Urban Displacements: Governing Surplus and Survival in Global Capitalism

by Susanne Soederberg

Overview

WINNER of the BISA IPEG Book Prize 2021

https://www.bisa.ac.uk/members/working-groups/ipeg/articles/ipeg-2021-book-prize-winner-announced

With an eye to further our understanding of everyday life in global capitalism, Urban Displacements provides the first systemic critical political economy analysis of low-income rental housing and social dislocations, combining both theoretical advancements and detailed empirical studies, centering on Berlin, Dublin and Vienna.

Soederberg pushes beyond dominant debates by treating low-rent housing as a unique commodity that provides a necessary place for the societal reproduction of labour power whilst being integrated into the global dynamics of capitalism. She argues that historical and geographical configurations of monetized governance, including landlords, employers and inter-scalar state practices, have served to reproduce urban displacements and obfuscate their gendered, class and racialized underpinnings. The outcome is the everyday facilitation and normalization of urban poverty and social marginalization on one side, and capital accumulation on the other.

Building on Soederberg’s previous book Debtfare States and the Poverty Industry, this accessible and interdisciplinary text will be useful to academics and students in political science, sociology, geography, urban studies, labour studies, European studies and gender studies.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780367236199
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	12/31/2020
Series:	RIPE Series in Global Political Economy
Pages:	310
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Susanne Soederberg is Professor of Political Economy in Global Development Studies at Queen’s University, Canada.

Table of Contents

List of tables ix

List of boxes xi

List of illustrations xii

Acknowledgements xiii

List of abbreviations xvi

Displacements - an introduction 1

Part I Framing displacements 13

1 Disrupting the housing crisis 15

2 Renewing the housing question 36

Part II Regional displacements 63

3 Displacements in the European Union 65

Part III Urban displacements 93

Prefacing Berlin 95

4 Stigmatizing survival 99

5 Displaced survival in Neukölln 127

6 Interrupting the refugee crisis 153

Prefacing Vienna 177

7 Politicizing a prototype 182

8 Displaced survival in a housing model 206

Prefacing Dublin 239

9 Decentring a homelessness crisis 244

Displacements - a conclusion 272

Index 287

Editorial Reviews

‘Soederberg has successfully captured the complex global ecosystem connecting capitalism, the housing crisis and rising un(der)employment, and delivered it in an accessible, informed package. This book is essential reading for anyone wanting compelling and relevant real-world examples from some of the worst-hit urban centres in the world.’
Leilani Farha, Former UN Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing and Director of The Shift

‘In her newest book, Soederberg revisits the "housing question" famously raised by Engels one and a half centuries ago. Placing today’s housing question into the wider class dynamics and contradictions of contemporary global capitalism, the book lays bare the root causes of urban poverty, precarious housing and homelessness in three European cities. With this highly accessible book, once again Soederberg has proven herself as a distinct, most original and radical voice addressing the big social questions of our times.’
Professor Dorothee Bohle, Chair in Social and Political Change at the European University Institute, Italy

‘At a time when a dramatic housing crisis prompting massive displacements has exploded in the midst wealthy European cities, a trenchant materialist analysis astutely revealing its underpinning drivers, the class configurations of power, and the concrete, different – yet disturbingly similar – processes governing 21^st century poor housing, could not be more topical.’
Professor Margit Mayer, Senior Fellow at the Centre for Metropolitan Studies, Germany

‘What is the role of racialised barriers to housing in changing landscapes of accumulation? How does renting become a central process in disuniting working people? This insightful work guides the reader through this most urgent of debates.’
Professor Gargi Bhattacharyya, Centre for Migration, Refugees and Belonging at the University of East London, UK

From the Publisher