'Trying to keep up': Intersections of identity, space, time and rhythm in women student carer auto/biographical accounts

Abstract

Geographies of care and caring are a burgeoning area of geographical thought, although auto/biographical caring accounts have been less explored. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with women students (from different generations) who are in education with a range of caring responsibilities ('student carers'), this chapter explores how auto/biographies are laden with spatial and temporal rhythms. Drawing upon theorisations of time and rhythm (Lefebvre in Rhythmanalysis: Space Time and Everyday Life. Bloomsbury, London, pp. 11-80, 2013; Elden in Understanding Henri Lefebvre: Theory and the Possible. Continuum, London, 2004) and feminist work exploring the gendered emotional and temporal dynamics of care (Hochschild in The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home. Viking Penguin, New York, 1989; Maher in Time and Society 18:23-245, 2009; Rogers & Weller in Critical Approaches to Care: Understanding Caring Relations, Identities and Cultures. Routledge, London, 2013), we explore how participants negotiate complex, shifting and multiple intersecting rhythms across space and time to undertake care and construct identities as student and carer. In doing so, we consider the benefits of incorporating spatial and temporal rhythms within auto/biographical accounts.