Creating calmness: The infrastructure of care within homeless day centre De Kloof
Keywords
Loading...
Authors
Issue Date
2026-01-28
Language
en
Document type
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Title
ISSN
Volume
Issue
Startpage
Endpage
DOI
Abstract
This thesis examines how care is practiced, perceived, and governed within homeless day centre De Kloof in the city center of Amsterdam. Drawing on six months of autoethnographic fieldwork as a volunteer at day centre De Kloof, it maps the everyday infrastructure of care through which staff and visitors navigate rules, policies, and relationships. Rather than understanding care and control as opposing forces, the thesis argues that they are deeply intertwined and continuously mediated in practice. Focussing on spatial organisation, hierarchical relations and the narratives through which staff justify rules and policies, I show how care emerges through executing rules and policies and having an overview of the space. The atmosphere of the space is revealed not as a given quality of the space, but as a sustained effort that depends on ongoing emotional labour. Hierarchies among staff and visitors are not fixed but circulate unevenly in interactions. Tracing the way in which both practices of care and control are navigated, this thesis understands care as a situated practice, requiring constant mediation, attention and responsibility.
Description
Citation
Supervisor
Faculty
Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen