5th ISA Forum of Sociology (6-11 July 2025)

Shared housing among strangers is a recurrent pattern of the (in)formal housing market in many urban contexts worldwide. This dwelling arrangement can be driven by several factors—market dynamics, policy measures, grassroots solidarity initiatives. Each factor results in different ways of co-living, from involuntary emergency options to deliberately chosen ones, short-term "couch-surfing" as much as long-term flatshares. This diversity of arrangements invites a redefinition of micro-, meso-, and macro-understandings of housing and homemaking compared to standard household arrangements in the Global North, and beyond.

This redefinition raises key research questions to be addressed in a comparative fashion across urban locations, as follows. What are the major commonalities and societal implications across drivers and temporalities of shared housing? What factors influence everyday boundary-making and homemaking within shared living spaces, considering housing infrastructures, local contexts, and the intersectional and interpersonal dynamics among dwellers? How do inequalities and vulnerabilities affect shared dwelling and the possibility to enter or leave it? Additionally, what roles do local labor and housing markets, welfare policies, and civil society initiatives play in determining the distribution, composition, and sustainability of shared housing?