The home I have defined as a socio-political situation in which the house becomes a place of protection from, and also to engage with threats and uncertainties. Home is thus both a location and a relation, situating citizens‘ lives within broader socio-political processes.
As MCMV developments are often embedded within preexisting (criminal) power structures, struggles for improving housing security are exposed to a combination of challenges. Uncertain tenure and exposure to crime and violence undermine residents‘ attempts to collective organization. The peripheral location removes the condominiums from their surroundings. Weak societal cohesion, additionally results from the arbitrariness in rehousing families originating from diverse places. The privatization of services, including the rising costs, call on stage ‘alternative’, often illicit, providers and finally, the necessity to (re)sell while the program lacks a legal option for this, weaves a structure of opportunities for illicit actors to perform real estate sales activities, producing an alternative real estate market.
In a recently published paper, I furthermore argue that housing security encompasses a ‘political materiality’ (Pilo’ & Jaffe 2020), offering opportunities and necessities for the formation of political subjectivities. Demanding the fulfillment of the constitutional right to housing therefor involves demands to improve urban security. Housing security is a pressing issue that, based on one’s own (new) place in a housing project allows to collectively interfere in wider urban, and national, politics.
Standby Urbanization 