Re-constructing the Home: Shared Student Households in Leiden coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic

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Re-constructing the Home:

Shared Student Households in Leiden coping with the

COVID-19 Pandemic.

Marita Klijn

Master Thesis

Supervision: dr. Francio Guadeloupe

Cultural and Social Anthropology

Department of Anthropology

Universiteit van Amsterdam

Leiden, 06-12-2020

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(Illustration on cover page by Ryn Frank, www.rynfrank.co.uk)

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Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic and the social distancing measures that were enforced by authorities in response had very different impacts on different individuals and social groups within Dutch society. For students living in shared student households in the city of Leiden, it meant that they had to engage in their own process of norm construction to keep themselves as a household safe from contagion. By not acknowledging those students living in shared houses as a household, I argue that the government measures were a mismatch with the students’ lived experience, creating a ‘gap’, where those measures in place were not applicable, and no alternative was provided. Through this process of interaction and norm-construction within student households, I will be exploring how students continued to create their alternative norms of domesticity, and what this can tell us about how to perceive this concept, as well as those of family and

household in both modern-day (Dutch) society and within the social scientific debate. Student households, through their collective coping, demonstrated that a more de-essentialised

conceptualisation of people’s domestic situation is at place, both in the dominant narrative as well as in institutional policy.

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Acknowledgements

First, I would like to thank all my respondents for giving their time to help me with this research. It was a tough time for all of us, and I am thankful that, with everything going on, people still wanted to put their time and effort into helping me and sharing their experiences with me. I am grateful for everybody’s openness and trust, and I have tried my best to present this research in a way that honours that.

As this research was conducted in a time of pandemic, my primary case-study for participant observation was my own household. I would whole-heartedly thank all of my

roommates, who were so supportive in allowing me to ‘snoop’ around their business, even while we were all so much in each other’s business already. I would like to thank them for it being no issue at all for me to use our home situation as my scientific ‘subject’ and trusting me in that. Apart from being willing to participate in the research, I am also thankful for them and how we were able to make it through this period together, -a chapter not yet closed. I could not have imagined how I would have been able to deal with the past nine to ten months, if I did not have thirteen amazing people around me. Even though we were to much too handle for each other at times, it was amazing to be able to experience this together as a group. I am thankful for all the movie-nights, dinners, board-game filled evenings, and yes, even the chaos and the drama. Because each time I would have some things going on in my life, I could count on them, sometimes forcefully, being there for me as well.

I also want to thank my supervisor dr. Francio Guadeloupe for his supervision, that I look back at as a very positive experience. Through his availability, as well as his positivity and support, he made the process of the thesis writing seem manageable (which it did in fact turn out to be). With his help and expertise, I think we have succeeded in presenting a notable project.

Finally, I would like to express my gratitude to all the other people that helped me throughout the process by just being there to listen, and sometimes distract me with things that were fun and relaxing. So thank you to my friends and family who made the life of thesis-writing Marita a little bit easier by just being around.

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Introduction

“ This confusion is the sign of an unresolved relationship, a love triangle that seems to have come undone in our modern times: a relationship drama where citizens, institutions and experts seem unable to communicate.”

(Giordano 2020 : 21).

In this quote, Giordano reflects on the role of numbers and how, through media

communication, which is sometimes rather chaotic, citizens grow anxious and confused. In How

Contagion Works, he reflects on the COVID-19 pandemic and connects the social with the

‘mathematical’ aspect of the pandemic. The work presented here, also revolves around an issue of confusion and the relationship ‘drama’ between these various actors that became apparent

through the COVID-19 outbreak.

In the world affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, the home has come to play a dominant and central role. After the first COVID-19 cases in Wuhan, China at the end of December 2019, the virus spread rapidly throughout the globalised world, to the point that the World Health Organization officially declared a situation of pandemic in March 2020. The virus is aggressive, having cost 1,45 million lives to date1_{. Several nations went into national lockdown,} encouraging people to “stay home” as much as possible. The Netherlands watched other

European countries such as Italy applying harsh measures, it’s inhabitants only allowed to send one house-hold member a day to the purchase essentials, singing on their balconies as a coping mechanism. For them, the domestic space had become their only space, the ‘private’ being perceived as safe from the dangerous ‘public’ and its risk of contagion. The household became the only social group that was left in their lives, shaping quite different experiences for those living in a large family house, as opposed to those who were alone in a small urban apartment. It seemed that the domestic space and the groups that inhabited them became more important and prominent in peoples lives than they had been for a long time.

In the Netherlands, it still seemed surreal at that time. Even though the first Dutch case e was reported on February 27th_{, a man who had come back from his vacation in Italy, and started} to feel sick a couple of days after he attended the Carnaval festivities in Tilburg, me and those in my surroundings were not very worried yet; unaware of the rapid spread across the country and the severity of the illness. When prime minister Mark Rutte announced the ‘working from home’

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7 measures on March 12th_{(2020), which were the first impactful measures for me in my current} situation, being a student at the Universiteit van Amsterdam and living in a shared student house in Leiden. It was a week-day evening, and me and two roommates, both girls, were trying on clothes from one of the girls in her room, as she was cleaning out her closet (I only now realise how stereotypically ‘college-girl-sleepover’ this image is). I had found a cute crop-top blouse, that she had bought in a small boutique in Bali but was never comfortable enough to wear since. I thought it would be so cute for dancing, as I frequently attended Latin social dance events. Little did I know that I would not be dancing for the next nine months to come. At some point one of my roommates announced ‘we are not allowed to go to university anymore’. ‘Really?’ I answered in disbelief. ‘And then what?’. ‘Everything online, I guess’, my roommate answered rather indifferently. I remember this moment as my first real moment of realisation, thinking ‘Okay so now this is real’.

These measures initiated, the start of the first lockdown period in the Netherlands, with the official ‘intelligent lockdown’ announced a few days after. Although the measures were not as harsh as in other countries, such as Italy and Belgium, it still meant that the home as the private space had gained many functions, for example, the place from where one performs his or her ‘professional’ activities. It also meant that, similar to these other countries, the domestic space, and the group within it, became even more prominent in people’s lives. What I found, however, was that with the private and domestic being so important, there was a need to define what exactly was considered as such. I argue that the inadequacy of the official definitions of ‘household’, ‘domestic’ or ‘private’ spaces proved problematic in the Netherlands. This thesis, explores this particularly with regards to shared student households in Leiden, and how the pandemic measures forced them to create alternative norms- and coping systems.

What makes (a) home?

