Housing policy and (de)segregation: an international perspective

• The implicit and explicit assumptions of policymakers with regard to the positive effects of social mixing/desegregation;
• Assumptions about the causes of segregation;
• The effects of desegregation policies on levels of segregation;
• The effects of desegregation policies on the housing choices of minority ethnic groups;
• The support needed for desegregation policies to be effective.

New submissions are not being sought for this special issue but submission of papers in this field of study are welcomed through the normal submission process.

Housing and the Family

Guest Editors: Clara Mulder and Nathanael Lauster

The function of housing is first and foremost to provide homes to families and other households. Surprisingly, only rarely do housing researchers explicitly address the connections between housing on the one hand, and family and household issues on the other. Thus, there are relatively few published research articles addressing the connections between housing and, for example, household composition, household formation or dissolution, fertility, family background or family relations. Similar things can be said about articles in the fields of family studies and demography. In the research in these areas, housing issues are perhaps as infrequently explored as family issues are in housing research.

In this special issue of Housing Studies a set of papers is brought together in which several connections between family issues and housing are highlighted. The papers address three themes: the influence of the family of origin on housing characteristics and housing situations; the links between household events and housing events at the micro level of households; and home-ownership as a context for parenthood at the macro level of countries. A general conclusion that can be drawn from the research reported in the issue is that housing and family are inextricably bound up with each other: family is as much a context for understanding housing needs and residential mobility as housing is a context for understanding family events.

New submissions are not being sought for this special issue but submission of papers in this field of study are welcomed through the normal submission process.

2011 Call for Papers

Disasters, housing and actuarialism: on the securitisation of risk

Guest Edited by Stewart Williams and Keith Jacobs (University of Tasmania)

The frequency and severity of natural disasters is expected to rise and it is apparent that the technological complexity of the modern world has increased some vulnerabilities. Irrespective of the ‘type' of disaster, housing usually bears a significant part of the damages and costs incurred including the provision of emergency, short-term and long-term accommodation, and reconstruction. Research has examined policy and practice in disaster management, and the roles of insurance in planning and mitigation are stressed, but it is still mostly understood through traditional, econometric concepts. The emergence elsewhere of new insights and responses to matters of security and risk, especially as they have been conceived in terms of actuarialism, invites more theoretical reflection.

The notion of actuarialism assumed here begins with the theory of the ‘risk society' and related notions of neo-liberalism, subjectivisation and governmentality. Risk as a calculative rationale and technology of government is linked to the history of the modern sovereign subject and recent roll-back of the state. It has also been central to the ongoing problems of uncertainty and prudentialism associated with criminal danger, drug use, social security, policing and law, legal contracts and financial markets. Rather than being incompatible, risk and uncertainty are now increasingly assembled together in plans and preparations for scenarios such as terrorist attack and environmental hazards. The meanings and implications of this securitisation of catastrophic risk are yet to be unpacked and their all-important intersections with housing especially demand to be examined.

Please click here for the Guest editors' call for papers, with suggestions of possible topics and submission details.