A practice of togetherness: home imaginings in the life of location-independent families

Abstract

In this paper, I examine how home is imagined and socially constructed in the life of 'location-independent families' (LIF). Location-independence is a form of lifestyle mobility based on the possibility of running an online business from anywhere in the world and the choice to homeschool the children. Through an examination of families' stories based on indepth interviews and virtual ethnography, the article explores the ways families-on-themove negotiate their idea of home at the complicated intersections between security and freedom; material dispossession and need for attachment; isolation and sense of community. LIFs' imagination of home is not bound to a static, fixed, geographical place but takes a contextual and processual dimension, as social process and lived experience. Its core is the simultaneous physical presence of the family members and different home-making practices.