Julie Rugg

Conceptualising the Contemporary Role of Housing in the Transition to Adult Life in England

This paper uses both survey and qualitative panel data collected from five different case-study areas in England in order to offer a conceptualisation of the contemporary role that housing is playing in the transition to adult life. The data suggest that the types of housing pathway that young people follow are a function of differences in the combination and intensity of three main factors: the ability of young people to plan for and control their entry to independent living; the extent and form of constraints that characterise their access to housing; and the degree of family support available to them. Based around these three dimensions (each of which is a continuum), the following ideal typical pathways can be identified: a chaotic pathway, an unplanned pathway, a constrained pathway, a planned (non-student) pathway and a student pathway.

Studying a Niche Market: UK Students and the Private Rented Sector

Renting privately is a minority tenure in the UK, but the sector is recognised as being essential to the smooth operation of the wider housing market. The need to target policy effectively has led to an increasing stress on the importance of understanding how local private rental markets operate. Using a number of local case study areas from throughout the country, this paper explores the nature of demand for private rented housing from students. This niche market is a substantial and growing feature of the private rented sector. The paper demonstrates that although student demand shares a number of common characteristics throughout the UK, its localised impacts can vary. Both qualitative and quantitative methods are required to gain an understanding of how student demand affects all aspects of the local housing market, and it is concluded that greater attention needs to be paid to exploring ways of understanding the dynamics of rental market development.

Young people, housing, and social policy

Presenting up-to-date empirical research on the subject of young people, housing and social policy in contemporary Britain, this book considers the issue of young peoples early housing histories in the context of a range of government policy initiatives aimed at the group. It offers a critique of aspects of social policy that specifically address the housing of young people. Topics covered include: *young people leaving care *young people in the parental home *youth homelessness *housing services for young people *students in the private rented sector *young owner occupiers *housing benefit for the under 25s *young single parent families *young people and housing in rural areas *social housing.

Housing advantage? The role of student renting in the constitution of housing biographies in the United Kingdom

Research on young people leaving the parental home has tended to focus most closely on charting and explaining the age at which young people leave, and exploring the incidence of returning after a period of living either ‘semi‐autonomously’ or independently. The majority of these studies have been quantitative and fairly static in approach. This paper develops an approach to the topic that is more qualitative in its orientation and that views housing biographies as essentially dynamic. Using primary data from the United Kingdom, the paper constructs five ‘ideal’ typical housing pathways followed by young people: a chaotic pathway, and unplanned pathway, a constrained pathway, a planned (non‐student) pathway, and a student pathway. The paper then gives particular consideration to the characteristics of the student pathway, and compares the experience of students studying away from the parental home with the long‐term housing biographies of their non‐student peers. The paper concludes that the typical student housing experience—including a supervised leaving of the parental home and a ‘sheltered’ spell in the private rented sector—constitutes an essential education in housing that enhances the housing and labour opportunities of graduates compared with other young people who have not studied away from the parental home.

'A Few Remarks on Modern Sepulture': Current Trends and New Directions in Cemetery Research

In contrast with other countries—particularly France and the USA—cemetery research in the UK has tended to be limited and sporadic. This paper constitutes a review of existing literature on British cemeteries, and examines a number of new theories and approaches that may be applied to cemetery research. Although much of the paper concentrates on historical, sociological and social policy material, relevant debates in other disciplines are also introduced. The paper has five sections and discusses: gaps in the history of cemetery establishment; cemeteries and the corpse; cemeteries and grief; the cemetery as a specific type of landscape; and cemeteries as cultural institutions. The paper principally concerns UK cemeteries, but references are made to international studies for the purpose of comparison, to demonstrate broader trends and to illustrate fruitful avenues of research yet to be pursued in the UK.

Managing London's dead: a case of strategic policy failure

Abstract Within the last few decades, two principal debates have emerged with regard to cemetery management policy in the UK: cemetery conservation and the adequacy of planning for burial needs. This paper focuses on the provision of burial space in London, and demonstrates that a lack of burial space, an uneven provision of services, and inequities relating to costs charged to those using the service can be explained through reference to a strategic policy failure. This failure is not evidence of what might be considered a modern disregard for matters relating to death. Rather, it comprises a facet of a much longer thread of policy weakness that has been evident for nearly two centuries. It remains to be seen whether a recent Parliamentary Inquiry into Cemeteries will successfully challenge this failing.

'Between a rock and a hard place': the failure to agree on regulation for the private rented sector in England

The private rented sector in England presents a number of widely-acknowledged problems for the policy maker including relatively poor property conditions and sometimes low management standards. There are a number of intractable obstacles to dealing with these problems, including an inability to agree on how the sector should be regulated, extreme variation in letting arrangements, a lack of clarity on the relationship between regulation and supply, industry distrust of regulation, and an anti-landlord culture.

The development of cemeteries in Portugal c.1755-c.1870

Abstract In many countries, the introduction of cemeteries constituted a radical change to existing burial traditions. A sporadic secondary literature indicates difficulties in some provincial areas, as reform—often dictated from above, through Royal Edict—became subject to delay and resistence. This paper charts the progress of cemetery establishment in Portugal during a turbulent phase in its history. Through its discussion of some of the obstacles to burial reform, the paper indicates that there may be particular prerequisites required to facilitate smoother and speedier transitions from traditional to newer types of burial provision in the nineteenth century.

Churchyard and cemetery in an English industrial city: Sheffield, 1740–1900

Accounts of nineteenth-century burial practice in England borrow heavily from French historiography, which describes the way that scientific agendas drove a shift from traditional churchyard use to secular, municipal cemetery management. A challenge to this meta-narrative uses the example of Sheffield. In this highly industrialized city, the nineteenth century did not see a dichotomized translation from churchyard to cemetery; the Church Building Act (1818) was more effective in meeting burial demand than the 1836 General Cemetery; the formal closure of churchyards did not always lead to a cessation of burial; and by the centurys end, church burial provision remained substantial.

Constructing the grave: competing burial ideals in nineteenth-century England

‘The grave’ is often taken as a symbolic representation of mortality itself – untold secrets are generally taken ‘to the grave’ – and there can be little ambiguity with regard to the hole in the ground where the dead body is placed to decompose. For Roman Catholics, consecration of the grave space remained an important determinant of the eventual fate of the soul, although for Protestant cultures the nature of the grave itself carried no such importance. However, during the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, scientific understanding began to be applied to the task of defining the specifications of an ideal sanitary grave. The importance of this task had been increased by both a belief that emanations or miasmas from decomposing remains had deleterious effects on the human subject, and dismay that the increasing mass of urban dead were proving impossible to contain. Previous academic studies have described one consequence of the difficulty: that is, the creation of new cemeteries, which relocated the dead from the city centre to its periphery. Integral to this process was a new understanding of the grave itself, not merely as a passive receptacle of remains, but one which – if built according to scientific principles, and used in accordance with best sanitary guidelines – would facilitate