Urban assemblages, (in)formality and housing in the Global North

Mark Jayne and Sarah Marie Hall

Prof. Mark JayneSchool of Geography and Planning Cardiff UniversityGlamorgan Building King Edward VII Avenue Cardiff CF10 3WAWales, UK.

Email: JayneM1@cardiff.ac.uk

Dr. Sarah Marie HallSchool of Environment, Education and DevelopmentArthur Lewis BuildingThe University of ManchesterManchester, UKM13 9PL

Email: sarah.m.hall@manchester.ac.uk

Corresponding author: Mark Jayne

Acknowledgments: This research was funded by Strategic Research Investment Fund, Faculty of Humanities, University of Manchester, UK. Thanks to Desiree Fields who undertook some interviews in NYC and Gary Bridge, Noel Castree, Michele Lancione, Bethan Evans for advice and comments and Nik Heynen and anonymous reviewers for their help to strengthen the paper.

Figures

Figure 1: A communal living room - spaces of found, shared, creative materialities and (un)wanted sociability (Source: Mark Jayne).

Figure 2: A communal kitchen - spaces of found, shared, creative materialities, (un)wanted sociability and restrictions on cooking appliances (Source: Mark Jayne).

Figure 3: A communal shower inserted between toilet cubicles - originally a school’s toilets (Source: Mark Jayne).

Figure 4: A communal bathroom - originally a school’s toilets (Source: Mark Jayne).

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Urban assemblages, (in)formality and housing in the Global North

Abstract: Geographers and urbanists focused on assemblages in the Global South have significantly advanced urban theory, investigating politics, policy, everyday practices of (in)formality - infrastructure, water, sanitation, housing, education, health - how (non)human actors, networks, practices, ideas, learning constitute urban life. This paper outlines new directions for this agenda, presenting research into comparative geographies of Live-in-Guardians - ‘temporary’ living, often in non-residential buildings, based on licensed tenure - undertaken in London, Dublin, Amsterdam, New York City that considers water sprinklers, light/air, employment, money, travel, ghosts, family, love, nuns, intimacy, slamming doors, echoes, friendship, aesthetics, leaks, draughts, comfort, sharing, heat/cold, housing markets, consumer culture etc. We engage with (non)human assemblages to offer new theoretical and empirical insights into relational politics, legislation, policy, (in)mobilities, (un)comfortable materialities, more-than-representation which we argue are key to understanding (in)formal housing in the Global North.

Key words politics, legislation, policy (im)mobilities, materialities, more-than-representation

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Introduction

Assemblage has been at the forefront of urban geography in recent years (Farías and

Bender 2010; Farías 2010, 2016). Writing on politics, legislation, policy and everyday

practices of ‘collective consumption’ - infrastructure, water, sewerage, housing,

education, health - offer insight into urban (in)formalities. Theorists have pursued

understanding of (non)human actors, networks, policy, practices, ideas, learning

(McFarlane 2009; 2011a, b, c, 2012; De Boeck 2011; Simone 2011b; Angell et al

2014; Corsin-Jimenez and Estella 2014) focusing on cities in the Global South

(although see McCann and Ward 2012; Farber 2014; Jayne and Ferenčuhová 2015;

McFarlane and Lancione 2016). Here we advance understanding of urban

assemblages, (in)formality, housing pioneered in Southern cities through comparative

research from London, Dublin, Amsterdam, New York City - foregrounding urbanism

as relational and co-constituted (Amin and Thrift 2002). Our research into Live-in-

Guardians - ‘temporary’ living, often in non-residential buildings, based on licensed

tenure - considers water sprinklers, light/air, employment, money, housing markets,

travel, ghosts, family, love, nuns, intimacy, slamming doors, echoes, friendship,

aesthetics, leaks, draughts comfort, sharing, neighborhood/'neighborliness', heat/cold,

consumer culture etc. which we argue are key constituents of geographies of

(in)formal housing in Northern cities.

Theorists have long engaged with political, economic, social, cultural geographies of

housing/home in Europe and North America (Engels 1872; Smith 1979; Saunders

1986; Brenner 2009; Marcuse 2009; Blunt and Dowling 2006). Since Engels (1872)

argued ‘housing crisis’ could not be resolved under capitalism, generations have

critiqued privatization, neoliberal policy and urban planning (Hodkinson 2012). The

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role of housing in recent global financial crisis has seen academic, popular, political

and policy concern.

For example, consider one of our case studies, London.1 ‘Austerity’ and long-term

‘roll-back neoliberalism’ included cuts/changes to welfare (e.g. capping of housing

benefit); unemployment, precarious working (e.g. part-time/‘zero-hours’ contacts);

lower standards of living. Moreover, Kemp (2014) argues ‘buy-to-let’ and ‘buy-to-

leave empty’ housing offer less risky returns than other assets - ‘bricks and mortar’

providing more secure options than stock market/private pensions as London became

a haven for private equity/financial institutional investment. Global financial

crisis/changing international political economy intensified a ‘housing bubble’ -

increasing costs of home ownership/renting (compared to income); reduced access to

mortgages; new build housing at low levels; increasing numbers of properties left

empty; lack of affordable housing - factors excluding many from accessing/climbing

‘the property ladder’. Record numbers of young people live at home with

family/friends, purchasing property later than previous generations, or remaining in

rented accommodation (BBC 2017). Changing aspirations and markers of ‘success’

also relate to social/economic/demographic change e.g. migration; expansion of

higher education and associated financial burdens; later parenthood; fluidity of

kin/friendship; increasing divorce/separation - altering established lifecourse/housing

quality/tenure expectations (Rabe and Taylor 2009; Schwiter 2011; Feijten and Van

Ham 2010; Mulder and Wagner 2012).

While such broad-brush depictions are useful we must not however be seduced by

overly ‘neat’ geographies of housing/home. For example, Smet (2015) highlights the

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importance of interrogating geographical diversity of housing accumulation strategies;

uneven policies, spatial inequalities; identity, belonging. Hall (2016) points to

differential geographical/social impacts of shrinking welfare; Hamnett (2014), Kemp

(2014) signpost research lacunae/political silences relating to (lack of) policy,

overseas ownership, equity, poverty, amount/quality of housing etc. We respond to

one such knowledge gap - research on housing (in)formality in Northern cities, which

has received little attention (Vasudevan 2015; Lombard and Meth 2016; Ferreri et al

2016).

To that end, this paper presents comparative geographies of Live-in-Guardians in

dialogue with our research focused on (in)formal/(il)legal housing in New York City.

We argue that key to understanding (in)formal housing in the Global North are

theoretical, empirical and methodological challenges of interrogating ‘becomings’,

de-centring ‘the human’, and foregrounding more-than-representation at the heart of

powerful epistemological demarcations of (in)formality. Addressing how

(in)formality emerges and mutates across temporal/spatial contexts with regard to

(non)human actors demands attention not only to assemblage thinking per se but

diverse theoretical resources relating to policy, legislation, policy; (im)mobilties;

(un)comfortable materialities, emotions, embodiment, affect. This work advances

debates regarding analytical strategies of comparing cities (McFarlane and Robinson

2012) by responding to challenges and opportunities afforded by ‘relational

comparison’ (Ward 2010), paying attention to place, scale, causality of territorial

/relational urbanism through ‘experimental’ comparison (Lancione and McFarlane

2016). Such approaches are vital theoretical and empirical resources to move beyond

‘like-for-like’ study of context, practice, process in order to pursue questions that

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refigures our critical understanding of cities (Ward 2010; Edensor and Jayne 2012;

Robinson 2016).

Urban assemblages, (in)formality, housing

Over the last decade ‘assemblage thinking’ has extended an invitation to reimagine

‘the city’ (Farias 2016). Writing has focused on ontological problematizations,

empirical possibilities and ethico-political challenges of understanding co-functioning

heterogeneous human and non-human actors, networks, practices, ideas and learning -

with studies addressing in a ‘parliament of things’ including materials, technological

artifacts, bodies, texts, concepts and symbols (Latour 1993) - through engagement

with qualities, intensities, speeds and topologies of territorial, proximate and

relationally distant connections and flows (Deluze and Guattarri 1987). Following

Farias (2016) we embrace the productive ways ‘assemblage thinking’ can be pursued

as a point of departure to develop new theoretical, empirical and methodological

repertoires to advance understanding of cities and urban life. In this paper we argue

that assemblages offer innovative new insights into the ways in which politics, capital

accumulation, policy mobilities interpenetrate with the diverse, rich and complex

everyday lives of citizens living in (in)formal housing in the Global North.

