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Infrastructural citizenship: conceiving, producing and disciplining people and place via public housing, from Cape Town to Stoke-on-Trent

Accepted version
Peer-reviewed

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Article

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Authors

Lemanski, Charlotte  ORCID logo  https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0982-2329

Abstract

This paper critically examines how state-subsidised homeownership is used by the state to produce and discipline a normative ideal of ‘good’ citizenship. Using the framework of infrastructural citizenship, cases studies from South Africa and the UK demonstrate how public housing provides a physical mediator for the politicisation of the citizenship contract. Analysis is framed by in-depth research in two public housing programmes: in Cape Town, a state-subsidised housing settlement where low-income households were awarded homeownership of newly-built fully-serviced houses; and the Stoke-on-Trent £1 housing scheme, where the local state subsidised homeownership of newly-refurbished inner-city houses. In both public housing schemes the state conceived subsidised homeownership as a tool to produce people and place, and the paper reveals how citizen responses in each settlement frequently deviate from state expectations. In using divergent empirical examples, the paper demonstrates the global significance of public housing for citizenship production and destruction, and reveals global South/North comparative juxtaposing as a legitimate process for knowledge creation.

Description

Keywords

Public housing, state housing, homeownership, infrastructural citizenship, South Africa (Cape Town), Stoke on Trent (UK)

Journal Title

Housing Studies

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0267-3037
1466-1810

Volume Title

Publisher

Informa UK Limited

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Leverhulme Trust (RF-2017-166)
Isaac Newton Trust (17.24(h))
The Leverhulme Trust, the University of Cambridge Humanities Research Grant, the University of Cambridge Isaac Newton Research Fund, and Robinson College.