Instrumento de Dios en la reconciliación y la comunión

Of all the families interviewed, with the exception of one, there were other family members either living in the same house, on the same street, or in other streets within Hiraeth. Having family near was a locally valued and central facet in the born and bred narrative, through which participants understood their lives and identities compared with those living nearby (Barker 1972; Watt 2006; Skeggs 2011; Mannay 2013a). In her 1972 seminal work based in a south Wales town, Barker highlighted the centrality of an affective relationship with home within the Welsh context. Therefore, the home is valorised and the notion of ‘keeping close’ amongst family members is

crucial to maintaining this relationship (Barker 1972). Often a certain family home acted as a kind of anchor, providing stability and consistency for those in the family, and a site of support when needed. This can be seen in Rosemary and Charles’s (married, 70s) narrative about downsizing their home:

Rosemary: I think it’s about eighteen years around like that, yes cos, oh, it doesn’t work out this way but I mean we had left the house because we had four, we had four, yep, four in six years, our babies you know, because they all grew up and they all…and then they were all leaving home, and we moved to a bungalow and suddenly everybody came back home again *laughs* [LF: oh no!] at one point we had three, three lots in a year! [LF: oh gosh!] but uh, we built the conservatory *laughs* to give a bit of extra room [LF: extra space], we had one in each room and that was it! One family! But uh, yeah, they’ve all had their problems at different times but that’s family, isn’t it?... Yeah, if you can’t go anywhere else you can go home. Even the grandchildren come back to us, don’t they Charles? Even after children have grown-up and moved out (and parents have downsized) the anchoring role of the parental/familial home is still important to families (Barker 1972). This provides consistency and continuity to the narratives constructed by participants as proximity to the familial home helps to shape (im)mobility narratives. When I asked Rosemary and Charles about where their children currently live, it became even more apparent that maintaining proximity to family members has impacted upon decisions made by their three children:

Charles: Yes well they’re very close together Rosemary: No they’re all very close! *laughs* LF: They haven’t gone far!

Charles: We can’t get away from them!

Rosemary: The one [grandchild] I was taking to school today they’re in [neighbouring suburb] so they’re just the other side of Penrhos Road, and right at the top of [neighbouring suburb] so just opposite the rec, so um, yes they’re there. My daughter is in Hiraeth, she lives behind the shops, you know there’s the little block of shops… And then, [Charles: John is close] John lives down off Trinity Road [LF: mhmm] yeah, so they’re all very close… you could walk to any of them *laughs* …so yeah, all the family live close yes. Attachment to place is reinforced through kinship networks and social capital linkages within the immediate community (Barker 1972). Charles humorously states, “we can’t get away from them!” although clearly this has never been attempted as they have remained in the same area since marrying over fifty years ago and their children are Hiraeth ‘born and bred’. Unlike the commodification of place as typically emphasised by more mobile and transient middle-class ‘consumers’ (Atkinson and Flint 2004; Skeggs 2004; Watt 2009; Benson and Jackson 2012; Paton 2013), the residents of Hiraeth displayed a sense of value and worth in being close to home (Barker 1972). When discussing spending her whole life living in her grandparents’ home, Tracy and her husband Michael (50s) talked about how they have adjusted to living in the house, and how their daughter Lucy (30s) came to live with them following her wedding and having children:

Michael: Yeah over the years [LF: mmm] we’ve just, fitted the house to suit us really [LF: mm] um, and Lucy and Martin when they got married in 2011 they moved out to [neighbouring suburb] and then um, when Tracy’s Nan passed away we were in the similar situation, in so much as we were kinda rattling around in a big house [LF: mmm] with no children home, oh Gareth was home at that time, no! And-

Tracy: Yeah he was home

Michael: That’s right, only just though wasn’t he? Tracy: Mhmm

Michael: So um, Lucy and Martin moved back in and rented their house in [neighbouring suburb] so… So we, we live with our grandchildren… So we used to, used to live with your grandmother and grandfather, and we live with our grandchildren

Similar to Rosemary and Charles, this narrative illustrates how the longstanding family home provides the same anchor to different generations. Tracy has remained in the same home her whole life, providing a consistency to her narrative, and multiple generations have consistently lived in and returned to the home. Often childcare was an important factor in keeping close, highlighting the gendered nature of the born and bred narrative, explored later in Chapter Seven, section 7.3 (Barker 1972; Hochschild and Machung 1989; Taylor 2010; Mannay 2013a; 2016). Similarly, my interview with another Hiraeth resident, Tanya, further entrenched the idea that familial proximity had been crucial in anchoring herself to the Hiraeth community:

Tanya: Um, I’ve always lived in Hiraeth, I think my parents moved here when my mum was pregnant with me, but they, they went from [neighbouring suburb] to [neighbouring suburb] to here [LF: okay] so they’ve always been in the area, um, and I went to Hiraeth nursery, infants and juniors, and then I went to [local secondary school], but I’ve always lived here, I haven’t gone anywhere else [LF: oh okay] so, so, I’m thirty-six now so *laughs* [LF: been here] yeah thirty-six years *laughs*

LF: And why have you stayed?

Tanya: Cos, I don’t know, I got married at twenty-one so um, we bought our first house in Hiraeth, when we were in our twenties so um, just wanted to stay close to my parents and stuff, it just seemed [LF: mm] why, you know, *laughs* nowhere else seemed any better so we may as well stay here hadn’t we? *laughs* [LF: *laughs*] yeah and my grandparents live in Hiraeth as well so [LF: so you’ve got a lot of family nearby] yeah, yeah, yeah, both sets of grandparents live in Hiraeth, and my parents, so [LF: oh everyone’s here *laughs*] so yeah, and I used to work in Sainsbury’s on Cambrian Avenue so [LF: yeah] so, it was close by and then my husband got a job in um the [local] hospital, so again it’s easy [LF: yeah] so yeah, we just stayed *laughs* and then we had um, my eldest when I, was twenty-three, so obviously then he started at Hiraeth as well so [LF: mm], once you’re here, you’re here aren’t you? *laughs* stay near the babysitters once you have children! *laughs*

There is a sense of fixedness in Tanya’s narrative that appears to stem from her limited experience of living anywhere else (MacDonald et al 2005; Jeffery 2018) for instance, “nowhere else seemed any better so we may as well stay here hadn’t we?”, whilst also suggesting a lack of agency in her decision to stay in Hiraeth, “once you’re here, you’re here aren’t you?”. The narrative shows the ongoing, unresolved negotiation of discursive identity work (Taylor 2010)

as contradictory to this, Tanya also suggests that she has chosen to stay because “both sets of grandparents live in Hiraeth, and my parents” and jokes about staying near the babysitters once you have children. Again, this demonstrates the practical importance of having family close-by to assist with childcare whilst also strengthening the relationship to home (Barker 1972). Familial proximity and keeping close therefore provided both a practical and a sentimental value, as Hiraeth residents expressed how important it is to them to have their family living nearby. Often this spanned three generations of the family all living in close proximity, if not in the same home as each other. Families discussed the importance of generational traditions and of having strong social bonds with neighbours, and this is explored next.