Negotiations of Urban Ontological Security: The Impact of Housing Insecurity on Being-in-the-City

ABSTRACT

Housing insecurity has rendered urban life inherently unpredictable owing to the constant increase in rent. Consequently, housing insecurity impacts urban residents’ well-being and feelings of security. Considering this fact, this study aims to understand renters’ subjective perceptions of rental housing insecurity by exploring the ties between housing and ontological insecurity. Drawing on qualitative interviews and photo-elicitation with participants of different age groups in Berlin, this study engages with coping strategies for insecurities on the rental housing market. We apply the concept of ontological security to private tenants’ situations, and thereby, develop a spatial perspective on housing insecurity. The study’s results suggest that ontological security is continuously negotiated and shifting, and that urban geographical imaginations, contribute to residents’ notions of “being-in-the-city.”

KEYWORDS:

• Geographical imaginations
• private rental housing
• ontological security
• photo-elicitation
• Berlin
• being-in-the-city
• Germany

Acknowledgments

We are very grateful to Miro Born, Henning Füller, Ylva Kürten and Yannick Eckert who contributed to the first stages of the research project and, e.g. conducted the interviews, as well as to Lucas Pohl, Janina Dobrusskin and Carl-Jan Dihlmann for their continuous support and cooperation in our joint research project “Geographic Imaginations: People’s Sense of Security and Insecurity in a Cross-Generational Comparison” (funded by the German Research foundation within the framework of the collaborative research centre “Re-Figuration of Spaces” (CRC 1265).

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author.

Notes

1. All interviewees are anonymized. The interviews were conducted in German and translated by the authors into English.

Additional information

Funding

The research for this paper was funded by the German Research Foundation within the framework of the collaborative research centre “Re-Figuration of Spaces” (CRC 1265)