| Abstract: |
Property guardianship, a form of short-term building security through temporary dwelling, has emerged in several European countries over the last twenty years. Despite being characterised by tenure insecurity and often substandard conditions, 'living as a guardian' has become a composite and polyvalent mode of inhabiting cities, rooted in the production and dissemination of distinctive spatial imaginaries of 'nomadic' urban dwelling. In the United Kingdom, where guardianship is relatively novel and marginal, the establishment of several intermediary companies has contributed to the rapid diffusion of the scheme as precarious 'adventurous' housing, particularly in metropolitan areas where guardianship schemes largely attract mobile and university-educated individuals. Drawing on debates about the complexities of 'self-precarization' (Lorey, 2006), this article examines imaginaries of property guardianship and their ambivalent significance in relation to lived processes of precarization. Through the analysis of media representations and in-depth interviews with current and former guardians in London, it explores how guardians mobilise narratives of adaptability, flexibility and nomadism, between resignation to existing housing conditions and a sense of critical and autonomous agency. The article proposes and develops a nuanced qualitative approach to analyse how precarious dwelling through guardianship is reshaping spatial imaginaries of acceptable and desirable urban dwelling, and contributing to significant processes of individual and collective subjectification. At a moment of extensive governmentality through insecurity, it concludes that examining imaginaries and practices of self-precarization offers a critical entry point for understanding and rethinking, theoretically and politically, housing precarity and its geographies. |
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