The Role of Emotions in the Face of Violence That Sparks No Scandal: Coordinating Responses to Abuse in Home Settings as Institutional Work[La place des émotions face à des violences sans scandale : la coordination du traitement des maltraitances à domicile comme travail institutionnel]

This article examines how abuse of vulnerable adults living at home has emerged as a public problem that long remained invisible. Unlike scandals involving health and social care institutions, violence and neglect occurring in domestic settings have received limited attention from public authorities, despite the growing policy emphasis on home-based care. This invisibility stems in particular from the absence of a well-established socio-administrative framework: abuse in domestic settings does not constitute a unified legal category, and the available data are based on fragmented reports collected by institutions with diverse responsibilities. In the absence of public scandal, consolidated quantitative data, and a stable institutional framework, the emotions experienced by professionals confronted with situations of abuse help bring these forms of "violence without scandal" to light and support the development of collective responses. This approach has several limitations, including selection bias (participants already engaged with the issue), differences between the territories studied, and difficulties in generalizing the findings. Nevertheless, it provides insight into dynamics that are rarely observable, particularly the role of emotions in collective decision-making processes concerning the handling of reports of abuse.