Home in border crossings: A psychoanalytic study of dislocations in the lives of female domestic workers.

Psychoanalytic Psychology, Vol 39(4), Oct 2022, 330-338; doi:10.1037/pap0000404Traversing psychoanalytic inroads into the lived experiences of dislocations explored with three female domestic workers in India, this research article attempts to excavate the relational contours of “home” in their lives—from the shadows that multiple home losses left behind. Examining home from sociocultural, interpersonal and intrapsychic frames, with a longitudinal view of “degrees of homeness”¹ as encountered in different phases of life, it also brings to light insidious forms of dislocation culturally engraved into gendered bodies and psyches—and proposes an understanding of how these complex states of dislocatedness influence the way in which later geographical dislocation and its corresponding work of home-building or recovery are experienced and navigated. Developed out of 17 unstructured and exploratory interviews, this work hopes to open up new approaches to the psychoanalytic study of social and material realities, while offering an analysis of the experience of inhabiting one such nonunitary reality—occupied by female domestic workers in the city. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)
Source: Psychoanalytic Psychology - Category: Psychiatry & Psychology Source Type: research