'Keeping close and spoiling' revisited: exploring the significance of 'home' for family relationships and educational trajectories in a marginalised estate in urban south Wales

Mannay, Dawn ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-7368-4111 2012. 'Keeping close and spoiling' revisited: exploring the significance of 'home' for family relationships and educational trajectories in a marginalised estate in urban south Wales. Presented at: Intergenerational Geographies: Spaces, Identities, Relationships, Encounters, School of Geography, University of Leeds, Leeds, UK, 10-11 May 2012.

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Abstract

This paper revisits Diane Leonard’s (1972) seminal paper ‘Keeping close and spoiling in a south Wales town’, forty years on from the original study, by drawing on one mother and daughter case study. Specifically, the paper focuses on the subtleties of social reproduction and the central role of ‘keeping close’ as a classed and spatialised process. In her paper Leonard argues that in Wales, the affective relationship with home is particularly marked and that when children move away, to take up places in university, there is a fear that they are then ‘lost’ to their parents. This paper considers the ways in which remaining home and commuting to university acts as a vehicle for maintaining geographical continuity; but argues that retaining a spatial closeness does not foreclose psychological separation. Leonard’s work recognised the tension and feelings of betrayal in physical separation; however, this paper contends that in contemporary Wales it is important to consider the realities of the psychological cost and risk of becoming the other within. Exploring the psychological family provided an opportunity to examine upward social mobility in terms of the fear of a form of ‘ambiguous loss’; the loss of a loved one who is physically present but psychologically absent (Boss 2006). The analysis presented was drawn from a wider research project that employed visual and narrative methods of data production to explore the everyday experiences of mothers and daughters, residing on a marginalised housing estate in urban south Wales.

Item Type:	Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)
Date Type:	Completion
Status:	Unpublished
Schools:	Social Sciences (Includes Criminology and Education)
Subjects:	B Philosophy. Psychology. Religion > BF Psychology H Social Sciences > H Social Sciences (General) H Social Sciences > HT Communities. Classes. Races L Education > L Education (General) L Education > LG Individual institutions (Asia. Africa)
Funders:	Economic and Social Research Council
Related URLs:	Organisation
Last Modified:	25 Oct 2022 09:20
URI:	https://orca.cardiff.ac.uk/id/eprint/58095

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