Women Caring Networks in Urban Poor Communities: the Gendered Dynamics of Resistance under the Pressure of Financialization: CITY-OF-CARE

Programme(s): H2020-EU.1.3.2. - Nurturing excellence by means of cross-border and cross-sector mobility

Topic(s): MSCA-IF-2019 - Individual Fellowships

Call for proposal: H2020-MSCA-IF-2019

Funding Scheme: MSCA-IF-EF-ST - Standard EF

Grant agreement ID: 890603

Project description:

Gendered perspectives of social housing financialisation

Social capital is the bedrock on which communities and individuals can grow and prosper. In many countries, it is largely women’s involvement that has sustained social capital. The EU-funded CITY-OF-CARE project will study women’s involvement in building as well as using social capital. It will also examine whether we can challenge the inequities of neoliberalism and contribute to advancement of the EU urban cohesion agenda. The project will study the situation in Milan and Dublin, focussing on the socioeconomic and spatial implications of the financialisation of social housing that renders housing a vehicle for wealth and investment rather than a social good. The project will review the gendered activity that develops between women and their community members.

Objective:

CITY-OF CARE examines the crucial socio-economic and spatial implications of the financialization of social housing (FSH) in two European cities: Milan and Dublin.

Key global processes of financial capital markets and securitization have restructured national property and housing systems, making them increasingly interdependent. Welfare retrenchment, product deregulation and financial liberalization each contributed to a dual process of residualized social housing and the expansion and inflation of the private housing market. However, in the aftermath of the 2008 global economic crisis, new subjectivities and relational strategies by people for people emerged as a coping mechanism to fight the instability and uncertainty of living in poverty.

By linking research, innovation and policy, CITY-OF-CARE analyzes, at the macro level, urban strategies, policies and planning practices to promote equitable and sustainable growth. At the micro level, it looks at the efforts and the organizing that take networks, skills, and resourcefulness to alleviate housing affordability crisis, insecurity, exclusion and segregation imposed on social housing communities.

CITY-OF-CARE takes a “personal network” approach to elicit the dynamics and the relevance of interconnected care providers. Caring as a distinctive, network-based activity is one of the central elements in the survival practices of disadvantaged areas of the city. Yet, it remains a gendered activity that develops between women and their community members under significant structural constraints.

CITY-OF-CARE puts under scrutiny the role of women’s leadership in building and using social capital that can sustain community care and solidarity over the long haul, challenging the inequities of neoliberalism and contributing to the EU urban cohesion agenda advancement.