Everything is inside the home: the boundaries of home confinement during the Italian lockdown

This article investigates the ways in which social distancing and home confinement restrictions have been experienced and perceived in the Italian socio-cultural context, in order to assess how they reshaped everyday life, and which are their social implications. Drawing on 60 in-depth semi-structured interviews, this article sheds light on the sense-making processes and the construction of inter-subjective meaning around home confinement and social distancing that emerged during the lockdown. Results support that during the national quarantine individuals had to reframe everyday practices, thereby redefining the boundaries of their experience. Indeed, individuals had to deal with a lack of personal spaces, a following stress overload and a collapse of the typical boundaries between the professional and private sphere, which required a complex management of everyday activities. Implications of these preliminary findings are discussed, as well as suggestions for future research.