The Exclusion of (Failed) Asylum Seekers from Housing and Home: Towards an Oppositional Discourse

'Housing'– the practical provision of a roof over one's head – is experienced by users as 'home'– broadly described as housing plus the experiential elements of dwelling. Conversely, being without housing, commonly described as 'homelessness', is experienced not only as an absence of shelter but in the philosophical sense of 'ontological homelessness' and alienation from the conditions for well-being. For asylum seekers, these experiences are deliberately and explicitly excluded from official law and policy discourses. This article demonstrates how law and policy is propelled by an 'official discourse' based on the denial of housing and the avoidance of 'home' attachments, which effectively keeps the asylum seeker in a state of ontological homelessness and alienation. We reflect on this exclusion and consider how a new 'oppositional discourse' of housing and home – taking these considerations into account – might impact on the balancing exercise inherent to laws and policies concerning asylum seekers

Land Law, Property Ideologies and the British-Irish relationship

English and Irish land law are deeply influenced by the historical context of the British-Irish relationship, yet property scholarship comparing the two jurisdictions is surprisingly rare. The current Brexit negotiations provide a timely reminder of the strategic importance of property and trade relations between the two countries; and of their related-but-different legal cultures. In this article we examine how the property cultures of England and Ireland were shaped by the politics and practices of land tenure, by competing economic and property ideologies, and by the influence of both on national identity and statehood in both jurisdictions. The article reveals the role of local contexts and events in shaping land reform, and demonstrates the fertile potential of the comparative frame to contextualise each jurisdiction’s doctrines and practices. As domestic land law systems are drawn together in the context of emerging EU jurisdiction over areas like mortgage credit, each jurisdiction’s underpinning ideological commitments have important implications for the ease – or not – of attempts to harmonize member state practices. We explain the alignments and divergences between domestic underpinnings of Irish and English law, and reflect on the implications of our findings for contemporary property problems in the context of evolving economic and political relationships between the UK and Ireland

Homeownership, Debt and Default: The Affective Value of Home and the Challenge of Affordability

The promotion of homeownership as a national housing strategy has been a central element of American housing policy since the National Housing Act 1949. Indeed, in recent decades, successive administrations have emphasised the role of the expanding homeowners hip sector, particularly for low-income and minority households, in enabling citizens to realise the ?American Dream.? Yet, as the recent mortgage lending crisis has highlighted the risks associated with homeownership, debt and default , the tensions that exist between the political ideology of homeownership and the promotion of owner-occupation as the sine qua non of the American Dream, on the one hand, and the crisis of affordability and debtor default facing many American families on the other , are brought into sharp relief. This paper focuses on these tensions by scrutinising a paradox of government housing policies which promote an ideology of homeownership yet which run parallel to a legal context that does not adequately protect homeowners, particularly those who are at high risk, from foreclosure and repossession. This paper offers a more coherent analysis of the ways that law protects (or does not protect) the homeownership interest in the context of foreclosure, with a particular focus on the losses that are suffered by home occupiers in the event of losing their homes. In societies where homeownership has been promoted as the most desirable tenure, owning a home is heavily loaded with social and cultural meanings. Homeownership is not only associated with financial security, but is also strongly associated with personal and family security. Government policies seeking to extend homeownership often employ a rhetoric of homeownership as empowering, that it gives citizens a stake in society , that it enhances stability, security, control and so contributes to the ?social fabric.? Yet, alongside the potential benefits, borrowers must bear a range of risks in order to finance the purchase of their homes, and so to pursue this financial, personal and family security. While the perilous positions of those caught up in the current subprime mortgage lending crisis has received much attention in the media ? with considerable concerns particularly for the exposure of low-income households to increased risks of foreclosure ? it is important that, alongside the debate on rescue schemes, responses to this crisis include reflection on the underlying legal, theoretical and phenomenological issues associated with default and foreclosure. This paper considers the affective values of home as they have been socio-culturally embedded in home ownership, and identifies a range of costs ? both financial and non-financial ? that can result when occupiers lose their homes through foreclosure proceedings or through bankruptcy, and which affect not only dispossessed occupiers (and their families) but also significantly impact other stakeholders across society

