[OPINION] Rethinking home in the middle of a pandemic

In the past weeks, home has been a key idea in the government’s public policies and pronouncements. Speeches and articles online have been urging the public to stay home to save lives. But what is home? The word “home” tugs at the hearts of people, evokes feelings of safety and belongingness, and offers images of warmth and intimacy. At least, that’s what I presumed. 

This is one of the best times to rethink home.

The varying notions and imaginaries of “home” have been central to my current research. After becoming acquainted with the works of scholars on home and doing fieldwork in underprivileged areas, I realized that the pleasant feelings I once attached to my ideas and notions of home have been greatly influenced and shaped by my social class and relatively comfortable background. I took for granted the fact that the connection between the words “home” and “comfort” may not be easily discernible to the urban poor, survivors of domestic abuse, and of course, those who do not have a house to begin with. We do not experience “home” in the same ways. This is especially apparent in today’s global health crisis, and more so in the Philippine context. (READ: Duterte extends Luzon lockdown until April 30)

Crises, such as the one occasioned by the pandemic, highlights the realities and potentials of a situation. Is home a structure, a house? Or is it the sum of all our kinship ties and social relationships? Is it much more than that?

Home as/is a workplace

A deluge of articles and tips on how to efficiently work from home amid the pandemic has proliferated on the internet. But it’s important to ask: Even before this crisis, hasn’t home already been a workplace for women? For ages, women and mothers have been generally expected by society-at-large to fulfill home-making duties and care work. This has worked to the benefit of governments which fail in providing basic social services, and employers who give wages enough only for the barest minimum needs. 

Now that the crisis imposes on everyone the demand to stay home, women from middle class and poor families will most likely bear the brunt of this public health emergency. The Filipino middle class mother is likely to struggle with carrying out work tasks and attending Zoom meetings, all while tending to her children, worrying about lunch, or worse, getting laid off from work, and thinking about the next anxiety-inducing grocery trip. 

Meanwhile, the urban poor mother might be stuck in a downward spiral of restlessness. We can imagine her waiting for the delivery of long-delayed aid and food packs from local governments, and relying on community values of reciprocity and barter, and on civil society support to tide her over. This pandemic also allows for higher chances of domestic violence and abuse, as opined by Dr Nina Agrawal, writing for the New York Times. 

This crisis also lends the lenses to view how work-from-home (WFH) arrangements can also exploit. In ascribing to WFH conditions, employees work with a handicap while also paying a higher amount for their utility bills – overhead fees that should be shouldered by their employers in the first place. This is the curse of WFH schemes: employees bear more work, child care, and utility burdens all at the same time, and without social safety nets that should be provided by the government. (READ: What telecommuting requires)

The WFH scheme blurs the lines between work and home, between “public” and “private” spheres. This dualistic mode of thinking – that work and home are two opposite and opposed things, is a dangerous presumption. The non-recognition of home as a political site allows the non-recognition of unpaid reproductive work to continue, as well as the underreporting of domestic abuse cases. 

Scholars have since pointed out that boundaries between these two “spheres” are porous and that the two greatly rely on each other. We can see this in how our experiences at home shape our lives as political actors and citizens. Likewise, we see this in how our choice of consumer goods reflect cultural/class identities. It only takes a little bit of sociological imagination to understand that domestic issues such as violence against women, or consumer issues such as soaring electricity bills, are actually national, even global in scale, and therefore, political.

Home as a place of hope

There is a politics to home. This is most visible in the history and experience of the Philippine urban poor. 

The Kalipunan ng Damayang Mahihirap (Kadamay), a national grassroots alliance of Filipino urban poor, spearheads mass campaigns that bridge the domestic and the public. They do this by calling for decent, livable, and affordable housing; for state support for basic social services; for state regulation of public utilities. All these highlights how home is both alive in a public and private sphere.

Just recently, the starved urban poor residents of Sitio San Roque went out of their homes and marched to EDSA because of news that a party-list group would distribute relief packs. As is well-known, the Quezon City local government has not been swift in providing food packs to its constituents. But instead of receiving food, they were met with violence. This incident went viral on social media and further angered the public, eventually resulting in viral posts and tweets calling for President Rodrigo Duterte’s ouster. (READ: Police storm Quezon City community kitchens, tear down protest posters)

In the thick of this crisis, we begin to see how domestic issues concerning food, hunger, access to water, abuse, and even homelessness, are indeed political and involve political actors including the highest position in the land.

Coming home

In the past weeks, fears and anxiety about our individual and collective futures have emerged: Do we have enough money to get through this lockdown? Will we lose our jobs? How can we put food on our table? Will we have enough to pay next month’s rent? 

These are valid questions which we may have asked ourselves the past days, but these queries have hounded the urban poor daily and will continue to do so in the coming weeks. Is it only now, when we are confronted with our shared precarity, that we understand that the calls of urban poor groups are right and just?  

Mass protests calling out the Philippine government amid a shoot-to-kill order from President Duterte have temporarily migrated from the streets to homes and the cyberworld. Across the country, families and groups of people constituting “home” are having important conversations about basic economic needs and the government’s lacking response. Indeed, the home may be a site of oppression, but it is also a site of struggle and resistance. 

The good news is, we now have time to rethink and re-make our homes (and world) into something that is genuinely worth “coming home” to. – Rappler.com

Noreen Sapalo is a college lecturer on culture and politics and a graduate student of anthropology at UP Diliman. She is also a PANTAO Human Rights Research Fellow for PhilRights and host for AlterMidya Network’s ALAB Newscast. You can reach her at nhsapalo@up.edu.ph, or follow her adorable cats on Instagram: @yinyangkets.