The Geography of Survival: Household Strategies in Urban Settings

Abstract

The rise of poverty in Western societies can be explained by three socio‐economic processes: the dualisation and polarisation of the labour market, the dismantling of the welfare state, and the increase of new types of households like single parents and singles. These processes are interrelated and they lead towards different mechanisms of social exclusion. This article stresses that not everyone excluded from the labour market, welfare provisions, or social networks has to be regarded as excluded from society. By developing survival strategies in different economic systems (market, reciprocity, associative redistribution) poor households try to escape from social marginalisation. The whole of their survival strategies is analysed in five different settings in and around Brussels. It is argued that these areas offer very different opportunities for social integration and community development, essentially related to the heterogeneity of the environment and the social cohesion of the population concerned.

On the social significance of spatial location; Spatial segregation and social inclusion

“…This applies to housekeeping, odd jobs, cleaning, and child care in particular. Meert et al (1997) found that there are differences between neighborhoods in Brussels in this respect. In an area with a mixed population (professionals and poor households), the inhabitants to indeed profit from the larger demand for informal jobs.…”

Between Rural and Urban Slums: A Geography of Pathways Through Homelessness

“…It is noticeable that the initial differentiation between the three parks still played an important role in the way different groups of settlers found their way to the caravans, chalets and modest brick houses on the holiday parks of Somme-Leuze. The Domaine du Mayeur and the Domaine des Grands Horizons in particular attracted households from the Walloon industrial axis (not limited to Liège), while permanent dwellers of the Domaine du Pierreux mainly left the Brussels industrial basin to settle down in Somme-Leuze (for a similar case in Flanders, see Meert et al, 1997). This finding suggests that former owners of second homes (individual households as well as the owner of the parks in the case of rent contracts) promoted the sale of the former second homes to households from the cities where the initial promotion of the holiday parks had taken place in the late 1960s.…”

Inserting Temporality into the Analysis of Displacement: Living Under the Threat of Displacement

“…Considering the important role of place‐based social networks in the livelihoods of disadvantaged residents (Meert et al . ), we need to understand how social networks change over time in neighbourhoods under the threat of displacement.…”