Workshop 'New Housing Challenges: Families and Financialization'

Young households and newly formed families across different European countries are facing increasing tensions in finding secure, quality and financially affordable housing.

Financialization of public and social housing and rising prices of housing stock and private rental housing increases the pressure on the households and encourage research on the variety of financialization(s) of a housing.

In this context, we invite contributions which explore and critically discuss links between the varieties of financialization concerning housing and families. Paper may discuss, but are not limited to following themes:

• relationship between the structural extraction of value from housing and the everyday experience of households;
• transformation of household subjectivities (e.g., renters to owners, citizens to debtors, gendered subjectivities);
• strategies of de/politicisation of housing provision in relation to families;
• practical use of technologies and devices related to the financialization of housing;
• role of the family in the provision of housing (e.g., intergenerational transfers of wealth, non-monetary support across generations, postponement of family formation, multi-generational households)
• the character of intra-family negotiations and coping strategies in families in relation to the provision of housing in strained markets
• shifting discourses and narratives related to the provision of housing (e.g., moralization of family/individual, justifications of welfare retrenchment, subversive and critical voices against the financialization of housing)

We wish to bring together scholars from various disciplines (sociology, geography, urban planning, political economy, anthropology, demography etc.) to enhance dialogue between different theoretical approaches and analytical frameworks. We aim to involve scholars from various European regions to discuss the diversity of financialization(s).

We invite especially early-career scholars (doctoral students or post-docs up to 5 years from graduation), who will be offered a reimbursement of travel or accommodation costs up to 150 EUR.
Workshop is intended for approximately 10-15 participants and is funded by The Czech Academy of Sciences.

Please submit the abstracts of up to 300 words by February 9, 2018, to the address (tomas.samec@soc.cas.cz). Submission of full working papers (up to 3.500 words) will be encouraged although not obligatory by April 15, 2018. Authors of will be invited to submit to the Critical Housing Analysis journal (http://www.housing-critical.com/).

Tomáš Samec (tomas.samec@soc.cas.cz), Institute of Sociology of the Czech Academy of Sciences (main contact)

Rory Coulter (r.coulter@ucl.ac.uk), University College London

Michael Thomas (m.j.thomas@rug.nl), University of Groningen