The meanings of home

The meaning of ‘home’ has attracted considerable critical attention in recent years. The study of home has yielded an extensive literature and several leading journals – for example, Social Research (1991); New Formations (1992); Women’s Studies International Forum (1997); and Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society (2002) have all dedicated special issues to the subject of home. The launch of the interdisciplinary journal Home Cultures in 2004 is testament to the sustained level of interest in the meaning and concept of home, particularly in the social sciences and the humanities. Empirical research studies and the construction of a substantial body of theory in several disciplines have established the complex psychological, social–psychological and territorial, identity, and emotional and cultural attachments that occupiers associate with their homes. From speculative origins in the 1970s, analysis of the meanings and values of home became increasingly sophisticated and scientific as researchers from a range of disciplines developed a substantial body of empirically based, theoretically underpinned research literature. Analysis of home has drawn on various sources, and home scholars in various disciplines have drawn on the tools of their own disciplines to offer a range of perspectives from which to view the meaning and values of home, as well as emphasising the importance of cross-disciplinary communication. A substantial body of literature, based on both empirical studies and theoretical analysis, has sought to unpack and to identify the meanings and values that home represents to occupiers, for example, family, privacy, security, control, continuity, self-expression, and personal identity

Home Equity and Ageing Owners: Between Risk and Regulation

The growing use of housing equity to support a range of activities and needs raises complex issues, particularly for older owners. In an environment in which older owners are pushed towards housing equity transactions to meet income and welfare costs, they are required to make choices from a complex and sometimes bewildering range of options. The transactions which facilitate the use of home equity as a resource to spend in later life - from 'trading down' and 'ordinary' secured and unsecured debt to targeted products including reverse/lifetime mortgages, home reversion plans and sale-and-rentback agreements - raise important legal and regulatory issues. This book provides a contextual analysis of the financial transactions that older people enter into using their housing equity. It traces the protections afforded to older owners through the 'ordinary' law of property and contract, as well as the development of specific regulatory protections focused on targeted products. The book employs the notion of risk to highlight the nature and causes of the 'situational' vulnerabilities to which older people are now subject as 'consumers' of housing equity, showing that the older owner's personal situation is crucial in determining whether and why they may seek to release equity, the options and products available to them, and the impact of harms resulting from adverse transactions. The book critically evaluates the extent to which this context is incorporated in the legal frameworks through which these transactions are governed, as a measure of the 'appropriateness' of existing legal provision, as well as considering the arguments surrounding 'special protection' for older owners in housing equity transactions

The Idea of Home in Law: Displacement and Dispossession

The Idea of Home in Law: Displacement and Dispossession explores an important set of legal and policy issues surrounding the concepts of home and homelessness, taking a growing area of legal scholarship into the new arena of human rights and international law. The collection considers the ideas concerning home - both in the sense of the dwelling place as a special type of property, and territorial claims to homeland - which underpin many contemporary legal problems, by examining a range of contexts where people are displaced or dispossessed from their homes. The essays focusing on dispossession consider themes ranging from mortgage and rent arrears in the UK to responses to the foreclosure crisis in the USA, and from eviction for the purposes of economic development in South Africa to the exclusion of asylum seekers from the UK's social housing and welfare provision, and within the framework of the European Convention on Human Rights. The displacement theme, meanwhile, examines transnational 'home' issues from the experiences of exiles and refugees in areas of conflict to the impact of the broader context of economic, social and cultural rights on attempts to protect housing and home through international law. At the heart of each essay the contributors, experts from across the fields of law, policy, and housing rights, examine the circumstances in which displacement and dispossession take place, and reconsider how law and policy respond to such circumstances with a particular focus on the impact of loss of home for the human person. At a time of particular and increasing concern about security of tenure and the role of law and policy in protecting people who are vulnerable to forced eviction, The Idea of Home in Law presents a bold opportunity to raise questions about the 'rights' and norms associated with housing and home, and to generate new insights for scholarship and for national and international policy debates concerning displacement and dispossession