Navigating Displacement: Housing Precarity and Migrant Survival Strategies in Luanda

This proposal builds on prior research on housing precarity in the Lisbon Metropolitan Area (LMA), where housing financialisation, rising housing prices, and wage stagnation have limited access to adequate housing for low- and middle-income workers and the unemployed. Our previous findings showed that housing exclusions are influenced by gender, race, and class-based barriers (Saaristo, 2022). Migrant women often encounter exploitative labour conditions in the care sector, which affect their ability to secure decent housing due to low wages and precarious employment, forcing many into conditions of displaced survival (Soederberg, 2021).

Public policies often fail to address these needs, leading migrants to develop their own housing strategies in the LMA: self-built neighbourhoods on occupied land, unauthorised council housing occupations, and shared living arrangements like bed-sharing. Each of these options presents serious security of tenure challenges: self-built areas face eviction, unauthorised occupations encounter legal issues, and shared living arrangements result in overcrowding and limited legal protection.

The proposal at hand takes one step back in this cycle of displacement by examining Angolan women's – a significant immigrant group in Portugal - previous migration and dwelling routes, analysing them as survival strategies and forms of popular entrepreneurship, in line with the notion of 'neoliberalism from below' (Gago, 2017). In Angola, four decades of war caused a major demographic shift when people from rural conflict areas fled to the urban settlements on the coast, resulting in rapid urbanisation in coastal cities like Luanda. Migrants often live in environmentally hazardous areas with no tenure security, facing risks of climate-induced displacement and eviction. The ongoing research with the Angolan NGO Development Workshop employs methods like self-census, social cartography, and interviews in three Luanda neighbourhoods to understand displacement cycles and the housing needs of migrant communities, aiming to inform policies that promote dignified living and combat exclusion.