On Becoming a Social Housing Manager: Work Identities in an ‘Invisible’ Occupation

Abstract

Social housing in Britain is managed by a large grouping of ‘housing managers’, an occupational label which is viewed as unproblematic by most housing academics, and therefore, is largely taken for granted. Urban sociologists posit that a collective identity is crucial to professional status, and hence have been sceptical of housing managers' prospects of furthering their aims collectively. The paper departs from this focus on the collective endeavours of housing management as a profession to examine how housing managers themselves create and present self-identities. Specifically, it argues that housing managers use the lack of a collective identity as an opportunity to manage the ‘spoiled identity’ of being in an ‘invisible’ and marginalised profession. In doing so, they construct individualised occupational trajectories which bear little relation to the domain professionalism of more established occupations.

Keywords:

• Collective identity
• housing careers
• housing managers
• work identities
• motivations
• routes

Notes

¹ The fact that the research was conducted in the north west of England may problematise the extent to which the conclusions it draws can be applied more generally. However, the diversity of the sample in terms of positions within housing management and organisational culture (rather than geographical location) suggests that the findings and theory are applicable beyond the regional and indeed national case study.

² The author acknowledges that there are problems associated with using binary oppositions, in particular the simplification of complex ideas into convenient couplets. Nevertheless, these two identities do appear to be oppositional.

³ Registered Social Landlord.

⁴ ‘Identity work’ denotes the active construction of an identity.