Towards that end, tensions across foundational ‘assemblage thinking’ - Foucault

(1997), Deleuze and Guattari (1988), Haraway (1990) Latour (2005) - offer vital

resources for advancing comparative understanding of urban (in)formality. For

example, Greenhough (2011) applies anticipatory, fabricated, response-able

approaches to borders, bodies, states which resonates with our topic. Greenhough

(2011, 135) highlights Deleuze and Guattari’s ‘‘anticipatory assemblages’ – ‘what

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might be possible ... for things to happen’ and ‘bodies without organs’ which

‘captures the capacities of bodies to resist the process of organ(ization) and

normalisation’’, and Deleuze and Guattari’s (1998) interest in matter and energy -

‘becoming’ through (non)human encounters. These arguments are pertinent for our

research; enabling understanding of ‘becoming’ demarcations of housing

(in)formality in politics, legislation, policy that interpenetrates with changing

notions/depictions of how/where/when mobilities and ‘dwelling’ are related to

specific (un)comfortable (non)human materialities and more-than-representations.

Similarly, Greenhough (2011) applauds Latour’s (2005) ‘fabricated assemblages’ - a

challenge to ask; what is required? What needs to be assembled? Our research

highlights that Actor Network Theory is useful for dissecting how (in)formal housing

assemblages are ‘made to work’ (or not) - to reveal situated/contingent achievements

of ‘interconnected’ assemblages - relating for example to the (non)human constituents

of building, fire regulations and housing markets etc. Indeed, inspired by Greenhough

(2011, 135) we draw on Haraway’s (1990) ethnographies of political possibilities of

(non)human hybridities through a focus on ‘attachment sites’ where assemblages are

formed. This approach responds to Deleuze and Guattari’s reluctance to engage with

response-abilities (entailed by ‘ties of affection’) that emerge from and are demanded

by (non)human hybrid relations. Such critical perspectives highlight complex ways

people make/are able to make decisions (and define boundaries) regarding ‘dwelling’

and material conditions, social relations, emotions, embodiment, affective

atmospheres as relational comparison/experiences of (in)formal housing.

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Before applying these insights to (in)formal housing in the Global North we firstly

reflect on debate regarding strengths and limitations of ‘urban assemblage’. We do so

in order highlight productive tensions/dialogue between assemblage thinking and

theoretical resources relating to relational/territorial politics, legislation, policy,

(in)mobilities, materialities, more-than-representation. For example, argued to have

‘changed urban research’, theorists have celebrated Deleuze and Guattari’s/ANT

complexity and ‘openness’ - how cities (re)assemble (Farías and Bender 2009). This

thinking is useful in unpacking demarcations of (in)formal housing; firstly, urban

assemblage holds together the ‘‘heterogeneous things without them ceasing to be

heterogeneous’’ (Farías 2016, 1) - including living space, lighting, plumbing, leaking

roofs, travel to work time, family life etc. Relationships external to a wide variety of

components such as policy initiatives, housing markets, noisy neighbours, cooking

facilities can be foregrounded – ‘‘assemblages do not necessarily determine or

transform the properties of their various components’’, remaining relatively

independent, simultaneously participating in multiple assemblages in different

capacities (Farías 2016, 2). In these terms, much can be gained from considering

urban housing assemblages not as stable/bounded but transforming/relational with

regard to political, economic, social, cultural, spatial demarcations of (in)formality.

Secondly, assemblage emphasises heterogeneous, multi-local processual urban life.

For example, McCann and Ward (2012) de-stabilise linear understanding of ‘policy’

as governmental action; highlighting materials, resources, social practices, expert/lay

knowledges etc. This argument is important to the topic at hand in helping towards

understanding (in)formality as ontological demarcations affected by translocal

circuits, networks, and webs of policy mobilities; as well as highlighting ‘stubborn’

territorial politics/capital/culture. Thirdly, Farías (2016) suggests assemblage

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foregrounds multiple ontologies - paying attention to asymmetries and inequalities;

not only how they are (or not) contained within a city, but towards multi-local

typologies connecting elements and actors - cities as multiplicity, made through

networks (Amin and Thrift 2002). These notions are vital to pursuing relational and

experimental comparative approaches to urban housing (in)formality outlined above.

Finally, Farías (2016) celebrates assemblage as critical practice enabling engagement

with interactions between (non)humans. Comparative study of cities, neighbourhoods,

residential and non-residential buildings can be productively pursued with these

insights in mind by focusing on how place, scale and causality (Ward 2010) are active

constituents in geographically significant demarcations of (in)formality.

Urban assemblage thinking is not without critique (Brenner et al 2011; Storper and

Scott 2016). Brenner et al (2011, 227) welcomes theoretical/empirical innovation but

argues assemblage downplays ‘context of contexts’ - that theorists should take

seriously underlying logics/inequalities of capitalism. In response, and drawing on

specific examples of (in)formality - dwelling, infrastructure, ‘comfy’ clothes -

McFarlane (2011), Simone (2011), Jayne and Ferenčuhová (2015) point to ‘artificial

divisions’ between political-economy and post-structuralism; and that assemblage

challenges capitalism by focusing on socio-material practices rather than underlying

logics alone - engaging with ‘context of contexts’ without erasing

complexity/contingency of urban change and struggle. Moreover, Dovey (2011),

Block and Farías (2016) celebrate how assemblages challenges tendencies of critical

urbanism to resort to hierarchies of scale valorizing the large (e.g. global capital) over

the small - glossing over urban complexities and messiness. Blok and Farías (2016)

further suggest Brenner et al’s claims to ‘more critical’ accounts of ‘politics’ are not

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grounded in ‘cities’, but planetary capitalist dynamics, arguing need to: ‘redistribute

the political’ - understanding co-presence of relational topologies of urban politics. In

a similar vein, Roy’s (2011) ‘fractal geometries’ draws on Ong (2006, 7) to

foreground ‘market-driven strategies of spatial fragmentation [in order to trace

patterns of] non-contagious, differentially administered spaces of graduated or

variegated sovereignty, or zones of exception’ important for example in Simone’s

(2011a, 364) work on (in)formality in ports, bus terminals, back offices, large-scale

housing developments, universities etc. Together this writing offers detailed insights

into interpenetrations of politics/economy/culture that critiques David Harvey’s

‘spatial dispossession’, Neil Smith’s ‘revanchist frontiers’, Brenner’s ‘rescaling of

state spaces’ as no longer capturing the complexities of contemporary cities. Inspired

by Rao et al (2007), De Boeck (2011), Simone (2011a) we too undertake such work to

interrogate spatial tactics of capitalist accumulation relating to housing (in)formality

in the Global North.

(In)formality has been at the heart of geographical engagement with cities in the

Global South - (re)thinking infrastructure (water, electricity, sewerage etc.); land

acquisition, self/build/help construction; incremental service provision; subdivision -

often through ‘illegitimate’ building materials and sub-standard services; low income;

poverty; marginalization; discrimination; eviction; displacement etc. (McFarlane

2011a). Lombard and Meth (2016) argue assemblage helps to unpack the messy,

dynamic, contextual processes constituting (in)formal distinctions - naming,

managing, governing, producing, critiquing - with a focus on (non)human constituents

of power relations, inequality captures the complex material realities of powerful

distinctions enabled by this ‘modest descriptor’ as epistemological demarcation.

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However, McFarlane (2012) reminds us (in)formalities fold into one another,

occupying contradictory but never fully externalized space - and geographies of

(in)formalities exist in all cities - worthy of sustained comparative scrutiny.

Following an introduction to research design and methodology subsequent sections

we respond to this challenge. We draw on McFarlane’s (2012) understanding of

cumulative/constitutive processes of assembly, biographies of (non)human actors,

diverse parts of peoples lives - work, family, fun, entertaining etc. - alignments at the

heart of understanding Southern cities. In doing so we open ‘up a wider imaginary of

urban spatial topology’ (McFarlane 2012, 688) outlining new theoretical and

empirical avenues vital to understanding (in)formal urban housing assemblages in the

Global North.

