'We're moving – Like it or not': Tenant driven research on forced relocation and social mix

This paper reports on a study exploring the experience of forced relocation to new mixed income neighbourhoods, developed and conducted by public tenants in Western Sydney who have themselves been affected by relocations. Residents' Voices is a partnership involving university researchers and local tenant organisations in several cities in Australia and the US. which aims to recast debate on redevelopment and deconcentration of public housing from the perspective of tenants' lived experience and right to place. This particular project emerged from a Residents' Voices forum discussion amongst tenants who believed that much more could be learned by tenants exploring mutual experiences than through investigation by external researchers.

Tenants' experiences and perceptions of the benefits and disbenefits of moving, which might encompass: the quality of housing and neighbourhood services; empowerment or disempowerment; dislocation and re-establishment of social ties and networks; and the experience of stigma, are being explored through mutual storytelling as well as photo-elicitation and other visual methods. Stories, pictures and analysis of local participants' experiences can then be shared via a purpose-built website (residentsvoices.net) established to facilitate communication, collective theorising and organising by tenants across sites in both countries where redevelopment and relocations aimed at changing social mix are currently or have recently occurred.    

Residents' Voices is based on the premise that conventional academic and policy research on so-called 'excluded' communities is itself inherently exclusionary and so seeks to allow and encourage tenants to form and pursue their own questions about social mix, amongst other things.  The paper will reflect on the value and efficacy of the collaborative participatory approach and its potential to open a new debate about these issues.