Between friends: Making emotions intersubjectively

•Emotions are produced intersubjectively between friends.•Friendships act as a safe space in which to enact emotions.•The workplace is a context that shapes friendships in specific ways.•Workplace friendships help people manage emotional experiences at work.•Friendships at work operate counter to the principle of friendship homophily.

Analysing qualitative interview material from a project on friendship and spatiality, this article examines the relationship between friendship, emotions and context. In the project's data the workplace emerged as a key site in which people meet new friends and practice friendships. Using the workplace as a case study, the article analyses how context can shape friendships, how emotions are woven throughout the very constitution of friendships, and how friendships can impact upon people's emotional experience of workplaces. Further, I analyse how emotions are actively generated between friends. In this understanding, emotions are not pre-existing states that are located in individuals; rather, emotions are created intersubjectively between friends and in specific contexts.