Research design and methodology

Live-in-Guardians emerged in The Netherlands to ‘protect’, ‘secure’, ‘occupy’ empty

properties. Notions of ‘mutual gain’ underpins the concept. For Live-in-Guardian

companies: no cost to lease buildings; property owners responsible for renovation to

basic living standards; income generation based on license fees. For property owners:

buildings have 24/7 ‘security’; maintenance of financial/timescale control; cost saving

on insurance, tax etc.; no legal responsibilities for occupants. Live-in-Guardians

access locations/buildings typically beyond their financial reach with freedom from

constraints of rental contracts. There has been differential proliferation of Live-in-

Guardians throughout Europe and there remains limited reliable cumulative data

relating to all aspects of the ‘sector’ across within/national contexts due to

commercial sensitivities. Respondents nonetheless estimated that in Amsterdam there

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are approximately 30-50,000 guardians and 50 companies; 90 guardian companies

and estimated 6,000 guardians in London; and in Dublin 2 companies, with 152

guardians in approximately 40 buildings. In the UK since 2005, Live-in-Guardians

are in London, Bristol, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Liverpool. Licenses enable

open-ended occupation and short-periods of notice (14 to 28 days - 24 hours if terms

are broken by Guardians). While portfolios of Live-in-Guardian companies include

domestic dwellings the majority are non-residential; offices, schools, hospitals, police,

fire stations, pubs, religious buildings etc.

Our study in London, Dublin, Amsterdam and NYC included 30 in-depth interviews

with Live-in-Guardian companies and key stakeholders including local authorities and

charities. London research also included 20 interviews with property owners and

interviews/home-tours with Live-in-Guardians. While there are no Live-in-Guardians

in NYC, interviews were undertaken with organisations connecting individuals/social

groups (working-class, ethnic, immigrant new-comers - from India, Pakistan,

Bangladesh, Caribbean, China etc.) with owners/landlords of (in)formal (or illegal)

housing. Respondents constituted a coalition of 30-40 NYC organizations allowing

investigation of (in)formal ‘grass-roots’ urbanism in comparison to ‘market-led’ Live-

in-Guardians.

Right now, quite rightly you are perhaps asking yourself ‘are Live-in-Guardians

(in)formal?’ and moreover what theoretical, empirical, methodological benefits can be

drawn from comparative analysis of Amsterdam, London, Dublin in relation to NYC

(i)llegal housing? We suggest four responses to these pertinent question; firstly, we

argue that our comparative research highlights the ways in which national/urban

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housing politics, legislation, policy differentially embrace (in)formality across our

case study cities. As such, Live-in-Guardians are thus more-or-less formal and/or

informal with regard to different (non)human actors in each of our case study cities.

We embrace assemblages thinking in order to highlight how translocal circuits,

networks, webs of policy mobilities impact on housing policy and/or bump up against

‘stubborn’ territorial politics/capital/culture relating to capital accumulation strategies;

‘dwelling’ and (in)formal meanings of home. Secondly, our research highlights the

ways in which Live-in-Guardians assemblages are relationally experienced as formal

or informal through (im)obilities related to housing markets, employment, family,

time economies etc. It is the complex interplay of demarcations of formal or informal

that lead to successful marketization strategies and ‘dwelling’ in (non)residential

buildings for both Live-in-Guardians; and ‘re-modelling’ of residential buildings to

allow new formations of occupancy in NYC as legal or illegal. Thirdly, we argue that

to fully understand geographies of (in)formality relating to Live-in-Guardians there is

a need to understand ideologies of ‘dwelling’ and meaning of home, social relations,

materialities, emotions, embodiment, affect that are bound up with these (in)formal

demarcations. And finally, with regards to both Live-in-Guardians and our NYC

research we argue that assemblage thinking offers unique insights into how

materialities/practices/social relations/actors relate to (in)formal demarcations of

‘security’ and ‘comfort’ in (non)residential buildings; and the role of

actors/companies in blurring definitions/experiences of (in)formality ‘at home’

Applying such theoretical and empirical insights to understanding geographies of

demarcations that underpin (in)formal housing was not without difficulties. There is

acknowledgement that methodological innovation has not always kept pace with

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theoretical advances. McCann and Ward (2012, 43) highlight difficulties of studying

‘chains, circuits, networks, webs, and translations in (and through) which policy

discourses and ideologies are made mobile and mutable’. They argue research cannot

focus on key actors, events, documents etc. alone; ‘things’, metaphors, rumor, stories,

gossip etc. offer insight into small ‘p’ politics both within/beyond governance

institutions. This points to difficulties of capturing detail, complexity, messiness,

vagaries, inconsistencies - how policies/policy knowledges/expertise circulate and

shape place. Knudsen and Stage (2015) highlight similar problems of

capturing/representing (non)human building assemblage (objects, actions, images,

bodies, technologies). As Harrison (2007, 557) suggests researchers face ‘‘vexing’

challenges of vocabulary falling short, descriptive language failing to account for

manifold affective events and textures it seeks to speak up for’’.

Recognizing all methodologies have limitations, in-depth interviews nonetheless offer

insight into institutional/everyday (re)assembling through material, emotional,

embodied, affective geographies. Our analysis considers interviews ‘‘as performative

in themselves, as doings’’ (Dewsbury et al 2002, 438) - as encounters offering

descriptions/observations of tense, texture, tone, imagery. Moreover, responding to

Knudsen and Stage (2015) call for ‘inventive experiment’ our home tours enable

Live-in-Guardians to explore (in)mobilities, materialities, more-than-representations -

not bounded to their ‘home’ but, as our empirical evidence shows throughout the

remainder of the paper, probe complex spatial/temporal relational (re)assemblings.

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(In)formal housing assemblages in the Global North

‘Housing crisis’ has generated/multiplied informal housing in Northern cities -

conversion of garages, sheds, outbuildings etc. (Lombard and Meth 2016); infilling

dwellings between houses (BBC 2010); single room division/occupancy of

houses/flats/moored river, sea, canal boats; living in vehicles; reliance on

friends/families/strangers (‘sofa surfing’). In order to understanding urban housing

(in)formalities in Europe and NYC we pursue ‘experimental comparison … to

generate questions, stretch and challenge understandings … difference-making as a

tool to produce critical forms of knowledge in a heterogeneous urban world’

(Lancione and McFarlane 2016, 2418). To that end, subsequent sections also move

beyond assemblage thinking per se to theoretical resources enlivening urban studies

over the past few decades (Jayne and Ward 2016); including debate on public/private

space; ‘commons’; gentrification; neighborhood; consumption etc.

Politics, legislation, policy

Responding to calls to take seriously political-economic structural transformations of

housing and changing geographies of ‘home’ (Kemp 2014; Smet 2015) we investigate

Live-in-Guardians interwoven with reflections from NYC as spatial/temporal

‘surfacing’ (Simone 2011a) of ‘extra-local’ politics, legislation, policy (Ward and

McCann 2012). Specifically we highlight relational/territorial (in)formal housing

assemblages focusing on place, scale, causality (Ward 2010).

In The Netherlands, planned squatters protest against Beatrix’s coronation

(30/04/1980) - ‘no homes, no crown’ - was foiled by a real estate broker who owned

a building next to the church where coronation/protest were to collide. The broker

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uncovered a legal ‘loophole’- occupation by chair/bed ensured buildings could not be

squatted. This ‘anti-kraak’ response to squatting (kraak) was formalized by Live-in-

Guardian companies (early 1990s). One respondent suggested, ‘in those days 95% of

people squatted because they were like me, they needed a place to live … but couldn't

afford anything … the only option was to squat … 5% do it out of political reasons …

but for most it was cost and lack of availability’ (Chief Marketing Officer, Live-in-

Guardian Company, Amsterdam). As well as being a new ‘fractal’ geometries of

capital accumulation through ‘marketization’ of properties that previously would have

been squatted’, with ‘‘squatters being reduced from 50,000 in the 80s, to around

2,000-3,000 today… [with those left] with anarchistic politics’’ (Chief Marketing

Officer, Live-in-Guardian Company, Amsterdam) government officers acknowledged

Live-in-Guardians as an ‘alternative’ to squatting for those struggling to find

affordable homes (Housing Policy Advisor, Amsterdam City Council). Prior to ‘anti-

Kraak’, squatting was legal in buildings left vacant for one year (tolerance of squats

established under one year notwithstanding). With city authorities wishing to gentrify

neighborhoods, national government invited Live-in-Guardian companies, ‘home

renters union’, charities, property owners etc. to inform policy (Housing Policy

Advisor, Amsterdam City Council). Subsequent legislation (October 2010) declared

occupation of buildings without owners’ permission illegal. A key element of this law

ensured local governments responsibility for ‘productive’ use of vacant property

(Housing Policy Advisor, Amsterdam City Council).

