Housing Stigmatization: Defining, Distinguishing, and Refining the Concept

Studies of processes of stigmatization have burgeoned in urban studies over the last quarter century. These works primarily draw on, and are driven, by Wacquant’s hugely influential formulation of "territorial stigmatization". Such work tends to treat the neighbourhood as the primary unit of analysis. A related but distinct vein of research takes seriously the ways that housing itself is stigmatized. Housing stigmatization is not always and everywhere directly connected to neighbourhood or location. Indeed, a range of recent scholarship shows how different housing types and forms of housing tenure, for example, can be primary vectors through which processes of housing stigmatization unfold (Rollwagen 2015; Vassenden and Lie 2013; Smets and Kusenbach 2020; Horgan 2020).

In this session, we invite papers that investigate "housing stigmatization" as a distinct concept or social process that cannot be folded into the broader category of territorial stigmatization, especially works that look beyond locations and investigate stigmatized housing or tenure types. All research designs, methods, and analytic approaches are welcome. We particularly invite colleagues who are working in, or on, underrepresented countries, metro regions, and urban communities to participate in the scholarly conversation on this innovative concept at the intersection of urban and housing marginality.