To examine the, what I call, mismatch that occurred between policy and the lived

experience of domesticity, one has to de-essentialise this concept. Chapter 1 explores the notions of household, family and domesticity, as well as why these need to be made more inclusive, arguing that students living in shared student house can be perceived as a household or domestic group.

The definition of a household that was used in the Dutch government measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic echoes a ‘traditional’ view of a household equating the nuclear family, which is also found in a lot of traditional literature in the social sciences (Hammel & Laslett 1974; Goody 1971; Yanagisako 1979). In their effort to determine what exactly makes

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8 those inhabiting the same space a household, in a universal sense, many studies conclude with arguments on reproductive- and pedagogical functions, as well as kin-ties. Conversely, the definition of ‘family’ is just as intertwined with the notion of ‘household’. As Pine recognises at the beginning of her encyclopaedia section, where explores the different theories on family within anthropology:

“In most of these definitions the family overlaps with the household or domestic group: that is to say, the family is identified as those kin and affines who live together in the same dwelling, share a common hearth, and jointly participate in production and consumption. As will become clear, this identification of the family with the domestic group has given rise to various analytical problems”.

(Pine 2010: 277)

The social distancing measures in the Netherlands demonstrated how this could be problematic, not only in an analytical, but also a practical sense. Efforts to separate the two concepts were, among others, made by Bender. He recognises that seeing family and household as intertwined is a Western construct, making it problematic to use in anthropology (Bender 1967: 494). He, therefore, argues for treating family, households and co-residence as three distinct concepts (Bender 1967: 494). In the research presented here, we see that also within Western society, the inseparable connection made between family and household can be

problematic. Bender’s argument, for example, is based on the idea that there are families who do not live together, as well as groups carrying out domestic functions who are not family, but can be perceived as a household (Bender 1967: 498-499). In this thesis, I argue that through sharing domestic functions, students in shared student houses can indeed be considered a household. However, when looking beyond this particular case, many domestic groups can be found in the Netherlands who do not fit within the nuclear family household-norm, such as friends living together or other living constructions.

What is perceived to be a ‘family’, could be considered equally problematic. At present, a family can no longer be perceived through a purely biological, hetero-normative framework. The historicist and critical- theorist Mark Poster urges in his book ‘Critical Theory of the Family’ to redefine family structures through ‘issues of relating’, as well as emotional patterns (Poster 1978). Viewing ‘family’ in this sense, opens the doors to many other forms of family-life, such as the ‘blended family’ and non-hetero sexual family structures. It also introduces a new aspect of what can be considered a household. By sharing not only domestic function, but also relationships and emotional patterns, the student household, once again, does not differ much from more

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9 Irene Cieraad is a Dutch anthropologist who examined issues of domesticity in her work ‘At Home- An Anthropology of Domestic Space’ (Cieraad 1999). She views ‘domesticity’ as being related to meaning and being-constructed in, as well as -expressed through practice

(Cieraad 1999: 4). It also relates, she argues, to the material space (Cieraad 1999: 4), which is what Gieryn views as the difference between a space and a place; without investment with value, a space is not a place (Gieryn 2000: 465).

Considering these theories, the view on domesticity has already become much more inclusive. A specific group of people is sharing a space, sharing emotional relations with each other, performing domestic activities, and through that becomes a household. With the domestic space becoming more important in social distancing times, the question of what a household or a home is, has become truly relevant, and in need of further consideration. I hope, through this research, to contribute to this social dialogue; a dialogue that needs to reach policy-making institutions.

Making the familiar unfamiliar

This research came about in a rather unplanned way. As I was preparing my research project, which was planned for abroad, the pandemic suddenly limited global mobility. It forced us to re-think our research ideas, and with that, explore new methodologies. As I was not so appealed to do research online, I viewed my familiar spaces through anthropological eyes. As Moody-Adams explained it in her ‘Fieldwork in Familiar Places’ “seek to make the familiar unfamiliar” (Moody-Adams 1997: 3). After lots of thinking and filtering, I decided to conduct my research among students living in shared student households, and examined how they were coping with the pandemic and its measures. Within my own household, I noticed how we, rather structurally, constructed our own coping system, which was the starting point for this study. In order to ‘unfamiliarize’ my familiar space, I had to make it analytical. Analytically speaking, what exactly was a student household?

Above, we have already explored the domestic character of a space. Further developing an analytical framework, one could perceive the student household as liminal following the theory of Tuner (1967); a student household is a temporary living situation, in-between inhabiting bourgeois norm-style households. Students in the Netherlands are often from upper-middle class families, entering a period of transition, while studying towards a career, which would allow them to provide for their future their own nuclear family household. Following Hall and Jefferson’s theory on youth sub-culture, one could perceive the student household as part of student culture

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10 as a sub-culture. They view all sub-cultures to stem from a ‘parent-culture’ which relates to wider class cultural networks (Hall & Jefferson 2003: 11). This definition also applies to the student culture as they inherit aspects from their ‘parent culture’, which are reflected in the domestic spaces of these student households. The nuclear family home is one’s first teacher on domesticity.

Doing research in a familiar space was a very new, enriching, but at times also scary or difficult process. The work presented here is partly an auto-ethnography, as the participant observation was in my own student-home space, and a lot of the empirical data presented here is a description of my own experience. Additionally, I have aimed to include data from other households, through both interviews and an open-question questionnaire,. In the end this resulted in eight interviews, as well as around twenty questionnaire respondents.

Naïvely, I expected to this time ‘skip’ the first period of ‘swimming’ around in the field; in that first period when you just entered always you always feel a little lost, as you still have to find your direction (based on my experience, at least). As I was already in the field this time, I figured this wouldn’t be an issue. I was wrong. I still had to figure out how to collect other perspectives other than of my own household, as the whole pandemic situation didn’t make it very easy to meet people. There was no physical meeting place where I could go and do some networking. All common spaces in University buildings, for example, such as the cafeteria, were closed. The restrictive measures encouraged online ethnography, reaching participants through social media, which is a platform I tend to avoid in my personal life. Thus, even though the research was conducted in familiar spaces, I still explored some unfamiliar fields. I was very much enjoying the process of having to creatively go about the research, exploring new methodologies that I

‘normally’ would have never thought of. The auto-ethnography part also had a certain ‘healing’ aspect to it; I was forced to reflect on how I was experiencing the lockdown in my student-household space. It felt good to talk to others about it, like my interviewees, and through this reflect and connect. In a way, it also provided a sense of purpose; where most of my roommates had a rather empty summer vacation, I was thankful to be able to focus on my research.