Live-in-Guardians can be theorized through political-economies/neoliberal policies

working in the interest of property owners; criminalizing people looking to ‘survive’

through informal practices; privatization of ‘commons’; de-regulation; private sector

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involvement in ‘reforming’ policy, planning, legislation etc. (Hodkinson 2012;

Mitchell and Heynen 2009). ‘Anti-kraak’ drew on concerns over political power of

squatters, aligned with economic, social, cultural, aesthetic/material/affective post-

industrial urban regeneration agendas - highlighting how ‘‘multiple bits-and pieces

accrete and align over time to enable particular forms of urbanisms over others …

subject to disassembly and reassembly through unequal relations of power and

resources’’ (McFarlane 2011, 653). As one respondent suggested ‘we worked for 20

years to get that law … that helped our work’ (Chief Marketing Officer, Live-in-

Guardian Company, Amsterdam). Live-in-Guardian companies became key actors in

institutional structures and networks of influence in housing policy, self-organizing a

voluntary ‘standards agency’ defining/monitoring safety standards in contrast to the

political rhetoric of squatters (Housing Policy Advisor, Amsterdam City Council).

Welfare reduction also generated opportunities for Live-in-Guardians to pursue

‘marketization’ of social housing (Housing Policy Advisor, Amsterdam City

Council). Addressing concern that licenses favored property owners and short-notice

was problematic for ‘less mobile’ - students, single parents, migrant workers, low

income households etc.; ‘‘we are Dutch and pragmatic … we came with temporary

rental contracts, so that's official ‘rent’ but with a fixed end date’’ (Chief Marketing

Officer, Live-in-Guardian Company, Amsterdam). As Kemp (2014, 602) highlights

housing tenures are changing configurations of property rights/obligations,

socially/spatially constituted ‘‘processes of production, finance, availability and

consumption of housing ... [where] institutions are typically nested within, or interact

with, other institutions … and embedded within a wider political economy’’.

However, critiquing ‘anti-kraak’ politics, legislation, policy simply as criminalization

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of squatting, ‘fractal’ marketization of empty non-commercial buildings/social

housing enabling capitalist accumulation fails to acknowledge complexities at hand.

Anticipatory, fabricated, response-able assemblages offer sophisticated accounts of

(in)formal housing politics, legislation, policy too. For example, Dutch

actors/institutions/networks working to alter housing tenure assemblage, invoked

place based ‘national’ identity/politics/values of ‘pragmatism’ (Bridge 2005) via

(non)human materialities re-imagining ‘home’. This highlights how demarcations of

(in)formality are re-imagined and ‘becoming’ through Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988)

anticipatory (re)assembling and ‘‘scaffolding for thinking about epistemology as part

of a wider object to build new publics that are interested in and able to act’’ (Harney

et al 2016, 2). Live-in-Guardians represented a re-working of political, material,

emotional, embodied, affective subjectivities regarding ‘dwelling’, and home’ and

social responsibility - re-defining squatting and ‘slum frontiers’ (Doshi 2013) and

highlighting the ‘fabrication’ (Latour 2005) needed to (re)assemble housing

(in)formality in The Netherlands.

Internationalization strategies of Live-in-Guardians nonetheless highlights political,

legislative, policy geographies of ‘housing’ and ‘home’ that resisted (re)assembling

logics - with greater financial/time investment needed in some countries (Germany,

France, Spain) and legal frameworks in others impenetrable for marketization of non-

residential buildings as places of ‘dwelling’ (Italy, USA). Allan and Cochrane (2010)

remind us that assemblages of urban state power are not coherent, constituted by

diverse logics, imaginaries, practices, ensuring institutional arrangements do not

easily ‘jump scale’ to different contexts and highlight ‘power-laden and uneven

relations among these various actors all set within larger social and material contexts

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which tend to complicate straightforward assumptions about causality’ (McCann and

Ward 2012, 43). Deleuze and Guattari (1988) ‘bodies without organs’ is also useful to

further tease out critical geographies bound up with causality. Indeed, our research

highlights (in)formal assemblages that emerge and mutate (or not) in

temporal/spatially significant ways across our case studies. Thinking of Live-in-

Guardians as ‘bodies’ which enable ‘housing’ without ‘organs’ - formal tenancy

housing agreements; domestic housing/building regulations; integration into housing

policy etc. is particularly useful for understanding differential constitutions of

(in)formality and how (non)human assemblages ‘anticipate’ (Latour 2005) and enable

(or not) processes of ‘fabricating’ organ(ization) and normalization (Deleuze and

Guattari 1988) of ‘housing’ and ‘home’ in urban politics, legislation, policy.

For example, property owners in London (local authorities, universities, hospitals,

other public organizations) celebrated benefits of cost reduction - insurance,

legal/time costs of squatter eviction, vandalism etc. offered by Live-in-Guardians. All

pointed to social benefits of offering low-paid workers opportunities to live in central

London. In these terms Live-in-Guardians highlights complex ‘interplay of different

mobilities that go beyond the corporal to include communicative, imaginative, virtual

and non-human in relation to housing’ (Duffy-Jones 2012, 211). Indeed, anticipatory

and fabricated (re)assembling strategies to promote Live-in-Guardians as ‘bodies’

which enable ‘housing’ without ‘organs’ was pursued through depictions of ‘social

responsibility’ by respondents to offset the ‘problematic’ issue of allowing people to

live in buildings not ‘fit-for-purpose’ for their own students, tenants, employees etc.

However, unlike in The Netherlands, London companies recognized lagging behind

other European markets; with regards to ‘what might be possible’ (Deleuze and

19

Guattari 1988) through coalition building and marketization of social housing. Only

one company had modified its license to enable students to join the scheme (with

guarantors); another had introduced volunteering as mandatory. While there are

perhaps emerging oopportunities offered by the Conservative Governments shift of

policy in 2017 away from universal goals of home ownership, opening up possibilities

for restructuring of rental markets, Live-in-Guardians currently have no political,

policy, legislative role in Fixing our Broken Housing Market (HMG 2017).

In Ireland, (non)human assemblages relating to place, scale and ‘causal’ practices and

processes have also impacted on the proliferation of Live-in-Guardian’s in specific

ways. Companies established a decade ago entered the market by managing ‘ghost

estates’ and other non-residential properties to prevent theft (particularly metal) and

arson (Housing Officer, Local Authority, Ireland). To do so companies navigated

historic sensitivities:

in Ireland repossessions have a whole different stink … It goes back to British landlords putting out poor Irish peasants off their farms … even now you will hear people saying you cannot put people out of their family home because they cannot pay their mortgage …

(Director, Live-in-Guardian Company, Dublin)

Specific challenges in Ireland also related to large numbers of vacant religious

buildings (convents, abbeys), Garda (police), post offices - symbolically important to

local communities, often subject to campaigns against declining public services

(Housing Officer, Local Authority, Ireland). Live-in-Guardians companies attempts at

anticipatory (re)assembling of housing (in)formality was pursued by lobbying the

‘Office of Public Works’ controlling publically owned buildings against a backdrop

of historic political sensitivities and contemporary popular protest. Haraway’s (1997)

response-abilities allows us to theorize the how/when/why points of attachments, lead

20

to or effect inherent instabilities, fractures and cracks in interventions into

(re)assembling urban politics. In Ireland, historic and contemporary conflicts and

struggles related to policy maker’s response to Live-in-Guardians being restricted to

acknowledgment of usefulness for short term responses to increasing homelessness,

but questioning potential as a mainstay of housing policy (Head of Policy, Housing

Association, Ireland).

This ‘context-of-contexts’ highlights that while it is important to understand

assemblages as emergent (yet to come); future orientated, pre-emptive, anticipatory

(Deleuze and Guattari’s 1988); (re)assembling can be restricted by particular

territorial/relational boundaries and relations (Haraway 1988). For example, Live-in-

Guardian companies acknowledged housing repossessions in US cities - Detroit,

Baltimore, Las Vegas - enabled potential new markets. Despite ‘gold rush’

opportunities political, legislative, policy challenges constituted by socio-technical

regulations and urban geographies of (in)formal housing made it impossible for Live-

in-Guardians to enter US markets. Indeed, in NYC socialist ideals and historic

campaigns against slum housing led to provision of public housing and management

of private rentals. In a similar vein to our findings from Ireland and evidence

regarding Italy, in NYC Live-in-Guardians as housing ‘bodies without organs’ with

abilities to enable new ‘fractal’ urban geographies of capital accumulation through

dwelling in empty (non)residential buildings by mutating processes of organ(isation)

and normalization of political, legislative, policy has not been achieved due to specific

‘attachments’ and ‘ties of affection’ (Haraway 1990).

