Living precariously

Property guardianship and the flexible city

Bibliographic Data

ID8963353
AuthorsMara Ferreri (0000-0002-3163-4490, Institut de Govern i Polítiques Públiques Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona 08193 Bellaterra (Barcelona) Spain, corresponding author), Gloria Dawson (Leeds Independent Researcher), Alex Vasudevan (0000-0002-9550-3676, University of Nottingham), Alexander Vasudevan (School of Geography University of Nottingham Nottingham NG7 2RD)
Year2016
Volume42
Issue2
Pages246-259
Publication date2016-11-30
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueTransactions of the Institute of British Geographers (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0020-2754 • E-ISSN: 1475-5661
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/tran.12162
OpenAlexW2529700871
LanguageEN
Citations received47
References cited52

In this paper we examine the precarious everyday geographies of property guardianship in the United Kingdom. Temporary property guardianship is a relatively new form of insecure urban dwelling existing in the grey area between informal occupation, the security industry and housing. Young individuals, usually in precarious employment, apply to intermediary companies to become temporary ‘guardians’ in metropolitan centres, most notably in London. The scheme allows guardians to pay below market rent to live in unusual locations while ‘performing’ live‐in security arrangements that are not considered as a form of ‘work’. The experiences of becoming and living as a property guardian can be ambivalent and contradictory: guardians express economic and social advantages to being temporary, while also exposing underlying anxieties with ‘flexible living’. In this paper we offer a detailed description of the various practices of property guardianship and how they must be understood, on the one hand, in light of recent geographical scholarship on housing insecurity and, on the other hand, as an example of a precarious subjectivity that has become normalised in recent decades in cities of the global North. Drawing on in‐depth interviews with long‐term property guardians in London, we unpack the narratives and rationales of university‐educated and highly skilled individuals for whom the city is a site of intensified insecurity and flexible negotiation. In the end, we conclude that the form of permanent temporariness experienced by property guardians needs to be understood as a symptom of wider dynamics of work and life precarisation in urban centres and argue that it is imperative to extend recent geographical debates around work and life insecurity to include new housing practices and their role in co‐constituting urban precarity

Business · Economic growth · Economics · Geography · Legal guardian · Metropolitan area · Political science · Precarity · Property (philosophy · Scholarship · Sociology · Employment and Welfare Studies · Homelessness and Social Issues · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Law