Kim McKee

Post-Foucauldian governmentality: What does it offer critical social policy analysis?

This article considers the theoretical perspective of post-Foucauldian governmentality, especially the insights and challenges it poses for applied researchers within the critical social policy tradition. The article firstly examines the analytical strengths of this approach to understanding power and rule in contemporary society, before moving on to consider its limitations for social policy. It concludes by arguing that these insights can be retained, and some of the weaknesses overcome, by adopting Stensons realist governmentality approach. This advocates combining traditional discursive analysis with more ethnographic methods in order to render visible the concrete activity of governing, and unravel the messiness, complexity and unintended consequences involved in the struggles around subjectivity.

Young People, Homeownership and Future Welfare

Homeownership has become a ‘normalised’ tenure of choice in many advanced economies, with housing playing a pivotal role in shifts from collective to asset-based welfare. Young people are, however, increasingly being excluded from accessing the housing ladder. Many are remaining in the parental home for longer, and even when ready to ‘fly the nest’ face significant challenges in accessing mortgage finance. This under-30 age group has become ‘generation rent’. As this policy review emphasises, this key public-policy issue has created a source of inter-generational conflict between ‘housing poor’ young people and their ‘housing rich’ elders. To fully understand the complexities at play however, this paper argues that we need to look beyond the immediate housing-market issues and consider how housing policy interacts with broader social, economic and demographic shifts, and how it is intimately connected to debates about welfare. This is illustrated with reference to the UK, although these debates have international resonance.

Sceptical, Disorderly and Paradoxical Subjects: Problematizing the “Will to Empower” in Social Housing Governance

Abstract Drawing on focus group research with social housing tenants this paper illustrates that despite the existence of a political “will to empower” within housing stock transfer policy in Scotland, the effects of governmental strategies are only ever partial and uneven, and may be subject to challenge and contestation from below. Through a focus on “lay” perspectives and the contested nature of contemporary governing practices, the paper argues for more attention to the messy realities of governing within specific local contexts, especially the way in which governable subjects can think and act otherwise, and forge their own alternative govern‐mentalities.

The Paradox of Tenant Empowerment: Regulatory and Liberatory Possibilities

Tenant empowerment has traditionally been regarded as a means of realising democratic ideals: a quantitative increase in influence and control, which thereby enables “subjects” to acquire the fundamental properties of “citizens”. By contrast governmentality, as derived from the work of Michel Foucault, offers a more critical appraisal of the concept of empowerment by highlighting how it is itself a mode of subjection and means of regulating human conduct towards particular ends. Drawing on empirical data about how housing governance has changed in Glasgow following its 2003 stock transfer, this paper adopts the insights of governmentality to illustrate how the political ambition of “community ownership” has been realized through the mobilization and shaping of active tenant involvement in the local decision‐making process. In addition, it also traces the tensions and conflict inherent in the reconfiguration of power relations post‐transfer for “subjects” do not necessarily conform to the plans of those that seek to govern them.

‘Generation rent’ and the ability to ‘settle down’: economic and geographical variation in young people’s housing transitions

ABSTRACT The term ‘Generation Rent’ denotes young people who are increasingly living in the private rented sector for longer periods of their lives because they are unable to access homeownership or social housing. Drawing on qualitative data from two studies with young people and key-actors, this paper considers the phenomenon of ‘Generation Rent’ from the perspective of youth transitions and the concept of ‘home’. These frameworks posit that young people leaving the parental home traverse housing and labour markets until they reach a point of ‘settling down’. However, our data indicate that many young people face difficulties in this ‘settling’ process as they have to contend with insecure housing, unstable employment and welfare cuts which often force them to be flexible and mobile. This leaves many feeling frustrated as they struggle to remain fixed in place in order to ‘settle down’ and benefit from the positive qualities of home. Taking a Scottish focus, this paper further highlights the geographical dimension to these challenges and argues that those living in expensive and/or rural areas may find it particularly difficult to settle down.

