Call for Papers: “Putting the Financialisation of Housing in the ‘Rights’ Place: A Multi-Scalar Perspective”

XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology: ‘Power, Violence and Justice: Reflections, Responses and Responsibilities’,

RC21 – Research Committee on Regional and Urban Development

Toronto, Canada. 15-21 July 2018

The 2017 UN’s special rapporteur for housing, sets out how unregulated global capital has not only rapidly distorted real estate markets, but has also disconnected housing from its social function of providing a place to live in security and dignity, thus undermining the realization of housing as a human right. The increased intertwining of finance and real estate was a prelude to and intimately bound up with the global economic crisis, yet the post-crash context has been particularly dynamic as new roles are cast for private-equity firms and other financial actors in the ‘for-rent’ residential sector and as states engineer new policies to further affirm the treatment of housing as a financial asset. One upshot of these new financialized visions of housing and of the city more generally has been to accentuate sharply housing accessibility crises and socio-spatial segregation. This session examines the financialization of housing at a variety of scales using a ‘rights’-based framework by inviting papers that address some of the following:

• How pre- and post-crash processes of housing financialization are forged, governed, contested, experienced and performed?
• What is the role of local communities? How do they cope with everyday affordability problems in the current climate of welfare state retrenchments, predatory lending practices, displacement and eviction?
• What roles do state and financial actors play in promoting housing financialization? What are the impacts of the entrance of private-equity companies and REITs as the new asset owners and landlords in post-crash cities?

Organizers

Lidia K.C. MANZO, lidia.manzo@gmail.com and Sinéad KELLY, Sinead.M.Kelly@mu.ie

Department of Geography at Maynooth University (Ireland)

How to present a paper

Anyone interested in presenting a paper should submit an abstract on-line through the centralized Confex website. Abstracts must be submitted in English, French or Spanish. Only abstracts submitted on-line will be considered in the selection process.

Select the Research Committee: RC21 Regional and Urban Development

Select the Session: Putting the Financialisation of Housing in the ‘Rights’ Place: A Multi-Scalar Perspective

Link for on-line submissions:

https://isaconf.confex.com/isaconf/wc2018/webprogrampreliminary/Session10212.html

DEADLINE

30 September 2017 (please, notice that only abstracts submitted on-line can be considered for the selection!)

General inquiries can also be directed to the organizers.