One of the biggest challenges of doing research in a familiar space was not being able to enter- or exit the field, nor having a clear starting and ending point. I was used to being able to go somewhere and it being ‘research’, even if it was in the Netherlands; meeting for an interview, attending certain events, etc. With the research being conducted mostly from my home ,I was at times left feeling as if I wasn’t doing anything. Upon reflection, I realise that, since March, I was gathering data through auto-ethnography and participant observation. However, it felt weird as I

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11 wasn’t doing anything radically different than usual. This made it more difficult to determine for myself when the research had started and when it was finished. I completed the study around the end of August, after a meeting with my supervisor, dr. Francio Guadeloupe, who convinced me it was time to start the analysis. I think I needed that, as I had to stop somewhere in order to move on. However, I still included some data that was gathered afterwards in Chapter 3, which is from somewhere mid-October. After I had ‘officially’ finished the research, I continued to reflect on specific experiences or conversations, which would be important to include

Even now, as I am writing my introduction, two of my roommates are tested for the corona virus, and feel a strong urge to reflect, analyse, and report. Because what would it be like to have to finish writing a thesis in quarantine?

An ‘issue’ that becomes even more pressing when doing fieldwork in a familiar space is that of ethics, in particular informed consent. I informed my roommates about the research and asked for their consent; each of them agreed. Still, the situation required a fine balance. I was their roommate, a role in which they have known me for years, rather than that of a researcher. Although they knew that I was ‘researching us’, this was not always a prominently present idea in their minds while interacting with me or being in my presence. Upon reflection, I realise that almost everything that was shared with me, was shared with me being their roommate and friend, rather than I researcher, which I realise might raise ethical issues. In writing, I kept in mind not too present anything too personal that could identify a specific person, discounting their anonymity. Everybody in this thesis is anonymised, using pseudonyms. In some situations, however, my ‘research mode’ was very apparent, for example when I was recording. When listening back to the recording of one of our house meetings, I found this gem in the beginning of my recording:

Daan: “Hello future Marita”

Somebody else in a very deep, movie-narrator voice: “Welcome” Daan *very sinister*: “This is Daan from the Past”

Jessica: Oh my god I didn’t even notice you were recording. Well *dramatically and jokingly* now I’m not going to say anything at all.

This, I think, shows the playful roommate-researcher dynamic. My roommates knew, although they were not always very conscious of the research, not always taking it too seriously.

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Representing alternative norm construction and collective coping

In this thesis, I hope to provide an accurate representation of how student households, in any case in Leiden, collaborate to construct an alternative collective coping system for

themselves, to protect their domestic group from infection. Throughout the period of social-distancing measures, students received a mix of criticism and praise in the media and the political spheres. Along with others who did not match the dominant ideas and norms, such as large Muslim families who continued visiting each other, students became a focus point in the

discussion on if people were dealing with the corona-measures correctly. What was not accurately represented was the process of norm construction that students went through in order to protect themselves, and the reasons necessitating it. Chapter 2, presents how this norm construction took place. I argue that norm construction takes place through interaction, following on from Simmel (2009), who argues that everything is made up of social interactions, and from Collins (1981), who argues that micro-interactions form the basis of all macro-structures. In this process of social interaction around norm-construction I view interpretation and individual ‘content’ as vital in this process. Simmel views the individual ‘content’ to be people’s “idea’s, emotions and

energies” that they take with them in social interaction (Simmel 2009: 23).

I observed how students living in shared households created structures limiting their social contacts with others outside of their domestic group, contrary to the expectation and wish of the authorities, who expected them to limit contact with each other. These structures were continually being re-interpreted and -negotiated, adapting to the variable as the situation kept changing. Some students set up grocery schedules, others had agreements on use of public transport- or seeing friends. The individual wants and needs played a role; if a students’ parents were divorced, for example, they would need two parental visits where others might only need one. I argue, therefore, that the norm construction could in part be perceived as an effort to transform all the individual needs into a collective coping system.

Using Goffman’s theory of front-and back-stage behaviour, I aim to show how behaviour – outside the norm occurred and was, to a certain extent, tolerated. Goffman distinguishes between a person’s seen behaviour, when they know that others are watching and their ‘back-stage’ behaviour, which reflects their internal experience (Goffman 1959).

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The structure

This thesis argues that student households in Leiden, compelled to construct their own

alternative norms of domestic life in COVID-19 and social distancing times, became increasingly domestic in nature. This research aims to contribute to the academical discussion on how to understand the concepts of domesticity, household, and family, as well as how its norms are being constructed. Based on this insight, this study explores how students in shared households constructed alternative norms of domesticity, expanding these concepts by looking at practices and meaning, rather than structures and kin-ties.

On a societal level, departing from the traditional idea that a household equates a family (and vice-versa) is relevant, as it is not only inadequate for student households, but many others. In 2020, although the traditional household is still occurring, the relatively narrow perception of a household and family, on an institutional level, is outdated. There is a need to think more

inclusively about households such as student homes, shared accommodation (i.e., friends, young professionals) , carnival ‘travellers’ and others. By approaching these concepts with an open mind, one a gains more insight into people’s lived experiences and practices, which could be helpful in constructing social policy.

This research has been conducted keeping in mind the following research question:

How did the corona-pandemic, as well as the social distancing measures imposed by the Dutch authorities in response to it, influence how students in shared student households interact with each other as a domestic group.

I have aimed to research this through the methods described above, as well as the following sub-questions:

- Could a shared student house be considered a household?

- How did the process of norm construction take place?

- What id perceived to be ‘the aftermath’ of the social distancing period for the student households?

Chapter 1, 2, and 3 presents these findings. I have aimed to present them in an accessible way that is easy to follow along for the reader. I hope to have given the reader an idea of some of the roommates and interviewees that keep re-appearing by describing their character, creating an image of them who the reader can relate too.

Even though this work is place and time-specific, it aims to give an insight into the processes of domestic norm construction and how these might also play out in similar situations.

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1. A house or a home? - The shared student house as a

household and the ‘mismatch’ with the institutionalized

norm.

It was with a certain shock that I noticed the police officer standing in our student neighbours garden. Looking back, the shock was mostly because they were just suddenly there, something my roommates and I also reflected on not long after they left again; were they allowed to just step into somebodies garden like that? The two gardens were supposed to be separated through a hedge, but the old one had been destroyed in a storm two years ago, and still had not grown back, which meant the gardens were basically only separated through a see-through, ‘grid -like’ fence. It was through this fence that we were now being addressed by one of the two police officers, a young woman. She remained there, as there was no way to pass to our garden from where she was standing, and asked for our ID-cards. We all, with a sense of automatism, went inside to fetch them, and passed them to her, again through one of the open spaces in the grid. It was not the first time that the police were called on us, and their presence always served more so a warning than having any real consequences.