Empowering Local Communities? An International Review of Community Land Trusts

This paper aims to investigate the premise that community land trusts (CLTs) offer a method of delivering affordable housing that empowers local communities and provides democratic management of community assets. The paper provides a comparative analysis of CLT developments in England, Scotland and the USA, reviewing the policy and literature to identify two key approaches that underpin CLTs: an approach to property development that emphasises resale restrictions used to preserve housing use for the CLTs target clientele, and an approach to citizen governance that privileges local communities. The paper identifies a variation of practices that underpin the operation of CLTs in each country and uses the advanced developments in Scotland and the USA to illustrate some of the challenges that remain if the CLT sector in England is to continue its recent growth.

Community Ownership in Glasgow: The Devolution of Ownership and Control, or a Centralizing Process?

Abstract The largest housing stock transfer in Europe, the 2003 Glasgow transfer, promises to ‘empower’ tenants by devolving ownership and control from the state to local communities. This is to be delivered through a devolved structure in which day to day housing management is delegated to a citywide network of 60 Local Housing Organizations, governed at the neighbourhood level by committees of local residents. The receiving landlord, the Glasgow Housing Association, has further made commitments to disaggregate the organization via Second Stage Transfer in order to facilitate local community ownership, as well as management of the housing stock. This paper argues that while the Glasgow transfer has enhanced local control in the decision-making process within the limits permitted by the transfer framework, it has nonetheless failed to deliver the levels of involvement aspired to by those actively engaged in the process. Displaying, at times, more of the semblance of a movement than an organization, the Glasgow Housing Association operates a classic centre-periphery divide. These tense central-local relations have contributed to the emergence of conflict which has further undermined negotiations surrounding the realization of full community ownership via Second Stage Transfer.

Transforming Scotland's Public-sector Housing through Community Ownership: The Reterritorialisation of Housing Governance?

Abstract In recent decades, UK public-sector housing has increasingly been problematised, with government solutions focusing on modernising the sector by transferring ownership of the housing from the public to the voluntary sector through stock transfer. This promises to transform the organisation of social housing by devolving control from local government to housing organisations located within, and governed by, the communities in which they are based. The Scottish Executives national housing policy of community ownership is the epitome of this governmental rationale par excellence. Drawing upon empirical research on the 2003 Glasgow housing stock transfer, this paper argues that, whilst community ownership is underpinned by governmental rationales that seek to establish community as the new territory of social housing governance, the realisation of these political ambitions has been marred by emergent central–local conflict. Paradoxically, the fragmentation of social housing through the break-up of municipal provision, co-exists with continued political centralisation within the state apparatus.

Housing Policy in the UK : the importance of spatial nuance

Abstract The UK has been engaged in an ongoing process of constitutional reform since the late 1990s, when devolved administrations were established in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. As devolution has evolved there has been a greater trend towards divergence in housing policy, which calls into question any notion of a ‘UK experience’. Whilst the 2014 Scottish independence referendum again returned constitutional reform high onto the political agenda, there still remain tensions between devolved governments and the UK Government in Westminster, with England increasingly becoming the outlier in policy terms. Informed by ideas of social constructionism, which emphasises the politics of housing, this paper draws on an analysis of policy narratives to highlight the need for greater geographical sensitivity. This requires not only more spatial nuance, but also a recognition that these differences are underpinned by divergent political narratives in different parts of the UK. This emphasis on the politics underpinning policy has relevance internationally in other geographical contexts.

The Ownership of Assets by Place-Based Community Organisations: Political Rationales, Geographies of Social Impact and Future Research Agendas

This article calls for a more nuanced understanding of the links between the motivations, trajectories and policy environments of community asset organisations and the geographies of their social impact. While potential for the ownership of physical assets by place-based community organisations can be found in new localism powers in all four jurisdictions of the UK, there may be differences in policy articulation and implementation that enable or limit the social benefits community asset organisations are thought to deliver. Furthermore, community assets are premised on their intrinsic tie and value to place, with social cohesion, communal mobilisation and identification of mutual interest thought to be at their heart. This article reviews research in this field set in relation to recent policy developments, and identifies an important need to better understand how the personal and social geographies of impact are delivered in, and influenced by, different spatial contexts and political frameworks.