
them (and perhaps the parents too) may be enriched. However,
we might question whether this will this compromise Miss
Hubbard’s capacity to be the formal teacher figure Harriet’s
daughter is used to. The exposure of the home and the sights
and sounds it offers could affect power relations in organizations
in unexpected ways as well. When we return to work, we might
want to be conscious of what people have seen and heard, and
how this might be remembered. Privacy has been breached and
the balance of power might have been subtly tampered with.

Liminal spaces

Privacy and rest at work are found in liminal spaces. As we

have found in our previous research,4 liminal spaces –​defined
as somewhere that is on the ‘border’, a space somewhere
in-​between the front stage and back stage –​such as toilets,
corridors, stairwells and corners, are frequently used by
workers. These vital spaces are used to escape the visibility
of the office or shared workspace and become important
territories for private conversations, quiet reflection, and
inspiration and creativity.

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 The Contested Home

Working ​from ​home during COVID-​19 has shed light on

the liminal spaces of our homes  –​corners and crevices of
domestic spaces have emerged as unexpectedly useful. As a
response to lockdown, we have seen how territories on the
margins of dominant spaces of our homes (those we have
defined uses for, like living rooms or kitchens), are now in
regular use in new ways.
One entrepreneur we are working with sent us a photograph
of her on the roof of her house.

‘This is the only place I can get some rest … some peace
and quiet. This is where I can just breathe for a minute.
It’s a beautiful view and a lovely skyline, all the trees and
rooftops. I love being up here, I might do this more often.’

Liminal spaces are helping us, just as they do in the office, to

find private quiet moments of respite from family, technology
and being on show. The ability to reflect and make sense of
the day is being sought in the corners of homes and liminal
spaces are being used in the practice of self-​care.
For others, liminal spaces are now appropriated as new
workspaces. For example, from our visual analysis of hairdressers
adapting to working from home, toilets and cupboards are now
hair salons, from which stylists across the UK are filming ‘how
to …’ demonstrations and posting these on Instagram. One
celebrity hairstylist in London is seen in a walk-​in-​wardrobe
demonstrating an up-​do with their wife as a model. Another
hairstylist in Wales is pictured in a hallway by the mirror
demonstrating how to do a boy’s haircut (son as model).
Another stylist in London is filmed in a toilet demonstrating
a guide to toning your hair at home (self as model).
Perhaps this is a response to the vulnerability through
visibility mentioned earlier; the use of a liminal space  –​a
space in-​between –​avoids the exposure of dominant parts of
the hairdressers’ own homes, allowing them to reconnect with
clients without compromising privacy.

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On the other hand, we have seen how liminal spaces are

being appropriated for play during our home-​based lockdown.
An academic in Bath, working full-​time and home schooling
a four-​year-​old said:

‘I’ve seen my daughter make a den on the stairs, under

the stairs, under the table in the dining room, in the
hallway, on the landing. Dens have been built in every
nook of this house over the past few weeks!’

From this we might learn more about children’s needs for

privacy/​ownership over space. Children compromise all the
time in relation to space, with their bedrooms perhaps being
the only haven they might have in a home, and even then
parents place restrictions on these places –​no food, no drink,
tidy up, make your bed. It is no wonder that children, while in
lockdown with their parents who are desperately seeking their
own spaces and managing boundaries for work/​home life, are
claiming snippets of space and drawing new boundaries for
themselves –​even if it is just a few steps on a stairway.
Corners are ‘a symbol of solitude for the imagination’5 and
reappropriations of these spaces have perhaps always reflected
the malleable ways our boundaries are drawn. However,
during lockdown those boundaries are more prone to being
fundamentally contested, enabling –​as the spaces that were in
our peripheral vision now come into full view and full use –​
new patterns of spatial liminality to be formed. As rules are
being rewritten, new agreements will be made and home/​
work trade-​offs may be reimagined, drawing on the creative
potential of spaces in-​between. Transitory as current changes
may be, we are unlikely to resume where we left off.

Control/​monitoring

During this crisis, organizations and leadership teams have

been exposed. Their ability (or sometimes lack thereof) to

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recognize the human working from home and show that they
understand the complexities of boundary making and breaking
is often evident in their responses to staff.
The ways employers’ monitoring strategies affect our work
life when working from home vary in how intrusive they are –​
these are usually connected to how accustomed an employer
is to the concept of home working. Good practice abounds,
and we have been reassured to hear about organizations in
the current climate accommodating the surplus pressure
home working may exert on some employees, for example,
designating certain days in the working week as catch-​up days,
when no new work is allocated. In a recent email from a senior
member of a public sector leadership team, staff were reminded:

Like many of you I’m attempting to juggle home

schooling, childcare and work. There are times when it
has made me incredibly anxious and other times, I’ve felt
privileged to see my children. We’ve all had bad weeks and
good weeks so hang on in there, next week will be better.

