The Domestic Place-making Of Older People Who Use Drugs

This paper shows how marginalized older people who use drugs strive to make their place of residence a valuable place to live. Like the general population, when people who use drugs age their residence increasingly becomes the primary place where their everyday life unfolds. And thus understanding, how older people who use drugs experience their residence is important for the advancement of the limited knowledge of their quality of everyday life and their needs (Sultan 2022; Canham et al. 2021). The paper is based on 17 qualitative interviews with people who use drugs aged 50 years or above. The interviews were conducted as part of a larger research project about the everyday life of marginalized people who used drugs. The analysis employs the human geography concept of place-making (Duff 2010) to draw attention to the various activities through which the older people who use drugs seek to make and maintain their residence as an enabling place (Duff 2010) that has positive effects on their everyday lives. The paper identifies three types of place-making activities the older people who use drugs engage in: “Arranging material objects in the residence”, “having guests and dealing with intruders”, and “using drugs at their residence”. While these place-making activities frequently make the residence an enabling place, there are inherent risks that they may turn the older people who use drugs’ residence into a place of harmful experiences. The paper's findings suggest that older people who use drugs often are left on their own at their residence even when they need support to succeed in their place-making activities.