Precarious Homes, Resilient Struggles: Feminist Perspectives on Housing Justice.
Precarious Homes, Resilient Struggles: Feminist Perspectives on Housing Justice.
Wednesday, 9 July 2025: 13:15
Location: ASJE015 (Annex of the Faculty of Legal, Economic, and Social Sciences)
Oral Presentation
Housing precarity is a growing phenomenon in Europe, affecting around 260 million people (Clair et al. 2019), with significantly higher levels in southern European countries such as Portugal. Yet housing precarity affects different population groups in dissimilar ways. Single parents, of which 85% are women, are also particularly affected, due to their higher risk of poverty. Many women, especially racialised women, struggle against displacements and housing precarity work in the precarious low-wage service sector, notably in the care sector, not earning a sufficient salary to cover living costs, including paying their rent.
This paper addresses the struggle for the right to housing and other urban rights of women living in housing precarity. Mapping inequality, addressing not only gender-based oppression but also the ways in which race, class, ethnicity, and legal status intersect to shape urban inequalities in self-built neighbourhoods, the paper will consider multiple dimensions of discrimination, namely displacement from urban areas, exclusion from labor markets, or disenfranchisement in political spaces. At the same time, the research recognises local knowledge, particularly from grassroots and community-based women-led movements, as legitimate and valuable in shaping urban futures.
Methodologically, the paper reclaims urban histories of 10 women who were interviewed in 2020, during the pandemic, all living in some form of housing precarity and part of a collective called MUdHA (Movement of Women for the Right to Housing). By revisiting their experiences four years later, the paper seeks to trace the long-term impacts of housing precarity on their lives and communities, while also examining policies and articulation movements for housing justice. This temporal lens allows for a critical reflection on the intersection of crisis, gender, and urban exclusion.
This paper addresses the struggle for the right to housing and other urban rights of women living in housing precarity. Mapping inequality, addressing not only gender-based oppression but also the ways in which race, class, ethnicity, and legal status intersect to shape urban inequalities in self-built neighbourhoods, the paper will consider multiple dimensions of discrimination, namely displacement from urban areas, exclusion from labor markets, or disenfranchisement in political spaces. At the same time, the research recognises local knowledge, particularly from grassroots and community-based women-led movements, as legitimate and valuable in shaping urban futures.
Methodologically, the paper reclaims urban histories of 10 women who were interviewed in 2020, during the pandemic, all living in some form of housing precarity and part of a collective called MUdHA (Movement of Women for the Right to Housing). By revisiting their experiences four years later, the paper seeks to trace the long-term impacts of housing precarity on their lives and communities, while also examining policies and articulation movements for housing justice. This temporal lens allows for a critical reflection on the intersection of crisis, gender, and urban exclusion.