Unlike many places in the world, most Dutch citizens, including students, do not view the police as a threat. Gone are the days when the “Provo” and other radical Dutch student

movements were considered a public menace fighting against the police. Similar to Vietnam and the atom bomb, radical leftist students were something read about in academic articles such as Lieberman and Cochran (2001) and Klimke (2010). Most current students do not identify with that history and thus the police is not the enemy. It could relate to the efficiency of ideology in the Netherlands as the police remains the iron fist of the state. As Villiers puts it “formal policing begins with the need of sovereign power to keep control of its subjects within a larger society” (Villiers 2011: 277). This means that “the traditional role of the formal police service is to support the government in its power” (Villiers 2011: 277).

In the Netherlands, the police as an institution is divided into a regional and national force, each with its riot units. Besides the police, there are other agencies of law enforcement, such as the Royal Marechaussee (which is comparable to a gendarmerie) and the ‘buitengewoon opsporingsambtenaar’ (BOAs). One could argue, however, that the police also carries out many ‘maintenance’ functions, such as dealing with complaints of noise nuisance (which is probably partly due to the decentralized organisation of the regional police). For this, it is not very unusual for the police to be present in situations that are not necessarily very dangerous or ‘criminal’ in

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15 character. In my experience, my encounters with the police were always pretty positive. But this time it was different.

Her manner of communication was aggressive and degrading. She started explaining that there were rules that had been set (due to corona) and that everybody was to live by them; “het is voor niemand leuk [it is no fun for anyone]”. Among us, confusion started to grow as to what we had done wrong and what she was actually registering our ID cards for.

We felt that we were not doing anything wrong; similarly, to the rest of the people in the Netherlands, we were relaxing on this public holiday.

It was April 27th_{, a national holiday in the Netherlands in celebration of the kings’ birthday, Kingsday.}

Usually, this is widely celebrated all throughout the country, from big festivals to small parties and local ‘free’ markets, where people can sell their used goods, - and perform. Because of the COVID-19 outbreak, and the social distancing measures that had been introduced a few weeks earlier, none of these annual festivities could take place, and my roommates and I were all ‘stuck’ in the house together. To still celebrate a bit, two of them had organised ‘old-fashioned Dutch games tournament’, with for example ‘spijkerpoepen’ (tying a string and with a nail around your waist and trying to get the nail inside of a bottle as fast as possible) and ‘koekhappen’ (eating a type of pastry hanging on strings on a clothesline, the aim is to eat them as fast as possible while blindfolded). The organisation of this tournament was, in a sense, also a gesture towards me, as activities involving alcohol was a bigger source of discomfort for me at the time, and so this was an activity that didn’t involve any. Everybody that had stayed at the house during this ‘lockdown’ period was there, except for one, leaving us with a group of eleven. The weather was great that day, and we were in our garden, enthusiastically cheering our team members on. A few games in, I heard the doorbell ring. At first I thought it was our landlord (which I now realise makes no sense because he has a key and so never rings the doorbell).“I’ll get it” said one of my (at that time) ‘newer’ roommates Jasper. He was a first-year university student, after completing one year of applied sciences, and was active at the student rowing association and a small ‘fraternity’ within that. Being twenty years old at that time, he was one of the ‘younger’ people in our house, and had been living with us only for a few months. I followed him to the door, so in case it would be the landlord, I could offer some support if needed. At the door, however, stood, at the appropriate distance, an older man who I had never seen before. What followed after he started to speak came across as something that he had been thinking long and hard about, and for which he had gathered the courage to say it out loud. He explained how he lived up the street, a few houses to our left, and said we were being too loud “drinking and screaming”, something that also caused him a lot of trouble at night sometimes. I felt sorry for him and tried to explain that we were actually having a game tournament, without alcohol, but that I understood his

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frustration. He was, unfortunately but understandably, already very high in his emotions, and continued by saying that what we were having was a party, that it was illegal and that he was going to call the police, and walked away.

We could not help but feel that his anger was about more than us. Our student neighbours, having a similar tournament, were indeed drinking. Both our households recently had noise complaints from some of the surrounding neighbours, which had been settled through meetings and a collective messaging group. We live in relatively pricy neighbourhood in Leiden, not far from the city centre and train station. A neighbour, who lives a few houses up the street from us once complained about the garbage bags in our front yard with, “ Ik betaal veel geld om hier te wonen (I pay a lot of money to live here). What he meant was that this neighbourhood was higher middle-upper class with impeccable bourgeois norms, such as never playing music too loud, speaking softly with a tight lip, and keeping our yards impeccable. This is a neighbourhood of home owners and high income nuclear families, not students living on a scholarship.

Our bourgeois neighbours had difficulty determining which of the two student houses caused the noise disturbance, resulting in us being approached a few times while we were not the culprits at that particular moment. On King’s Day, it felt as if the same thing was happening. This neighbour lumped the two student houses together as one block of ‘studentness’, meaning here the period of liminality wherein the public imagery – and perhaps in our neighbour’s experience – people are careless and rebellious in spirit, with all the possible negative outcomes. The police are tasked with keeping those in undergoing that liminal period in check, which I only realised later.

This public imagery of student culture, as involving a wild period before bourgeois

normalcy kicks in, is not solely a Dutch phenomenon. Kenyon observes a similar trend in Britain, where students in privately rented houses are perceived to negatively impact the social and physical aspects of a neighbourhood, as they are often regarded as a ‘community within the community’ (Kenyon 1997: 287).

After our experience with the angry stranger, Jasper and I went back into the garden to pass the news to the others, also informing our student neighbours through the ‘fence’. Among my roommates, we discussed what we were to do. We thought about what he threatened us with; were we breaking the law being in our own garden together, playing games? We decided to turn down the music and have our orange-coloured snack break in relative silence. The issue seemed resolved, but we were wrong

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Now there was a police officer lecturing us through the fence. We had many, as we were still genuinely confused about what was going on. Was she here for noise nuisance? Looking back, I think she might have perceived our questions as ‘talking back’ to her. She explained that living in one house does not make a household, even with shared kitchens and living area. With not so many words she explained we were not the bourgeois nuclear family. She continued her monologue, and at some point exclaimed “en als je hier weinig ruimte hebt, ga dan naar huis! [and if you have too little space here, just go home!]”. Given the bourgeois norm, I think she was referring to our parents house, to which one of my roommates answered, with a sense of surprise “I am home”. And we were. Was she telling us we could not pend time together in our own home?