For those organizations that did not think it was possible

to work from home, stuck in ‘presenteeism’ culture where
visibility was key, we now see a turn in the tide and new
acknowledgements that working from home is possible.
A senior partner in a Bristol law firm told us she feels warmer
towards working from home now she has experienced it:

‘I have always preferred having my team in the office …

but now, after experiencing how effective people can
be, how much they enjoy their own space, I feel very
differently. When life returns to normal, I will be open
to allowing each of my team one or two days a week to
work from home.’

On the other hand, trust recently became an issue for

many employers:  there are media reports documenting the

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enforcement of employee’ readiness in the hours required by

organizing remote video calls at the beginning and end of the
day and/​or monitoring activity on a constant basis.6 Similarly,
others were asked to write daily journals describing their
working day at home to evidence the process of achieving daily
goals, on top of delivering actual output. All these instances
of control were reported –​often directly by our friends and
family members –​as obstacles to effective home working.
This increase of remote scrutiny at all cost emerged when
more direct modes of control in the office context diminished
(or disappeared) almost overnight. As many organizations
found the ground to be shifting, they responded with various
measures of intensified control, often hectically shedding off
more nuanced manners of remote oversight, frequently with
limited (or no) sensitivity.
One young mother working in the public sector, who has
two children under six and a husband who works away from
home told us:

‘… my boss today, on our Zoom call, gave us all a

bollocking and reminded me “you’re not on leave and
this not an excuse to watch Netflix and play puzzles all
day” … I mean really? He just has no idea. I sat there
crying after the call.’

It seems COVID-​19 has provided some leaders with the excuse

to be an “A-​grade prick” as our young mother later described
him. Indeed, home-​working monitoring devices seem to have
extended the legitimacy of leaders’ ‘A-​g rade prick-​ness’ to a
whole new level. Before COVID-​19 some organizations were
highly concerned with spying on employees in the name of
productivity –​now this seems to have increased. For instance,
some organizations are far more interested in the location of
their employees rather than their output; we have witnessed
first-​hand reports from a local government institution in which
home workers are requested to send selfies taken in home

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surroundings to their managers at varying times of day, within a

narrow 20-​minute timeframe from being asked by email to do
so. Another large public sector organization enforces constant
availability for instant messaging (and calling).
This is yet another arena in which our home is contested.
The enforced lockdown endowed the process of liquefying
home/​work boundaries with a new ally helping to legitimize
both stringent monitoring and control measures, as well as
normalizing working from home more broadly.

The home of the future

While some of the scenarios described here may suggest a grim

picture of days recent and to come, other stories have pointed
towards positive change. The point is to reflect on and learn
from the increased overflow between work and private life –​
treating ‘the contested home’ as food for thought.
The crisis will have changed us, and we think that we will
find ourselves in homes that will only superficially seem
identical to the way they were before. We may notice that
our own private ‘territories’, both spatially and temporally, are
now shared, or alternatively, have been reappropriated, first by
those we cohabit them with. Such reshufflings may include
‘takeovers’ or instances of subtly negotiated shifts of ownership;
some of the rituals that involved specific times and spaces may
need to give way to new ones. Yet, this is where the two-​way
nature of contestation may open whole new territories and
perhaps new rituals and settlements will be created. Liminal
spaces may certainly be our allies, easing the transition between
old and new as many of them are all around us and are now
up for grabs.
Second is the impact of work itself. The extent to which
we invite work into our private life may shift. Once allowed
in, some snippets of work are likely to stay, for some time at
least, if only through our colleagues’ memories of our private
home spaces witnessed during a Zoom call, or via tacit

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acquiescence with the possibility of working at night after

much of the traditional working day has perhaps been spent
home schooling, or gardening. Yet, this too is a two-​way-​street;
we have most likely witnessed similarly unmade beds during
those calls (so colleagues can be rendered just as vulnerable as
we are), and the possibility of deciding when work is performed
has obvious advantages as well (if only by freeing time to pursue
‘unproductive’ interests when one wishes).
This, however, brings us to the third way in which homes are
contested –​by external monitoring and control. The manners
of snooping on or directly disciplining employees that have
emerged and/​or intensified during the lockdown are perhaps
the least negotiable and potentially most objectionable aspect of
our post-​COVID-​19 work lives. And yet, we can also consider
the inefficiencies that such oversight entails in the long run;
direct scrutiny of home workers is costly to organizations,
unless employees self-​scrutinize and practice self-​control just
as efficiently. This, however, shifts the initiative to the workers
themselves, as noted previously. Since many people already
work at home and a large-​scale return to office work was
unlikely even before COVID-​19 and is even less likely now,
our remote working spaces –​often our homes –​are where the
contest for the times and spaces of control will take place. And
our sofas, cats, children and kitchen tables will all be involved.

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