Global (in)justice and the human right to housing. A practice-based approach

ABSTRACT

Housing has become a political problem in the vast majority of cities around the world, highlighting obvious injustices. The article pursues the question to what extent the existing human right to housing can be of any interest here. The practice-based approach of Charles Beitz can help against the background of some systematic supplements. A ‘negative’ approach that distinguishes forms of injustice is an important prerequisite for a substantial use of human rights. The negative approach makes it possible to uncover injustices and shows the obstacles that stand in the way of a practice-based conception of human rights. The practice-based conception is, at the same time, necessary for the social analysis of the obstacles, in order to analyse human rights as well as to be able to justify human rights themselves. The current commodification of housing it is argued impedes the exercise of a practice-based conception of human rights in the way that Charles Beitz has suggested.

KEYWORDS:

• Human right
• practise-based
• commodified housing markets
• structural and interactional injustice
• housing

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank David Alvarez, João Manuel Cardoso Rosas and collaborators for organising the successful “10th Meeting on Ethics and Political Philosophy” in Braga and all participants for their questions and comments. I would also like to thank David Alvarez and João Manuel Cardoso Rosas for their very helpful comments on the text, and the anonymous reviewers for their equally valuable input on this article. Last but not least, I would also like to thank, as always, Chris Engert for his careful linguistic review of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. It still goes on today; see earthquake in Ischia 21 August 2017. Thanks to Chris Engert for this hint.

2. In a way similar to the patterned/unpattered theory of justice by Robert Nozick (1974).

3. Plesase see the UN-Habitat commentary of 2009/2014: The Right to Adequate Housing. 2009. UN-Habitat. https://ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/FS21_rev_1_Housing_en.pdf. For a very good commentary on the scope and effectiveness of the human right to housing, see Krennerich (2020), unfortunately in German ony.

4. This conceptual distinction was introduced by Andrea Sangiovanni (2008) and has been developed further ever since.

5. ‘[A] bigger piece of cake.’ See Shklar 1990, p. 22.

6. See UN-Habitat commentary of 2009/2014,The Right to Adequate Housing, 2009/2014.

7. See Butler (2017).

8. See Cumming (2015).

9. ‘How the Real Estate Business is Internationally Caught up in Organised Crime’, research on building in Berlin conducted by ‘Netzwerk Steuergerechtigkeit’, with the assistance of Christoph Trautvetter.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Regina Kreide

Regina Kreide is a professor of Political and Social Theory and the History of Ideas at the Justus Liebig University in Giessen, Germany. Her research is in political and social theory and on topics like justice/injustice, democracy, resistance, security/insecurity, border politics, and housing. The Securitization of the Roma in Europe, (edited with Huub van Baar and Ana Ivasiuc) appeared 2018 and her book Global (In-)Justice? (in German) will be out 2021.