21

This argument can be productively applied to particular (in)formal/legal housing in

NYC; firstly, subdivision of family homes illegally partitioned into multiple

apartments (respondents estimated 200,000-300,000 such dwellings - not including

2/3 family homes). Secondly, basement living in residential/commercial buildings

with (in)formal status underpinned by technical definitions:

you absolutely can't legalise if it’s defined as a cellar ... So even if it’s 51% below grade ... you’re not allowed to legalise, regardless of light, air, egress … you need an 8ft ceiling, so if you have 7ft 11 you’re never going to be legalised … no matter what quality and how liveable

(Chef Executive, Community Development Corporation, NYC)

In contrast designation as ‘residential basement’ ensured cost/planning regulations

were the only barriers to legal occupation no matter the quality of inhabitation.

Planning regulations include; measurement of light/air, size of rooms, two points of

egress, hardwired sprinkler systems (from external fire hydrants). Thirdly, single

room occupancy - now outlawed:

we refer to them in NYC as rooming houses … numbered rooms [with] … corresponding lockers, shared kitchen, bathroom, living space. There are higher-quality rooms … but others are basically just open beds everywhere, no security, no privacy (Chef Executive, Community Development Corporation, NYC).

Interviewees pointed to contradictions/ambiguities in assemblages of ‘fabricated’

(in)formality within/ beyond the law (Latour 2003):

in NYC we’re lucky to have good protections for tenants if they’re in a rent-regulated building’ but limited opportunity for negotiated planning; its on a case by case basis without expertise of consultants and significant financial backing … its difficult to challenge (Chef Executive, Community Development Corporation, NYC).

Indeed, rigid socio-technical definitions were considered to be holding back

‘unpicking of legislative and policy codes’ ensuring varying quality across (il)legal

basements. Some lamented ‘idealistic’ regulatory regimes and social visions from the

22

1950s based on nuclear family provision; ‘‘now if you are single or get divorced how

the hell do you afford to live legally in New York?’’ (Chef Executive, Community

Development Corporation, NYC). Others nonetheless applauded that response-able

assembling (Haraway1990) remained at the heart of housing governance in a global

capitalist powerhouse, but expressed concern regarding failure to attend to changing

socio-demographics; housing markets; legitimate safety concerns with overcrowding;

lack of fire exits; overextended electrical systems; poor living conditions; harassment

of tenants; illegal evictions supported by the police due to lack of knowledge of

resident’s rights (Director, Community Legal Services Organization, NYC).

Interviewees also highlighted conflicts/challenges of working with homeowners and

tenants:

for us it’s about acknowledging informality … we don’t want families to get evicted, or for homeowners to get fined … we are pushing the city to find ways to help … legalize units and make them safe because once it goes to court both parties lose out … so we try to mediate (Chef Executive, Community Development Corporation, NYC).

Despite widespread acknowledgement of this context, the cost of planning

applications, architects, building work for homeowners wishing to remain within the

law was often prohibitive even when planning/zoning allowed habitation. However, in

contrast to coalitions of artists, middle-class gentrifiers and property developers

leading to change in zoning policy of ‘loft living’ in industrial buildings (Zukin 1988)

organizations representing (in)formal homeowners/tenants are not able to effect

progressive change. Politics of ‘scale’ relating to political and economic costs of

engaging with sheer scale and geographical distribution across the city of (il)legal

dwelling and the heterogeneous (non)human actors/codes such as water sprinklers,

light/air, ceiling height, immigrant social groups, ‘slum’ housing etc. and response-

23

able ‘attachments’ (Haraway 1990) related to long-established housing policy

traditions have become barriers to meaningful interventions.

Our research in London, Dublin, Amsterdam, NYC highlights comparative

geographies of relational/territorial politics, legislation, policy constituted by

(non)human actors, network, webs of connectivity, socio-technical materialities and

more-than-representation that differentially (re)assemble demarcations of (in)formal

housing (Latour 2005). We have highlighted housing assemblages that are fragile, not

fully realized, mutating, or seemingly ‘untouchable’ because of issues relating to

place, scale and causality in demarcations of (in)formality. In doing so we have

shown that capital accumulation strategies alone are not sufficient to explain political

and economic motivations in proliferation (or not) of Live-in-Guardians across

Europe. Heterogeneous ‘ties of affection’ and ‘attachments’ (Haraway 1998)

enable/constrain Live-in-Guardians and (i)legal housing in NYC as ‘bodies’ which

enable ‘housing’ without ‘organs’ to transform (or not) politics, legislation, policy.

Such theoretical resources highlight ‘fractal geometries’ (Roy 2011) relating to

marketization of ‘non-residential’ buildings/social housing, and how in

(in)formal/(i)legal housing economies of Amsterdam, London, Dublin and NYC

water sprinklers, light/air, repossessions, religion, ‘social responsibility’ etc.

constitute assemblages of ‘more-and-less’ organized coalitions of private/state actors.

We now move to consider how (in)formal housing assemblages relating to politics,

legislation, policy interpenetrate with everyday housing (im)mobilities.

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Housing (Im)mobilities

Winstanley et al (2002) describe problematic long-standing influence on housing

politics, legislation, policy in cities in the Global North from 1950s concern over

social cohesion and ‘transients’ - mental/physical health, disrupted family

life/community/neighbourhoods etc. They call for new ontological narratives of

housing (im)mobilities\lifecourse embedded in changing political, economic, social,

cultural contexts - identity, home/place attachment, social differentiation,

employment, gender relations, family structures etc. Advancing that argument, we

highlight the opportunities and limitations of theorizing (in)formal urban housing

assemblages as ‘meshwork’, ‘entanglements’ of flows of materialities/practices of

‘dwelling’ constituted not through stability/rigidity but flux/transformation (Lombard

2014; McFarlane 2012).

We focus on assemblages of (im)mobilities relating to materialities, emotions, bodies,

affect and ‘meanings of home’ that interpenetrate with economic rationale, human

centered political agency relating to money, work, travel, housing markets, family

lifecourse, ‘cool’ habitus economic/cultural/time capital. Our theoretical arguments

and empirical evidence are in stark contrast to Ferreri et al’s (2016) depiction of Live-

in-Guardians in London as urban ‘precarity’ normalized in contemporary

working/dwelling. While there are elements of ‘flexible neoliberal subjectivities’

bound up with how Live-in-Guardians ‘‘choose to (re)act in certain way’s’’ (Duffy-

Jones’s 2012, 216) we argue that (im)mobilties cannot be boiled down to precarious

urbanism alone but instead can be more productively theorized with reference to

housing (im)mobilities\lifecourse underpinned by diverse response-abilities

(Haraway’s 1997).

25

Prior to emerging social welfare activities Live-in-Guardians had to be employed.

Live-in-Guardians estimated they pay half/third less than market-rates, with a

motivation of ‘savings’ - mortgage/rental deposits or holidays and living near to

employers, making travel/time costs less arduous. Farber and Otto (2016, 41) describe

‘saving on a low budget’ as ‘‘collective saving based on temporary association … [as]

situative and tactical’’. Reduced rent/travel costs were augmented by saving on

domestic consumption - decoration, furniture, kitchenware (this will be returned to

later). Other financial strategies emerged; one respondent could not return to their

family home following graduation - her room had been rented out, with her family

reliant on the extra income; another Live-in-Guardian owned property, but could earn

more money letting at market rates. Further examples include, saving to pay for a

family funeral; financial/emotional transitions at the end of relationships; financial

benefits of working away from family etc.

