Housing Violence in the Post-welfare Context

Abstract

Housing transformation creates conditions or situations that may be experienced as “everyday violence”, which is present in mundane life but may not necessarily be recognized as violence. This article argues that post-welfare housing violence differs from other housing violence while being affected by the society’s welfare state ideologies. Violence may develop slowly or manifest itself in subtle ways when the rights to own, use, and develop housing estates are debated. By analysing activists’ struggle against the privatization of a Swedish suburb, the article elaborates on the forms of post-welfare housing violence, and the ways in which violence is made visible and contested. The analysis reveals how post-welfare housing violence is normalized and slow violence, and how the by-product of the welfare state history is the effort to invisibilise violence in situations that were earlier public responsibility.