The right to stay put: Resistance and organizing in the wake of changing housing policies in Sweden

Gustafsson, Jennie; Hellström, Elof; Richard, Åse; Springfeldt, Scott

doi:10.54825/mkvm1056

Cited by 8 publications

(5 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Taking an active stance can lead to positive emotions, if tenants are heard, but negative emotions can be amplified if they are not heard. The possibilities to influence the process is often limited (Boverket, 2014), but there is an emerging housing movement against renovictions in Sweden today, organized mainly outside the Tenants Union (Gustafsson et al, 2019;Listerborn et al, 2020). These movements partly aim to call the politicians' attention to this problem, but their main purpose is to learn about the tenant's rights within the existing legal framework.…”

Section: Swedish Displacement Trajectoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Struggling with Conceptual Framings to Understand Swedish Displacement Processes

Listerborn

Baeten

2022

Socio-Spatial Theory in Nordic Geography

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Research on displacement has a long trajectory in Western geography and urban studies. In a Swedish context theory formation around displacement re-emerged in the 2010s as a response to an increasingly heated housing market, increased gentrification and growing homelessness, and as a consequence of ‘renoviction’ processes. Learning from empirical research in Sweden, the Nordic experiences differ from the Anglo-American context, and set ground for a theoretical discussion on how to understand the specificities of displacement processes in (post-)welfare societies. In this chapter we investigate some Swedish manifestations of displacement that cannot easily be grasped by conceptual apparatuses often developed in an Anglo-American context. The process of displacement in a Swedish (and Nordic) context is often more indirect and slower but its eventual outcomes have the same damaging effects on its victims. The chapter provides both an historical and contemporary view of Swedish displacement processes and practices, and we argue that we cannot uncritically import a conceptual apparatus that grew out of other socio-spatial contexts and develop particular understandings of displacement based on Nordic empirical observations.

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Section: Swedish Displacement Trajectoriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Struggling with Conceptual Framings to Understand Swedish Displacement Processes

Listerborn

Baeten

2022

Socio-Spatial Theory in Nordic Geography

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“…Previous research shows the brutal nature of current displacement processes taking place in Sweden (Baeten & Listerborn, 2015;Baeten et al, 2017;Gustafsson et al, 2019;Listerborn, 2018;Polanska & Richard, 2018, 2019Pull, 2020;Pull & Richard, 2019). Baeten and colleagues categorize the violence of displacement exerted by landlords as 'objective violence', arguing that it operates anonymously, systemically and invisibly through the very way society is organized, as opposed to physical, or 'subjective ', violence (2017, p. 11).…”

Section: Governing Practices In Housing Renewalmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Despite such practices that weaken the position of tenants facing housing renewal, affected tenants have taken collective action throughout the country (Gustafsson et al, 2019;Listerborn et al, 2020;Polanska & Richard, 2018;Pull & Richard, 2018). In our previous research (2018, 2019), we discussed individual as well as collective forms of resistance, and the formation of political subjectivities among tenants in Sweden facing renovictions.…”

Section: Resistance Among Tenantsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Resisting renovictions: tenants organizing against housing companies’ renewal practices in Sweden

Polanska¹,

Richard²

2021

RHJ

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While governing practices, as articulated in policies and other documents intended to shape tenants’ behavior, have been given considerable attention in research, less attention has been given to the self-regulation of tenants in practice or how these governance practices are challenged and resisted from below. The ambition of our work is to study governing practices deployed by housing companies in two Swedish cities to achieve tenants’ compliance with extensive housing renewal plans, and to conceptualize this means of exerting power as practices through which tenants are governed, silenced and surveilled, and their collective interests divided. Building on several years of ethnographic work among communities of tenants experiencing extensive renovation of their homes and, in particular, qualitative interviews and focus-group interviews with tenants, this study analyzes how governing practices are exercised by housing companies and contested by tenants. Our contribution is twofold: First, we propose the broadening of the notion of repertoires of contention alongside collectively organized contention to include covert and individual forms of resistance. We understand these forms as mutually shaping, and distinguish between eight forms of resistance repertoires common among tenants facing renovictions (indirect evictions caused by extensive housing renewal and skyrocketing rents) in Sweden: building local identities, mixing formal and informal forms of organization, delaying the process, detournement, politics of disengagement, demanding accountability through visibility, reversing knowledge hierarchies, and reversed shaming. Second, we aim to add to the still understudied field of tenants’ mobilizations in the Swedish context.

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“…During the last decade, however, the established tenants' movement has been challenged, both from the right by those wanting to decrease the influence of HRF, and from the left by those wanting to once again increase the grassroot influence within the movement. A trend of separate network organising independent of, but often partially working with, HRF has been prominent in the last few years (see Gustafsson et al, 2019 andListerborn et al, 2020). There have also been several conflicts within HRF.…”

Section: List Of Abbreviationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A Union for Tenants: Tenant militancy in Gothenburg as a historical example

Rolf¹

2021

RHJ

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The Swedish Union of Tenants is known today as perhaps the strongest tenants’ organisation in the world, with an established institutional role in the rent-setting system and a mandate to collectively bargain rents. What is relatively unknown, however, is that this system emerged out of a period of widespread rent struggle during the mid-war period. This was especially noteworthy in the city of Gothenburg. During the 19th Century, Gothenburg had become an important industrial centre and its population multiplied tenfold. Together with other groups, such as clerks and small shop owners, the workers formed a distinct popular class culture with organisational expressions and collective mobilisation that changed the social and political order of the city forever. One of these expressions was the tenants’ unions, seen as a sort of trade unions for the rented home. Tenants’ unions advocated protective legislation for tenants and confronted landlords, both with legal means and with militant methods such as rent strikes and blockades. This militancy reached its highest levels from 1932 to 1937. The collective mobilisation and organisation of the tenants altered the power relations between landlords and tenants, which can be seen both in the concessions made by landlords in numerous conflicts and in the fact that the landlords altered their organisations to defend themselves against the tenant offensive. By the time of the rent control act of 1942, centralised collective bargaining had been largely implemented and the collective organisations had become established and recognised interest organisations. The historical relationship between organised labour and tenants, and the effect of tenant organising on the rental market, are still under-researched subjects. This article is intended to both explore the historic rise of the tenants’ movement and to show the very real historical conflict between independent grassroot organisations and political parties in housing and labour history.

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The right to stay put: Resistance and organizing in the wake of changing housing policies in Sweden

Cited by 8 publications

References 5 publications

Struggling with Conceptual Framings to Understand Swedish Displacement Processes

Struggling with Conceptual Framings to Understand Swedish Displacement Processes

Resisting renovictions: tenants organizing against housing companies’ renewal practices in Sweden

A Union for Tenants: Tenant militancy in Gothenburg as a historical example

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