Changing spatialities of homes in post-COVID-19 working-from-home practices: A Lefebvrean perspective

The conceptual separation of home and work, central to the cultural history of housing in most modern westernized countries, has been blurred by the COVID-19 pandemic, which has introduced working from home to many households. Using the lens of Lefebvre, this paper contributes to the ethnographic investigation of how households negotiate the ambiguity of time and space at home in post-lockdown working-from-home practices. The paper shows that (1) the stronger the spatial ambiguity, the more important temporal demarcation becomes, especially by the end of the workday; (2) household work is often included in work practices, and as such it bridges home and work while also keeping the homeworker “in place”; and yet (3) the domination of home also influences the way work is done, materialized, and understood. This suggests that working from home is not only a matter of flexibility and freedom, but an activity embedded in powerful spatial and temporal practices of home.