Making Home Work Places

Abstract

This exploratory paper makes the case for deepening and expanding CSCW research on how knowledge and digital professionals work at home. The steady rise of flexible and ‘mobile’ working policies and burgeoning of freelance work and solo entrepreneurs, means that working from home is now commonplace. Yet, there are few investigations of how people make working from home ‘work’. In response to this gap, this paper focuses on how homes become sites of complex coordination and negotiation for those who use them as workplaces. Following a review of how the relevant literature frames working from home, this paper opens up a set of urgent research questions. It argues that CSCW research needs to attend more closely to those intricate emplaced negotiations and coordination efforts that occur at home, not only to collaborate remotely with colleagues and clients, but also to ensure that the more ‘intimate’ relationships of households and families are protected. In particular, this paper examines how both sets of relationships are shaped by the spatial and environmental organisation of the home as a shared space for most.