Growing precarity in the UK: An examination into the everyday lived experiences of homesharers

Abstract

Enduring neoliberalism has made life in the UK increasingly precarious. The housing market is overstretched, access to care provision has been termed a ‘postcode lottery’ and levels of loneliness continue to rise. During the current COVID-19 pandemic, these issues have been exacerbated and insecurity and uncertainty have become more pervasive. As the UK enters its second decade of austerity, alternative models of care and housing provision are arising and UK
homeshare is one such model. Homeshare involves an older adult with a spare room being matched with a younger person who completes ten hours of informal care tasks for the older person per week (activities such as cooking, cleaning and providing companionship). Both the older adult with the spare bedroom and the younger adult completing the care tasks pay a monthly fee to a homeshare organisation who arrange homeshare matches and provide ongoing
support.
UK homeshare has been portrayed by homeshare organisations, the media and
policymakers as a solution to the UK’s housing, care and loneliness crises. Through understanding the everyday lived experiences of homesharers, this thesis examines if this portrayal is in line with homesharer experiences or if, like other so-called crisis solutions, homeshare actually works to contribute to growing precarity in the UK. The data within this thesis comes from 16 in-depth
interviews with homesharers (and 2 interviews with the daughters of older homesharers). This thesis examines homesharing through the lens of everyday lived experience and provides key insight into how precarity is entwined into the everyday for homesharers.
Firstly, I explore people’s motivations for homesharing, examining the making, unmaking and remaking of homes. In doing so, I analyse a central characteristic of participants’ homeshares: insecurity. This shows how in coming to homeshare, people attempt to navigate uncertain situations and precarity. Secondly, I examine co-homesharer relationships, analysing if these can
provide important social bonds in challenging times, and questioning if relationships built out of requirement can be valuable or lasting. Finally, I focus on the labour involved in homesharing, considering what this means in terms of precarity for homesharers and exposing the hidden labour that is involved in homesharing. Overall, the findings of this thesis provide an original
contribution to geographical and sociological scholarship into precarity, exploring how precarity interweaves into everyday life, actions, feelings, decisions and relationships – vital research in an increasingly precarious society.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Rosalind Edwards: orcid.org/0000-0002-3512-9029

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