Moreover, alluding to changing relational geographies of age (Hopkins and Pain

2007) respondents highlighted longer waits to property ownership and older

generations surprise by their financial/living strategies; ‘‘Oh I think my parents just

think I’m crazy! My mum cried when she saw it’’ (Live-In-Guardian, London,

female, age 22, SCS 2).2 As Jorgensen (2016) suggests housing markets and home

making/buying are intermeshed with emotional/material creation/stabilizing ‘family

life’ - love, desire, fear, anxiety, hope, sadness, excitement, disappointment, failing

etc. For the majority of our respondents Live-in-Guardians assemblages are

anticipatory, pointing to ‘what might be possible’ (Deleuze and Guattari 1988),

discounted as an investment in the ‘future’ given meaning with reference to

familial/lifecourse ‘ties of affection’ (Haraway 1990):

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I’m 24, I’d certainly not want to be 30 and a Live-in-Guardian … I think I could do it for another couple of… maybe another year … When I’m 30 I want to be settling down with my partner, and looking at having kids.

(Live-In-Guardian, London, female, age, 21, SCS 2)

I like living this close to London, otherwise I would have to move much further out and have travel costs or have to bike further … buying a house, I’m 28 … that’s not going to be until my mid-thirties … but this is pretty good at the moment .. I quite like that I’m not renting, I’m not giving my money to scumbag landlords. Buying is a massive undertaking, I don’t take it lightly, mortgages and all that … it’s just something I don’t want to get involved in. Perhaps the financial crisis telling me that I shouldn’t invest … I don’t feel any bitterness towards other people, or generations before me. The price of a house, though, is nuts … I’m not ready for that move yet.

(Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 28, SCS 1)

‘Ties of affection’ also related to urban dwelling as ‘a time-space strategy of

gentrification’ (Bridge 2005); as ‘urge for authenticity’ (Zukin 2009); ‘coolness’

offered by living in ‘unusual’ buildings as ‘‘reproduction of cultural capital assumed

by the idea of gentrification habitus’’ (Bridge 2005, 211). Respondents lived in a

variety of buildings; residential properties, offices, hospitals, schools, fire stations,

YMCA’s, care homes, pubs from 2 weeks to 2 years. While some ‘second-guessed’

the length of stay by looking at planning applications Live-in-Guardians were

generally positive about their (im)mobilites:

you could be moved at any time … they shy away from guarantees, when you sign up but roughly you understanding how long you’re going to be there ... That’s not such a bad thing …you get a mindset where you look forward to where I’m going next … for me impermanence was a bit of freedom …

(Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 22, SCS 2)

Live-in-Guardians highlighted ‘belonging’ to location/buildings mirroring middle-

class gentrification/attraction to poorer/multi-ethnic areas (Jackson and Butler 2014).

There was resonance with middle-class ‘marginal professionals’ (self employed,

artists, public sector employees) fighting against negative associations of some

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neighbourhoods by renting/living in (ex)council houses for political/social reasons

(Watt 2005).

This evidence highlights that (in)formal housing assemblages are underpinned by a

diverse mix of financial, work, travel, family, habitus ‘becomings’ that Live-in-

Guardians defined as (im)mobile lifecourse ‘phases’ and not simply ‘precarity’ and

structural change in home ownership/rental sector or flexible-working arrangements.

While Live-in-Guardian companies celebrated offering homes to key workers; nurses,

teachers, doctors, fire/police officers - or to those in crisis (divorced, separated,

having to move for work) and one London company also focused on service

personnel - echoing historic strategies in NYC; ‘after World War II city authorities

made special accommodations for returning veterans, so home owners were allowed

to rent their illegal basements’ (Chef Executive, Community Development

Corporation, NYC) there was also an acknowledgment that Live-in-Guardian

(im)mobilities ‘wasn’t for everyone’. Indeed, beyond The Netherlands Live-in-

Guardian companies generally considered families, couples, single parents, pets,

migrant workers, low-income households etc. as ‘not mobile’ enough.

While these findings foreground ‘new relatedness’ of (in)formal housing

(im)mobilties - finances, work, travel time etc. were not always unproblematic. Live-

in-Guardians often lamented restrictions to their moving desires - compromised by

jobs, family, transport etc. (Coulter et al 2015) and specifically ‘London time

squeeze’ - housing affordability, childcare, school choice etc. (Jarvis 2005).

Moreover, living with people with different working hours/responsibilities was often

difficult; as was juggling work/family/holidays timetables when required to move

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properties at short-notice (Live-In-Guardian, London, female, age 26, SCS 2). Live-

in-Guardians for one company requiring volunteering suggested that 16 hours per

month was difficult: ‘‘people underestimate how much energy and effort it takes …

four hours a week, every week, for a whole year, is a big commitment’’ (Live-In-

Guardian, London, male, age 28, SCS 2).

However, while Live-in-Guardians discussed emotional, embodied, affective

‘temporary’ (dis)comfort, there was also an acknowledgement of pleasure and fun of

moving/staying - offering insight into how (extra)ordinary (in)mobilities can be

transformative through ‘‘assemblage involving differing affectual relations,

affordances and spatial-temporal configurations’’ of moving throughout the city to

diverse (non)residential buildings (Binnie et al 2007, 168-169). Moreover, recent

theorization of corporal/material relationalities suggests (in)activity ‘‘should no

longer conceptualized as a dead period of stasis or stilling, or even a slower urban

rhythm … but as a variegated affective complex where experience folds through and

emerges from a multitude of different places’’ (Bissell 2007, 277). This view of

‘waiting’ was present in Live-in-Guardians experiences of the ‘time in between

moving’. Live-in-Guardians acceptance of (im)mobilities can thus be understood

through Massumi’s (2002, 85) ‘‘event of the home, not as fixed and bounded but as ‘a

membrane … a filer of exteriorities continually entering it and transversing it […]

awash in transivity, the home is a node in an indefinitely extended field of immanence

to which the technologies of transmission give body’’. Such theoretical resources are

vital to understanding relational (im)mobilties of Live-in-Guardians as:

meaningful interaction, pleasure and cultural production ... a shift from the ‘static agora’ to an understanding of the potentials of the multiple arenas of flow that the city is made up from … [and how] identities do not solely reside in

29

place (home, neighborhood, nation) but rather (de)coded in a complex valorization process, networked connections to multiple communities of interest and practice offer new layers of relations connectivity (Jensen 2009, 154-155).

Assemblage thinking offers insights into such complex ‘relations of connectivity’ by

unpacking Live-in-Guardians as (in)formal ‘bodies’ and ‘housing’ without ‘organs’

which challenges historic organ(ization) and normalization of ‘housing’ and ‘home’.

It is only when housing (im)mobilities are theorized at the intersection of (non)human

assemblages with reference to emotions, bodies, affect and diverse practices and

processes relating to gentrification, housing markets, habitus, waiting, work,

(dis)comfort, volunteering, family relations etc. that the complexity of (in)formal

housing in Northern cities can begin to be more fully appreciated.

Materialities, emotions, embodiment, affect

In this final section we address material/imaginative/symbolic ideologies of home

beyond binaries of exclusionary/idealized space (Blunt and Dowling 2006; Brickell

2012) by offering insights into material and more-than-representational constituents

of domestic politics and injustices of demarcations of (in)formal housing as:

socio-material orderings … constitutive geographies of which extend beyond the territory of the house: the acts of ‘housing’ and ‘dwelling’ are a coproduction between those who are housed and the variant technologies that do the work of housing: ornaments and decorations, yes, architecture and bricks and mortar, sanitation and communication technology, too, and all the other lively ‘things’ of finance (Jacobs and Smith 2008, 517)

We further advance our argument that Live-in-Guardian can fruitfully be theorized as

(in)formal because of disruption to processes of organ(ization) and normalization of

housing and ‘home’ underpinned by energy and matter to ‘dwell’ through

30

(non)residential heterogeneous encounters with (non)humans (Deleuze and Guattari

1988) in the following ways.

Firstly, our research highlights relational materialities, emotions, embodiment, affects

of moving in/home-making and cleanliness/comfort:

the smell was terrible. We went down the hallway. It was like a film set … smashed up and broken … there was moldy food in the kitchen, holes in the walls where mice had been living. There were ants everywhere … so unhygienic … you’d have to spend a week minimum cleaning it solidly every day (Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 24, SCS 5)

While uncertainties of moving to new buildings in variable conditions were often

offset by the possibility of ‘cool locations/buildings’ Live-in-Guardians expressed

‘‘middle class approaches … to veer between disgust and romanticism’’ (Lawler

2005, 444). One respondent suggested ‘we called it our loveable squat ... [but] it’s

kind of embarrassing having people over, because some of our other friends have got

nice houses with living rooms, running water and no mushrooms in the shower’

(Live-In-Guardian, London, female, age 22, SCS 2).

