Blurring the boundaries of home: Community eldercare centres as institutional homes in urban China

Scholars who study aging in place generally understand home care and community care as distinct but interrelated concepts. They conceptualise home narrowly as a place with defined boundaries that differentiate ‘home’ from ‘unhome’. In this paper, I propose the term ‘institutional home’ to describe a space with fluid boundaries between home and unhome that incorporates aspects of both. Here, ‘home’ is not exclusive to private residential places and homely feelings, but could be constituted outside the private home, with a combination of homely and unhomely feelings. Employing discourse analysis of interviews with older adults and staff, I examine how older adults experience community eldercare centres in China as an institutional home where the practice and meaning of home go beyond one particular space or setting, becoming both home and unhome. This paper contributes to the aging-in-place literature by investigating an expanded understanding of home for older adults.