Where she already started off, I think, with a certain demeaner towards us, our questions and confusion seemed to only frustrate her even further. She started saying things like “you are young” and that we were “being selfish”. This triggered some of us, as we took responsibility limiting our social contact with others, outside our households, when running daily errands. However, she was treating us as if we were being irresponsible. Frustratingly, she would not let go of her prejudice, and continued lecturing us as if we were the anti-social spoiled kids. We were the liminals who spoke back, not afraid of verbally opposing the police. As such, my frustration, along with my housemates, intensified towards her.

Some of us tried to reason with her, but her attitude was impossible to change. Neither did she answer the question from one of my roommates, whether our garden was a private space. I also somehow got in a discussion with her, while wishing she just registered our IDs and leave. However, she kept provoking me, “gaan jullie naar de

supermarkt?” (are you going to the supermarket?). I explained that one person go once a day to purchase essentials for the entire household, but she continued with “en dat is nu precies het problem!” (and now, that is exactly the problem).

“But so what if we are together at our own kitchen table, would you be able to fine us?” one of my roommates tried in vain. The situation also caused some friction among us, as one roommate, Daan, was just through with all of it and tried to stop us from discussing with this woman, as it didn’t seem to go anywhere and yelled “ okee, bekken dicht, ga weg! [okay shut up, go away!]”. He and I had moved to the house around the same time, 2,5 years ago, and he had lived in another student house before. We were close in age, but having changed studies he was still planning on studying, as well as living in our house, for a few years to come. He was also in the same fraternity as Jasper. Looking back, I do appreciate him taking the responsibility to try and control the situation a bit. On my part, my frustration towards the officer had gotten very high, and I honestly just wanted her to leave my eyesight. She, however, decided to go on for a little bit longer. As she handed me back my passport, she very sarcastically and judgmentally said “Miss Klijn”. “Thank you” I answered in the same tone, and went on inside. When we recalled this event, my roommates claim that they have never seen me so angry.

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Upon reflection, I realise that prejudice or bias from a police officer towards a certain group in society, could escalate into a dangerous situation elsewhere. For instance, the death of George Floyd resulting in the Black Lives Matter protests about a month later2_{. Even though our encounter was unpleasant, we could safely questions her without}

life-threatening consequences. Interestingly, the ideology in the Netherlands where the police are supposed to be a friend proved useful.

Still, the police officers’ attitude reveals a negative prejudice towards student culture in Dutch society. Even I, having grown up in Delft, another university-and with that student city, I had my annoyances with students, their associations and their often extravagant behaviour. Even now, I still carry some of those ‘old’ judgements with me, and they influence how I perceive my fellow students in Leiden, even sometimes those that I live with.

The socialisation in bourgeois norms cannot easily be undone, and so when we found out we were not a household we knew that this was something we had to deal with; we were to obey the official rules. It is not a matter we thought about much, but Covid-19 was a telling reminder that we were an anomaly; living in what I learnt through the anthropology of Victor Turner to call liminal households awaiting reintegration into the norm: from born in bourgeois families, to a period of being a student, to graduating, to having a career and creating our bourgeois families. Student culture is what North Atlantic societies did to manage the pubertal stage between the bourgeois norm (Turner 1967 in Bigger 2009: 209).

1.1. Student ‘culture’

Student culture often attracts negative media attention. After aspiring new members of

Augustinus, a student association in Leiden, caused a raucous in a public park, resembling an illegal

rave, Prime Minister Rutte addressed students in particular in his press conference on the 17th_of September. This address resulted in a media discussion in the media on whether students were adhering to the corona-measures3_.

2_{George Floyd was murdered by a police officer in service in Minneapolis, Minnesota, for allegedly using a}

counterfeit $20 bill, BBC news https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-52861726 , consulted 23-10-2020.

3_{Augustinus sluit voor twee weken de deuren, incident Van der Werfpark was uit de hand gelopen}

verenigingsactiviteit [update]

https://www.leidschdagblad.nl/cnt/dmf20200918_37124269?utm_source=google&utm_medium=organic

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19 It is exactly this discussion that was a reminder that the anthropological theories on liminality of Turner and van Gennep could not be simply transposed to North Atlantic societies like the Netherlands (Bigger 2009: 209). I could try to follow Turner in his adaptation to complex societies by talking about liminoid instead of liminal—by claiming that student life was not so much a transition, but an extended break to head back being ideally bourgeois—but such felt contrived. I needed a theory that was developed to deal with student life.

One such theory is Hall and Jefferson’s analysis of post-war ‘Youth Culture’ in Britain and its many sub-cultures, which they studied through material and historical context (Hall & Jefferson 2003). They argued that any sub-culture exists in double articulation with both their ‘parent culture’, relating to the wider class-cultural networks, as well as the dominant culture, which is reproduced and represented through, among others, institutions. (Hall & Jefferson 2003: 11). Student sub-culture is not representative of all youth culture; it is those higher educated youths, who, often come from higher middle class families. Thus, students were but one part of the youth subcultures.

A sub-culture, in their perspective, can be seen as including a ‘map of meanings’, making things understandable to its members (Hall & Jefferson 2003: 10). When I interpreted student culture in Leiden as a sub-culture related to those post-war youth cultures analysed by these authors, a lot of interesting new insights emerged. To be able to see the sub-culture in its material and historical context, I had to historize university life.

The university of Leiden was founded in 1575, very soon followed by (among others) the universities of Utrecht, Groningen and Amsterdam. Knegtmans (2017) describes how in the early days, university life was something for the children of elite, and students either moved along with their parents or stayed with their professors (Knegtmans 2017: 7). With the rise of so-called ‘associations’ [verenigingen], came that there were more students residing together (in a house that was bought for them by one of the parents), as well as giving birth to an ‘independent student life’ (Knegtmans 7, 31). ‘Het Leidsch Studenten Corps’ for example, was founded in 1839, and with time a differentiation of associations took place throughout the country; along religious, political or other lines (Knegtmans 2017: 12-34). Within these associations, students occupied themselves with extramural activities, such as music, theatre, and so on (Knegtmans 2017: 34-40). However, student life can never be fully ‘independent’ and students also enjoyed recreational activities in their wider communities (Knegtmans 2017: 34-40). When universities where increasingly democratized (among other through financial aid to students by the state) after the

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20 war, the time that Hall and Jefferson theorize, the amount of- and diversity in students increased, making studying and student life more accessible to a bigger public (Knegtmans 2017: 44-46).

