From Home to Community: Reflecting Emotions Related to Mobility

Abstract

This study investigates how clients’ emotions are invoked and reflected in client–worker interactions and themeanings they have regarding leaving home. We concentrate on floating support work, which aims to support people suffering from mental health and substance abuse‐related issues to improve their living in the community. Our theoretical framework is based on the geography of emotions, and we draw on both the interactional and relational approaches thereto. The research material is gathered from Finland and England. We draw on mobile ethnographic and discursive approaches, and our data consists of transcriptions and field notes gathered during floating support visits (N = 19) that took place either at or outside of a client’s home. Our findings demonstrate how the connections between places and emotions, the emotions connected to leaving one’s home, the emotions reflected while being out in the community, and the reflections of emotions after being out in the community are constructed and reflected in client–worker interactions. The study highlights that these emotions are a necessary and demanding part of promoting clients’ social inclusion in the context of floating support work.

Keywords

• emotions
• floating support
• from home to community
• mental health
• mobility
• substance abuse