Sharing Is Caring: Living with Friends and Heterotopic Citizenship

Abstract

Drawing on biographic interviews conducted with LGBTQ people based in Lisbon, this chapter unpacks the reasons why people cohabit with friends. The chapter starts with an introduction to the topic of friendship and how it has been historically constructed in Western societies. The second part draws attention to the empirical experience of living with friends. To understand why and how people manage cohabiting with friends, a focus will be placed on recent processes of gentrification and on the dynamics of care. Towards the end of the chapter, it will be suggested that houses designed to host nuclear families are heterotopic spaces where a variety of social practices occur.