Most of the students currently studying, of which my ‘generation’ is among the oldest now (being five years into my university education) are on loans, as the student-loan system was reintroduced in 2015, replacing the ‘basic student grant’ [basisbeurs] system after 24 years. Despite that, many students are still from upper-middle class families given their cultural capital, and the image of students, especially those residing in student cities and engaging in student life, is still very much influenced by the image of these being the children of upper- or upper-middle class, and all the ideas and judgement that come with that. The attitude of the police officer, in my view, serves as a perfect example of that.

As Hall and Jefferson acknowledge, there is often overlap of sub-cultures- and groups, with flexible boundaries, the case of student life not being an exception (Hall & Jefferson 2003: 14-15 ). My Latin dance parties and classes consist of a cross-section of Dutch society. Many are students like me, but by far not all. One could argue that the fact that you are studying makes you a student, therefore your experiences and activities could be regarded as ‘student life’. There are those students who actively engage in student life in a city, in the sense that they go to class, are member of a student association, etc., but who do not reside there. This particular case, however, applies to those ‘members’ of student culture who reside in a shared student household, as this ‘alternative’ living situation, like we have seen, caused friction with the dominant culture when social distancing measures were introduced. This living situation is very particular, yet frequent in the Netherlands; students renting a room in a shared space, be it a ‘family-house’ or a student accommodation, who form strong social bonds together.

Leiden, having an academic university and a university of applied sciences, has,

unsurprisingly, a large student population. Of those students studying in Leiden, 11.139 live in the municipality4_{. To those we could add students like myself who do not study in Leiden, yet} reside there. Considering that the total population of Leiden is around 125.0995_{, students make} up a considerate amount of the residents

4_{https://leiden.incijfers.nl/} 5_“

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1.2. A house as a public space

The confrontation between me, my roommates and the police officer (and to some extent our neighbour who contacted the police in the first place) was that they had a different

perception of the living situation me and my roommates found ourselves in. We considered ourselves to be a household, the police officer-, and behind her the government as her institution upholds the order, considered our common living space to be but public.

One of the things I, and many students like myself, learnt is that being deemed public means being policed. The Covid-19 pandemic can be considered to bring out that old truth. The week prior to our police encounter, five students had been fined for sitting on their own

balcony6_.

The distinction between the ‘private’ domestic space and the ‘public’ space, a distinction that arose with 17th century European urbanism, becomes, in these times, extra important and seemingly apparent (Cieraad 1999: 3). Cieraad notes that the discovery of bacteria, shaped the ‘public’ space to be increasingly impure or dangerous, an image that currently expresses itself in both popular discourse and policy (Cieraad 1999: 3).

All this understanding came after the police had left. We all went back inside, where we exploded in frustration, finally being able to let it go (I mean you don’t want to be that person yelling wildly at a police officer). We all agreed on how this officer was being disrespectful, did not listen to us, providing us with zero clarity on the situation. A lot of us didn’t believe her claims, and went on online search.

Some roommates even called the police station to clarify the rules. It turned out that we weren’t legally wrong to be in our garden together. This probably meant that the warning in our name could not have been registered under corona-related issues, and so probably was under noise nuisance.

Our internet search for government measures and -definitions taught us, however, that we were, indeed, not considered to be a household, as the official definition called;

Image 1.1

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It turned out that we were indeed not considered a ‘household’, as the official definition called ‘spouses, registered partners or other life partnership, grandparents and children, as long as they are living on the same address’ (see Image 1.1) 7_{. Thus, there was the bourgeois nuclear family plus that was considered a ‘real’ household. We also}

found that this meant that members of a student household were expected to keep a distance from each other as much as possible, also within our own house. In ‘public space’, they were expected to keep a distance and not be together in groups bigger than three (see image 1.2)8_.

Image 1.2

7_{Rijksoverheid.nl} 8_idem

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1.3. The student household as a domestic group

This definition of a ‘household’, based on- and created by dominant culture, equals the household to the nuclear family ‘plus’, and excludes all other forms of ‘living together’. This is in direct contradistinction to theoretical discussions within social sciences like anthropology, where authors try to problematize the idea of the family and the household being intertwined.

Bender made an important contribution to this discussion, arguing that, although they are often perceived to be part of the same social phenomena, social groups based on affinal and consanguineal relationships, co-residence and domestic functions are in fact semi-independent variables (Bender 1967: 493). Although, in Dutch society, there are many situations where the family does not live together, the nuclear family still remains the norm; even the ideal. As Bender states, the households where a father does not reside with his children are, from a Western perspective seen as sad, almost ‘unsuccessful’ (Bender 1967: 494). Pine explains:

“(…) in the Euro-American discourse the concept of the family is politically and ideologically ‘loaded’, or imbued with sets of politically and culturally contested ideas about what the correct or moral ways in which people should conduct their lives, and the people with whom they should conduct them” (Pine 2010:

277).

In this case, the living situation of students in shared student households does not reflect the dominant norm of a household being a family, therefore being denied certain rights by the state, the police, and in the minds of our neighbours.

Although it seems to get harder and harder to remember what ‘normal’ life looked like, I will do my best to illustrate the pre-corona day to day life that takes place in my household. At the start of the day, I usually eat breakfast in the kitchen downstairs, because this is where all the common groceries are. We have this system where everybody pays a set amount each week, from which we buy groceries that serve as breakfast and lunch (such as eggs, milk, bread, spreads, tea, and so forth.). This is facilitated by a different roommate each week, which means that I have to take care of the groceries for fourteen people once every fourteen weeks. Because all the groceries are in that kitchen, this is where everybody meets for breakfast and lunch. Of course not everybody has their meals at the same time, but there are usually others present there when I go to eat. After, I would take a shower in one of the two showers we have, get dressed and go about my day. If I don’t have any other plans, I usually have dinner with others as well. Almost everyday, somebody pops the question in the group chat if there are people that want to eat together, and it very rarely happens that this is not the case. We divide ourselves over three dinner-tasks: groceries, cooking and dish-washing. Often times people hang out a little bit after dinner if they have nowhere to go and don’t

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have to study, usually watching a movie or doing some board games. In any case, we all have dinner together on Wednesdays, which used to be in order to have everybody together at least one’s a week, as most people do have a busy schedule, followed by an activity determined by that weeks grocery facilitator. One could already notice the several systems at play here that are set in place in order to make function living together with a group. Another domestic function, is our cleaning tasks, where everyone has a set task each week, which is checked and if not done, the person at fault is fined and the money is used for our ‘house-bank account’ for internet and unexpected

expenses. We also collectively care for our housecat, Benny, (yes, I anonymised him as well as he is kind of a public figure). If our household is not private, this would make Benny a very well cared for street cat.

