Moving Home: Theorizing Housing Within a Politics of Mobility

Abstract

It has been argued that the social sciences have undergone a “mobility turn” over the last decade: a paradigm shift in which movement is seen to have become increasingly important to our social worlds. For the most part, housing studies is yet to extensively engage with this “paradigm shift”. In an attempt to engage with the ideas that the “mobility turn” has thrown up for housing studies this paper grapples with two key questions. First, where does housing studies fit in the new mobilities paradigm in the social sciences? And, second, how can housing studies contribute to this paradigm shift? This paper does this through an examination of how a politics of mobility can be usefully employed and extended by housing researchers. Looking specifically at two current dimensions of this politics: mobility as a right, and mobility as a resource, this paper argues that a third dimension – mobility as governmentality – should be introduced to the mobility turn’s politics of mobility.

Key Words:

• Mobility turn
• Mobility politics
• Rights
• Resource
• Governmentality

Acknowledgement

This research was supported through a grant from the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. I would also like to thank Ilan Vizel, Michael Darcy and an anonymous referee for their insightful comments and advice that improved earlier drafts of this paper.

Notes

1. Given the constraints of this piece it is impossible to provide an exhaustive analysis of all the various dimensions of the mobility turn and how it relates to housing research. However a focus on a “politics of mobility” inevitably also touches on the meanings, practices/performances and moorings of mobility. In particular how all these dimensions of mobility are informed by and in turn produce and reproduce different politics of mobility. In doing so this paper hopes to spark further contributions and innovations from housing studies to the development of the mobility turn in the social sciences.

2. Defined as “patterns of interaction (practices) concerning housing and home, over time and space” (Clapham 2002:63).