Searching for Dwelling: Autism, Adolescence, and the Threat of “No Man’s Land”

Abstract

What does it mean to come of age on the spectrum for autistic adolescents and their families? And how might this transitional stage be related to phenomenological questions of dwelling? As part of a broader research project on family life, autism, and coming-of-age in Denmark, this paper explores the case of the autistic adolescent Leo and his family to illuminate how families with autistic adolescents experience and respond to the coming-of-age process. Engaging with perspectives from anthropology of autism, disability, and critical phenomenology including the notion of dwelling, the paper demonstrates how coming-of-age poses pressing demands of (re)imagining, and searching for spaces of belonging and possibilities for becoming in both present and future horizons. These demands are often negotiated and shaped within a world that is dominated by neuronormative and chrononormative expectations, where the dynamics of misfitting are seldom a question of chance. I argue that families like Leo’s face not only practical and bureaucratic hurdles related to coming-of-age, but profound existential concerns. They face what I call an intensified dwelling problem of reimagining and searching for ways to feel at home in the world.