‘Half of my body is at work and the other half at home’: narratives of placemaking while working from homes in rural and small-town India

ABSTRACT The article reflects on moving workspaces into homes during and after the Covid-19-induced lockdown. In our qualitative research in India, we investigate the processes of place-making and redrawing of boundaries between paid and unpaid care work. Through interviews and autoethnographic reflections, we analyse the process of new workspace making. We examine the erasing of the home from the workspace where historical hierarchies of gender and caste mediated the (re) organising of work boundaries between paid knowledge and unpaid care work. The study is based in a context where social and physical infrastructure for paid knowledge work could not be assumed to be available in homes. The paper contributes to the literature on place-making with stories from a new context.