Regulating Home: A Case Study

ABSTRACT

In this article, we draw on recent scholarship on home, property and regulation to develop an idea of home as being co-constituted by, and through, three different types of regulation – regulation of the self, regulation of life, and regulation as enforcement. We demonstrate how a focus on the mundane in regulation, as opposed to the spectacular, impacts on the making and unmaking of home in this context. Rather than draw on traditional housing tenures to make our point, we de-dramatize the relationship between home and tenure (ownership or renting) by drawing on a case study of a particular type of owned but precarious housing – those living in boats on a canal in England.

KEYWORDS:

• Home
• regulation
• canal
• boats
• Continuous Cruisers

Acknowledgments

The authors are grateful to Tony Manzi for his comments on a draft of the paper; to attendees at the 2019 UK socio-legal studies association annual conference, and at a workshop held at the Centre for Socio-Legal Studies, Oxford University, for helpful discussion of the issues.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the UK Socio-Legal Studies Association.