Shared Housing, Shared Lives Everyday Experiences Across the Lifecourse Routledge Advances in Sociology Series

With a growing population, rising housing costs and housing providers struggling to meet demand for affordable accommodation, more and more people in the UK find themselves sharing their living spaces with people from outside of their families at some point in their lives.

Focusing on sharers in a wide variety of contexts and at all stages of the life course, Shared Housing, Shared Lives demonstrates how personal relationships are the key to whether shared living arrangements falter or flourish. Indeed, this book demonstrates how issues such as finances, domestic space and daily routines are all factors which can impact upon personal relationships and wider understandings of the home and privacy.

By directing attention towards people and relationships rather than bricks and mortar, Shared Housing, Shared Lives is essential reading for students and researchers in fields such as sociology, housing studies, social policy, cultural anthropology and demography, as well as for researchers and practitioners working in these areas

1. Introduction: Shared housing in context

2. The challenges of shared living

3. Motivations for shared living

4. The economic and material organisation of shared housing

5. The spatial organisation of shared living

6. Time matters in shared living

7. Conclusion

Appendix 1: Pen portraits of research participants

Bibliography

Index

Sue Heath is Professor of Sociology and Co-Director of the Morgan Centre for Research into Everyday Lives, University of Manchester, UK

Katherine Davies is Lecturer in Sociology at The University of Sheffield, UK

Gemma Edwards is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Manchester, UK

Rachael M Scicluna is a Lecturer in the School of Anthropology and Conservation at the University of Kent, UK