Family as a Safe Haven? Families in Social Practice and Narratives in Times of Crises. Introduction

What connects the homeless woman and her children fighting for a right to social housing with a mother in a non-monogamous relationship and a couple living in the post-socialist village at the EU border?At first glance, their stories barely rub against each other.As social researchers, we also tend to categorise them as if they have little in common, and we accordingly approach them from perspectives as diverse as the sociology of housing, the anthropological or psychological study of sexual behaviours and romantic relationships, and the study of people's economies, power, and politics.However, on a second look, there is one word that does tie them -family.Parents with children who cannot afford adequate housing due to their low or non-existent incomes, lack of social ties, or structural barriers are a family without a permanent home.The parents fostering poly-directional romantic relationships are families without a binary structure -or, rather, families with a structure that goes beyond the known and seemingly given structures.The parents coping with the challenges of transition and material hardship who find meaning in today's struggles through sacralising the bones of the glorious ancestors are a family that strives to keep the matrix of what a village life, and with it, village family life, used to be, incorporating itself in the long line of those who struggled to maintain livelihood and communities