Informal housing arrangements

Beyond support or exploitation

Inequality and reciprocity in informal housing arrangements between newcomers and their migrant hosts

Background

• In cities facing housing shortages, vulnerable newcomers almost always live with family or friends upon arrival

• Social networks are often seen as a source of support (social capital) that facilitates migration and settlement

• However, newcomers can also be exploited by established migrants and relatives

➡️ Do newcomers experience either altruistic support or selfish exploitation from their hosts?

Methods

• Interviews with Colombian newcomers in the city of Rotterdam (The Netherlands)

Questions

• How do they experience being hosted by a friend, a brother or a stranger?

• What kind of support do they receive and how do they reciprocate? 

• How do frames such as kinship or friendship shape the experience of shared housing, the exchange between the guest and the hosts and its meanings?

Findings

• No one is accommodated for free, there is always some form of reciprocity

• ‘Who supports whom’ is an open question and is sometimes the subject of disagreement between hosts and guests. The directionality of support cannot be taken for granted.

• The fundamental asymmetry between host and guest is compounded by inequalities of gender, legal status, and economic and cultural resources

• The vocabulary of help and family solidarity used by guests to describe their housing arrangement should be viewed as relational work, attributing specific qualities to the relationship with the host.

• Rather than opposite ends of a spectrum, exploitation emerges from support, from the ambiguity and implicit obligations that govern hospitality