Respondents had similar narratives; recalling dinners together, a ‘set’ house night, or taking care of a house pet. A shared student household carries out domestic- as well as economic functions. Keeping in mind Bender’s theory, they could, thus, be perceived both co-residence as well as a group carrying out domestic functions. When going through the literature, I noticed I kept, in a sense, following the same cycle; when trying to get an image on how to understand family, the household as a concept was included, and the same goes for the other way around. In an effort to separate the household and the family as directly linked concept, the focus remained on kinship groups that had a family like- tie together (Pine 2010; Goody 1971; Yanagisako 1979; Sanjek 2010). Fortes, for example, states that “The domestic group (…) is a householding and housekeeping unit organized to provide the material and cultural resources to maintain and bring up its [nuclear family] members” (Fortes cited in Goody 1971: 92). It seemed that we were not easily classified a household through these anthropological classics either, although one could argue that we were also sharing some kind of housekeeping and upbringing.

Something I had not consciously realized until my roommate Dana mentioned it, was how the student-house structure, in a sense, also has a ‘pedagogical’ purpose. Dana moved in at the same time as I did, and someone I knew before already as we were in the same bachelor programme. We are also exactly the same age (being born on the same day), jokingly calling each other sisters although, keeping our looks in account, that would have been a complicated kinship situation. I do not remember precisely who were there, but I remember we were sitting at the big table in the hallway, with some girls. A new girl had moved in with us about a month ago, and someone mentioned that she did feel that it showed that she was a little bit younger than we were, in the way that she went about things. She was indeed a few years younger, something that, at our age, still makes quite a difference. ‘But that is also a little bit the purpose right, that’s why you have older and younger people rotating and living here’, Dana said wisely. This was a moment of realisation for me, that there is indeed an implicit system that could be considered almost ‘pedagogical’.

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25 The shared student house offers a structure where young students who just moved out of their parents’ house, share a space with older students who have more experience in living ‘independently’ (outside of the family home). Sharing a space with others, all with different characters and backgrounds requires specific social skills, such as clear communication and being open to critique. Thus, even if we were not liminoid or liminal, we were liminal-like. Hall and Jefferson would describe us as a modern subculture where the members were transitory. Still, the phenomenon was ongoing, without any direct control of the parent culture or the broader

institutions of the dominant culture.

In the social sciences, there is still no consensus on what exactly the concept of a household or family entails. Still, social relatedness resembling blood ties was traceable in most conceptions. Could the members of a student household be perceived as a social group, even though none of the members share any biological or affinal relationships, or symbolically wished to share these? The literary review led repeatedly to a negative verdict. Despite the sophistication, the bourgeois bias was discernible in the studied social scientific literature. It made more sense following the cultural studies works of Hall and Jefferson to best conceptualise student

households as genuine.

I moved to this house, which the police and neighbours treated as a non-household, about 2,5 years ago. I just returned from an exchange in Paris, and was doing an internship. I found the house via a girl whom I knew from my studies. She approached me on Whatsapp, enquiring if I needed accommodation, as they were looking for a new roommate. Finding a new roommate, in most student cities in the Netherlands works through a system, which here in Leiden is called ‘hospiteren’.

Hospiteren entails organising a kind of soirée, where those interested in the room can come

by and meet the roommates who already reside in the house. Usually, there is a high demand for rooms, and the housemates do a pre-screening, based on the emails people write, similar to a job interview. During the evening, there is a second selection process, based on introductions and interviews. After, shortlisted applicants are invited to stay longer for a casual conversation with the roommates, but it is still similar to networking.

This process of the hospiteeravond, could be regarded as an active form of group construction and maintenance. The residents of shared student houses are not randomly appointed a room, or who just happened to be in the same place by accident. One could argue that the existing social group, choses a new person to enter, through a form of ritual.

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I thus went to the hospiteeravond, and was ‘selected’ to stay behind with four or five others to get to know everybody a little bit better. However, I did not get the room that night. I was a little disappointed but continued searching. After returning from Paris, I was living with my mum in a cosy seventies “workers apartment” of which there are a lot to be found in Dutch cities with an industrial history, in Delft. I loved that place, but it wasn’t a very sustainable long-term living situation for either of us to share the apartment. To my surprise, I received a message a few weeks later, again from the same ,if I was still looking for a room, as there was a group of roommates who found an apartment together, and thus there were a lot of rooms that were going to be free. For this occasion, my now roommates had organised a dinner for those interested, mostly people that they already knew. I was happy that apparently they had liked me enough during the ‘hospiteeravond’ and it was a very nice evening, on which end I had gotten myself a room.

When moving in at first, I had to adapt to living together so closely with so many people. In Paris I had lived in a ‘foyer’ for girls, both international and from other parts of France, which was super fun, and I made some great friends. However, it was still more independent than here in Leiden. I think it was because in Paris there were 168 of us in the building, each floor having about 20. Now, I was sharing a house, which was not originally built to be shared with a lot of people, with thirteen others. In first instance, I was a little bit overwhelmed by the intensity of engaging with one another and all the collective activities that were organised.

I share all this to demonstrate that there is a mode of domesticity involved in student households. There is intimacy and possible conflict resolution that needs to take place. The difference with kin based households, such as the bourgeois ideal versions in the Netherlands, is the fact that it does not tend towards seeking to ‘reproduction’ in the sense of sexual reproduction, where kin is based on biological ties.

Cieraad (1999) argues that ‘domesticity’ is related to meaning constructed- in and expressed through practices (Cieraad 1999: 4). Co-residents carrying out domestic functions together creates meaning. Simmel (2009) takes ‘social interaction’ between individuals to be the condition for a ‘society’ to exist (Simmel 2009: 22). One could, thus, argue that through

interaction, (domestic) meaning is being created, thereby constructing a ‘society’ or in this case, domestic group. In this discussion on families and households, Poster urges to redefine family structure away from issues of size and towards ideas of relating and emotional patters (Poster 1981: 10). Although a student household is not a kin-based household, emotional and meaningful interaction take place among the members, creating social relations and a group identity.