However, as Christie et al (2008), Smith et al (2006) suggest ‘emotional economies’

not only animate housing markets but everyday ‘investments’ in ‘making home’.

Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) depiction of matter and energy of becoming though

encounters with (non)humans was clearly present the emotional and embodied work

undertaken by Live-in-Guardians to make buildings ‘comfy’ and ‘homely’,

particularly through ‘sharing economies’ (Ince and Hall 2016) (see Figure 1):

[Figure 1 near here]

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Energy and matter were invested in challenges of communal living - some

respondents kept ‘personal things’ in their rooms (having experienced ‘nice things’

being stolen/broken), using candlestick, photos, incense, flowers etc. to make non-

residential spaces more homely. As Rose (2012, 759) suggests ‘not only must we

dwell in order to build, but we must build in order to dwell’. Drawing on Heidegger,

Rose (2012, 769) identifies; ‘‘techne as building (the discursive act of dwelling) …

building is the act of marking and claiming that which is never properly ours’’ (also

see Graham and Thrift 2007; McFarlane 2011). Holton and Riley (2016), Clapham

(2011) also highlight value of belongings - how rooms are furnished and D-I-Y as

expressions of identity, performances of subject positions/embodied experiences:

a broken shelf, we put our glasses on … we found a piece of wood, and cut it … I don’t have much stuff … two little chests, one big bag of clothes, a couple of other bags of bits and bobs … I never bought a wardrobe. Most of us have clothing rails … I bought my mattress, and I had it on the floor … I found a thing with wooden slats … I just put my mattress on that. My two Fortnum & Mason chests, one for shoes, and one soft furnishings … at the end of my bed I had a wicker basket with all of my toiletries in it. (Live-In-Guardian, London, female, age 21, SCS 2)

Holt (2008) also reminds us that embodied inequalities are performed through habitus

- and thus while Live-in-Guardians gain economic/social/cultural capital through

temporary informal housing (savings money, cool ‘addresses’ making friends/work

connections) respondents were nonetheless focused on future ‘home making’ through

consumption (in opposition to ‘making do’). Such findings highlighting Live-in-

Guardians as (in)formal housing assemblages that are both ‘anticipatory’ (Deleuze

and Guattari 1988) and ‘comparative’ and ‘experimental’ in themselves, specifically

with regards to ‘future-orientated’ ‘dwelling’; ‘fabricating’ their own future formal

housing assemblages (Latour 2005) - ‘making a home’ through ‘full’ engagement in

consumer culture (Jayne 2005):

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I’ve seen a sofa, I’d like to put that in my new flat, when have my own place I want to buy a beautiful mirror, and a big TV … it makes you value those things you might be able to buy in the future (Live-In-Guardian, London, female, age 21, SCS 5)

It was also noted, that despite efforts to overcome non-residential building ‘mutable

immobility’; conversion through quasi technologies was difficult (Guggenheim 2016,

Ureta 2014). As Kraft and Adey (2008) highlight affect/inhabitation, ‘being-in-

buildings’ matters. Non-residential architectural design is infused with power : ‘some

people don’t want to live in old churches, religious buildings, hospitals, police

stations, care homes etc. … some people can't forget childhood memories of strict

nuns … possibilities of ghosts … imagined past events/crimes’ and so on (Director,

Live-in-Guardian Company, Dublin). Thus, while ANT is useful for understanding

labour, material and agents necessary to ‘fabricate’ assembly of Live-in-Guardians

(Latour 2005), we must also consider how ‘normalized’ response-able (Haraway

1990) housing organ(ization) are often missing in such (non)residential ‘homes’.

Secondly, security and surveillance associated with ‘draconian’ licence agreements -

the thing Live-in-Guardians often found most difficult in comparison to tenancies -

was constituted by material/more-than-representational responses to inspections of

buildings/rooms and property owners/representatives access with 24-hour notice.

Such inspections also played a role in evidencing to property owners that Live-in-

Guardians were indeed occupying buildings ‘24/7’ and providing ‘security’. Several

respondents were uncomfortable with property owners, builders, estate agents etc.

wandering through their ‘home’ (Live-In-Guardian, London, female, age 24, SCS 2).

All respondents talked about being unnerved by stories/rumors of other Live-in-

Guardians working for the ‘company’ looking out for breaches in license agreements

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in return for a reduced fee. ‘‘Insiders’ were also noted in NYC too - ‘they act like

house managers who are very often tenants who they’ve given the responsibility... but

they are not always popular’’ (Chef Executive, Housing Charity, NYC). As Kraftl and

Adey (2008: 228) highlight ‘‘certain kinds of actors with various kinds of authority …

enrolled as inhabitants and users with buildings, but are apportioned (or apportion

themselves) more power in channeling of particular affective capacities of

inhabitation’’. Live-in-Guardians also pointed to lack/regularity of inspections;

inconsistency of policing; but annoyance/frustration of ‘post-it’ notes left on their

beds:

don't use candles, shut your windows, don't wedge open fire doors, take down pictures … just a bit nannying … I’ve heard that someone had to get rid of their goldfish … no pets allowed (Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 28, SCS 2).

You’re not supposed to smoke but we do … you’re not to have people stay over but we do ... you’re not supposed to have parties but we do (Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 28, SCS 3).

Thirdly, the biggest problem for Live-in-Guardians related to ‘things not working’

and emotional/embodied difficulties for work/social lives. Thrift and Graham (2007,

6) remind us that maintenance/repair produces the ‘urban’ - things must be ‘ready-to-

use’ and ‘ready-to-hand’ - to make a larger entity ‘work’. Living in (non)residential

buildings in different states of repair, respondents suggested they were ‘hostages’ to

leaky roofs/broken windows/heating; water either/or too hot/cold; unreliable

electricity and difficulties of facilitating internet connection; frustration of not being

able to contact property owners, facing ‘often unresponsive’ companies. As Bartram

(2016) suggests social/material vulnerabilities through networks of

people/responsibility highlights inequalities and structures of power. However, some

34

respondents nonetheless questioned ‘security’, rights in renting and what they

considered as false demarcations between (in)formality:

tenancies these days aren’t as secure as you’d hope … I don’t really see there’s that much of difference, especially when it’s so expensive and you’ve got lots of rogue landlords (Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 28, SCS 2)

Surprisingly few respondents considered limitations of kitchen/bathroom provision as

a significant concern (see Figures 2-4) - beyond dirty dishes, lack of washing

machines or ‘proper place to cook’ – which were offset by positive elements of

communal living – cooking, ‘hanging out’ (Live-In-Guardian, London, female, age

39, SCS 2). Most talked instead about embodied, emotional, affective problems of

intimate relations of living with ‘strangers’ - ‘passive aggressive’ people leaving

‘post-it’ notes about ‘every little thing’, people with emotional or mental health

problems/clash of personalities; noisy neighbors music or sexual activities (Gurney

2010) - echoes and slamming doors in large empty buildings - ‘the living building …

work routines and practical issues of problem solving’ (Strebel 2011). In NYC

plumbing, sanitation, heating, infestations, mould, electrics were viewed as serious –

and justification for illegal evictions by homeowners; ‘so it can sound a little bit

counterintuitive that you’re living in a really horrible place and you’re fighting your

eviction' (Community Organizer, Housing Advocacy Service, NYC). As Lancione

and McFarlane (2016) suggest geographies of living ‘at the margins’ can be traced

through immanent relations, everyday calculations and events, actualized and

potential power and affections’.

[Figures 2, 3, 4 near here]

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Finally, materialities, emotions, embodiment, affect related to location, building type,

scale, density - as residents seek to protect/define neighborhoods for political and

social purpose - imagined, shared, exclusionary spaces (Jimenez and Estalella 2013;

Martin 2003; Meth 2013). Low (2008) points to fortification infiltrating domestic

spaces - fear and insecurity - highlighting subjectivities that constitute ‘everyday

assemblage of difference’ bound up with being a Live-in-Guardian. For some

neighbours of Live-in-Guardian’s the proximity/density of ‘strangers’ living (often

large numbers) in non-residential buildings was associated with squatting as material,

emotional, embodied, affective disruption of residential ‘pattern’. This was mirrored

in NYC where an anonymous complaint based system for housing code infringement

was contributing to tension in neighborhoods - ‘13-15 people living in a single family

home … overcrowding is associated with South Asian migrants and often feeds

conflict and racism' (Chief Executive, Housing Charity, NYC).

