Staying Put! A Housing Pathway Analysis of Residential Stability in Belgium

Abstract

Governments all over the world try to influence in one way or another the residential mobility of their citizens. This article takes the vantage point of why Belgians do not want to change residence a lot and how they actually succeed in doing this. We claim that the framework of a housing pathways approach helps to get to grips with the historically built-up archive of normalizing discourses and practices related to housing and diverse other domains of life. Our in-depth interviews with 67 residents reveal that normalizing discourses and practices on becoming and remaining a stable home-owner mainly support the two pillars of Belgian housing policy (home ownership and commuting) even when these practices and discourses further endorse ecological and accessibility problems. Policies that successfully want to change the relocation practices of people do have to take this archive seriously.

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