Last year was the first year that I was present during the ‘ex-roommate drinks’. We had organised this evening at our house, where all the guests had thus lived at some point. I noticed how the mood was very familiar right away,

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although I had never met some of the people before. Everybody was very engaged with one another, and it was a nice evening. It was not that difficult to organise, as we have a group chat with roommates and ex-roommates, in any case the most recent ex-roommates, since the house had already been a student house since the ‘60s (I checked, there’s 42 people in there). A few months later, I ran into one of the ex-roommates at the train station, with his daughter, and we had a very nice conversation, just about our lives. Later, I realised how unique this was as our only connection was both having inhabited the same space, not even at the same time.

Gieryn reflects on how spaces are made through the interactions that take place in them, and notes that “place attachment facilitates a sense of security and well-being, defines group boundaries, and stabalizes memories” (Gieryn 2000: 481). Here, we as a group of individuals were all attached by a place, our house, through the collective events, and the social relationships that we created (Gieryn 2000: 481). Something that became apparent during the interviews was how, in speech or student ‘slang’, respondents talk about their ‘house’ not only to designate the physical place but to describe the domestic group residing there. If someone were to say “I went to see that movie with my house”, I would know that they meant that they went with their roommates (otherwise it would become a complicated situation).

This example of the group of ex-roommates at the same time illustrates the transitional character of the student household, somewhere between family-, work-, and eventually, once again family life. These students find themselves in an ‘in-between’ life phase, that comes a temporary living situation. Nobody lives in a student house for the rest of their lives, as, at some point, you stop being a student. One could argue that this temporal living situation is part of student life and its culture, on their behalf being influenced by the material and historical

conditions these students find themselves in; when you are not yet working, but do move out of the family home to study, another living situation is needed. The question that was debated in micro-form, (i.e., between the police office, my roommates and I), and in macro-form by the dominant norms versus the student sub-culture, is how to interpret these living situations.

1.4. The ‘mismatch’

The government, and dominant norm of a household equates a household to a nuclear family, echoing the traditional view of a household in social sciences. The concept of student households, however, defies this definition. There is, therefore, a distinction between the ‘official’ definition of a household and how I will be treating it here in analysis. One could to argue that

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28 not acknowledging roommates living in shared student houses as a household is a mismatch with the reality of those students. By this, a ‘gap’ was created; as those measures applied didn’t match, and no alternatives were provided, students were obliged to construct their own norms on how to protect themselves and their surroundings.

During the research, it became apparent that all of the student households participating in the research immediately focused ‘internally’, in the sense of regarding themselves as a group, and creating measures to protect their domestic group from ‘others’ Considering the government’s idea being so different, the question that arose for me was simply “why?”. I tried to find my answer through my interviews, as I, speaking from my experience, didn’t have it. However, I never found the kind of answer I was looking for, because, like me, it turned out that nobody had actively thought it through. Considering the house with its housemates as the main domestic core was not a well considered and debated matter, it was instinctive. Anybody whom I asked

answered something along the lines of “we never doubted that”. One of my interviewees, Lisa, who shares a house with six others, male and female, recalled

“Maar dat mensen in hun eigen huis afstand moeten houden (…) … ja hebben wij nooit over nagedacht. Ja op het begin was ik wel zo van… ik was juist zo van ja we zijn toch een huishouden [But that people should keep distance from each other in their own house.. (…) yeah we never thought about that. We were, in the beginning [when measures were just put in to place], immediately like ‘yeah but we are a household]”

Like for us after our internet search, the fact that these students and their roommates were not considered to be a household came as a surprise; a fact that in itself already

demonstrates misalignment. Another interviewee, Rosa, who lives in a student house especially designed as such (however already in a relatively old building) noted:

“Ja we waren oprecht wel bang dat we een boete zouden krijgen want we waren, ehm, ja we hebben een paar keer met zijn twaalven gewoon op het balkon en dan stonden we ook echt al helemaal *maakt een gebaar van een soort krapheid*

[Yes, we were genuinely scared that we were going to get fined, because, yeah we had been on the balcony all together [being twelve people] a few times and then we were in fact very *gestures crampedness*]”

She recalls at the beginning of quarantine they planned to do things together outside from time to time, like playing volleyball or taking a walk, but then it turned out that this was not according to measures.

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“Dus dat studentenhuizen geen huishouden bleken te zijn dat heeft dat samenzijn wel beïnvloed want ineens konden we niet meer met zijn allen naar buiten, dan zat je echt vast binnen [That student houses turned out to not be considered as households did change the being together as we couldn’t go outside together anymore, that way you were really stuck inside]”

Another aspect of the ‘mismatch’; apart from the emotional aspect, was the impractical measure to keep a physical distance from their roommates within the space of their house. As Rosa describes here, having limited space plays an important role in how illogical it feels to distance yourself from those living in your own house.

Our house, for example, is relatively large; we have three floors, a pretty big central hallway where our dinner table is and a big backyard. Each floor has its own kitchen and toilet, and there are two showers. However, these facilities are shared with fourteen people. Just the other day I couldn’t find a spot to cook because there were six people eating together cooking downstairs and one girl cooking on my floor, getting into a discussion with one of my roommates when there was not enough space on who should go and use the kitchen on the first floor (we made up pretty fast afterwards again though, as both of us realised that we were also both just hungry). Now imagine having to keep distance from all these people. We would need a cooking schedule, cleaning everything up afterwards. Considering, like I said, that our house is big; many people share a house with 10+ people with just one kitchen or shower.

Yet another interviewee, Cynthia, who shares a flat apartment with two other girls and one guy, noted while talking about one of her friends and her roommates

“Ja, zij woont op (…) met zeventien mensen, en zij hebben meteen besloten om met zijn allen in quarantaine te gaan. Dus zij hebben dus ook gezegd van okee wij met zijn 17en zijn dus bij elkaar maar we gaan dus ook geen afstand houden. Maar dat is (…) met 17 mensen, dan kan je ook geen afstand houden. [yeah she lives at (….) with seventeen people, and they decided right away to go into quarantine together. So they decided that the seventeen of them were ‘together’ so they won’t keep a distance from each other. But I mean (…) with seventeen people, so there you can’t even keep distance.]”

This ‘mismatch’, created a need for those students residing in student households to construct their own norms and measures to protect themselves (and their environment) from contagion, as those provided didn’t fit and no alternatives were given. For everybody, this meant limiting social contact with people outside their household, the ‘boundaries’ varying across the different houses. In our household, we for example included our families, and a +1 for everyone. Other households saw nobody, or even created social circle mind maps. Additionally, other

Re-constructing the Home: Shared Student Households in Leiden coping with the COVID-19 Pandemic