In London, Live-in-Guardians pointed to tensions and conflicts relating to

misunderstanding they were squatting:

Some guy outside started shouting at us that we didn’t pay our council tax, and we were fuckers, … if you’re living in a posh area, like Maida Vale, I think they see you as squatters, and so you can get quite a lot of negative pushback

(Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 28, SCS 3).

Vasudevan (2015) suggests squatting relates to ‘‘different politics’ - often focused on

network building, collective self-organization and empowerment through occupation

that many neighbors do not like - especially around particular imaginative

materialities of illegal occupation where squatters take on the role of ‘urban combats’,

whose lives are ‘makeshift and experimental … ‘dwelling-through-construction’’

(Vasudevan 2015, 339). Squats became ‘‘politicized armatures’ understood as

36

potential sites of resistance, meaningful social communication or interaction’’ (Jenson

2009, 105). However, echoing our findings from Amsterdam, London respondents

argued that:

squatting is a good thing … it was made illegal, I didn’t agree … [but] squatters don’t look kindly on someone like me who has been ‘nudged’ … the true squatter would still squat … there’s always going to be people who will … Would I squat? Probably not … I like my security. (Live-In-Guardian, London, male, age 28, SCS 2)

Such evidence highlights Live-in-Guardians as (non)human anticipatory assemblages

related to what Guggenheim argues (2016) are im/mutable, im/mobilities of buildings

and ‘spatial neighbourliness’ that exist through collective relations of material

semiotic stabilization and locational anchor points for social processes. In these terms

Live-in-Guardians are ‘bodies’ which enable ‘housing’ without ‘organs’ - e.g. having

a ‘bedroom’, or ‘bathroom/kitchen’; no choice over ‘flat-mates’; living in non-

residential buildings/specific neighborhoods that are ‘uncomfortable’ or

‘unwelcoming’ etc. However, in response to Haraway’s (1990) critique of Deleuze

and Guattari’s (1998) reluctance to engage with response-abilities we have

nonetheless highlighted ‘ties of affection’ related to material, emotional, embodied,

affective (non)human assemblages of population/building density in Live-in-Guardian

‘dwellings’; ‘sharing’ and anticipation of future lives; and with regard

neighbors/neighborhood - all mutating productive or problematic organ(ization) and

normalization of ‘housing’ and ‘home’.

Conclusion

In this paper we have outlined theoretical and empirical avenues for advancing

understanding of (in)formal urban housing in the Global North. Our research has

37

highlighted interpenetrations of politics, legislation, policy, (im)mobilties,

materialities, more-than-representation. Exploiting critical tensions at the heart of

foundational writing and debates about ‘urban assemblage’ we have advanced

understanding of (in)formal ‘dwelling’ in the Global North by addressing ‘multiple

assemblages’; such as gentrification, lifecourse, work/labour, housing markets,

national/religious identities, family life, neighbourhood/neighbourliness, (dis)comfort,

noise, populations/building density, consumer culture etc.

For example, ANTs focus on the ‘fabricating’ (Latour 2005) ‘work’ to create,

perform, sustain - how things come to matter - offered insights into ‘Dutch

pragmatism’ and institutionalization of anti-kraak in politics, legislation, policy;

helped to explain causality of political/religious/cultural constituents of socio-

technical limits/barriers to capital accumulation in Dublin. Deleuze and Guattari’s

(1988) emphasis on emergent (yet to come), future orientated, pre-emptive and

‘anticipatory’ assemblages was also vital to understanding the ways in which

(in)formal housing changed/mutated (or not) in our case study cities through specific

(non)human ‘‘topologies of relationships … qualities, intensities and speeds’’ (Farías

2016, 1) effecting the spatialities/temporalities of proliferation of Live-in-Guardians

in Europe and the political/economic ‘visibility’ of (in)formality/(i)legal housing in

NYC. Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988) notion of ‘body without organs’ was particularly

important for theorizing Live-in-Guardians as was ethnographic interrogation of

numerous response-able ‘ties of affections’ and ‘attachments’ (Haraway 1999). These

theoretical resources allowed us to foregrounded water sprinklers, light/air,

employment, money, travel, ghosts, family, love, nuns, intimacy, slamming doors,

echoes, friendship, aesthetics, housing markets, leaks, draughts, comfort, sharing,

38

heat/cold etc. as important (non)human actors. In doing so we highlighted diverse

biographies of people/things, more-than representation and ‘fractal geometries’ (Roy

2011) which highlight successful (or not) spatial tactics of capitalist accumulation. In

our case study cities this included consideration of the (not always successful)

attempts at marketization of empty (non)residential buildings (post-offices, churches,

convents, police stations, office blocks) and empty social housing enabled through

attempts at (re)assembling housing and meanings of home at the heart of

demarcations of (in)formality.

In mapping out this research agenda we have opened up fruitful avenues of

theoretical, empirical, methodological terrain deserving of sustained future attention.

Sustained quantitative and qualitative comparative relational/experimental research is

vital to further advance understanding of comparative geographies of the (non)human

actors that constitute demarcations of urban (in)formal housing in cities in the Global

North. For example, there is clearly a need for robust and comprehensive data

collection regarding scale and scope of Live-in-Guardians (numbers of guardians,

nature and location of properties, companies, mobilities, length of stay, regulation of

licences etc.) and with regard to other diverse existing/emerging (in)formal housing

too. Pertinent topics/questions also relate to developing better understanding of the

spatial/temporal ways different social groups utilize (in)formal dwelling; what socio-

materialities and relations become important (or not)?; how are housing

(in)formalities (re)assembling urban change to effect relationships between property

owners and those dwelling in their buildings?; how does (in)formal housing

contribute/or mitigate housing crisis and influence property values/markets?; how

does (in)formal housing compliments/conflict with social housing, squatting?; how

39

does (in)formal housing generate tensions/conflict or allow new innovative socio-

material relations in urban neighbourhoods? Other housing strategies such as

conversion of garages, sheds, outbuildings etc.; infilling new dwellings between

houses; single room division/occupancy of houses/flats and moored river, sea, canal

boats; living in vehicles; reliance on friends/families/strangers (e.g. ‘sofa surfing’) etc.

also all offer fruitful empirical terrain to further theorize (in)formality in the Global

North .

In pursing these and other research questions/topics it is nonetheless important to bear

in mind Hodkinson et al’s (2012) assertion that decades of privatization/neoliberalism

and failures of capitalism to provide decent, affordable, secure housing for the

majority of the worlds population has facilitated no shortage of theoretical work,

empirical evidence and policy interventions that seek to decommodify social relations

and generate alternative socially just, democratic and sustainable housing options or

strategies to help those in danger of losing their homes. While acknowledging such

‘context-of contexts’ in this paper we hope at the very least to have nonetheless made

a convincing case for advancing the frontiers of urban assemblage thinking by

focusing on comparative geographies of the (non)human (im)mobilities, materialities,

emotions, embodiment, affect defining and determining experiences of (in)formal

housing in the Global North. We argue that assemblage thinking opens up fruitful

theoretical and empirical research agendas that are vital for shedding light on politics,

economics, policies, everyday practices and experiences of (in)formal ‘dwelling’

which looks likely to be an increasing imperative for many in coming decades.

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Notes

1. UK professional bodies, charities, housing experts have called for strategy, policy, action - including a ‘cabinet’ minister/15-year plan for housing. 2015/2017 General elections party manifestos included; ‘Help to Buy’ (equity loan schemes); new build, first-time buyers discounts; ‘rent-to-buy’; new ’right-to-buy’ social housing; ‘garden cities’; empty properties used etc.

2. UK’s National Statistics Socio-Economic Classification: 1=managerial/professional; 2=Intermediate; 3=small employers; 4=lower supervisory/technical; 5=semi-routine/routine; 6=Never worked/long term unemployed; 7=unclassified.

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Biographical notes

Mark Jayne is Professor in the School of Geography and Planning at Cardiff University, Cardiff, Wales, CF10 3WA. E-mail: JayneM1@cardiff.ac.uk. Mark’s research interests include consumption, the urban order, city cultures.

Sarah Marie Hall is Senior Lecturer in the School of Environment, Education and Development, The University of Manchester, Manchester, UK, M13 9PL. Email: sarah.m.hall@manchester.ac.uk. Sarah’s research interests include everyday family life and economic change; ethics, care and consumption; and feminist praxis. .

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