Jennie Gustafsson | Malmö University (original) (raw)
Papers by Jennie Gustafsson
Housing, Theory and Society, 2024
How can struggles for housing justice act as a lens to expand housing researchers’ understanding ... more How can struggles for housing justice act as a lens to expand housing researchers’ understanding of the rental crisis and of the systems that underpin this crisis? By presenting papers from Sweden, Spain, Greece, the UK, and Australia this special issue contributes with knowledge on how housing struggles can inform new theoretical and methodological approaches within the field of housing studies. In turn, the SI presents three tenets that together form a framework for housing scholars: institutionalization as politics, tenants as political actors, and learning housing justice. We argue that it is crucial for housing scholars to recenter on struggles for housing justice in their readings of contemporary housing systems.
Plan: tidskrift för samhällsplanering, 2022
Chapter in "22 texter om humaniora och politisk handling" edt Meri Alarcón, Mat... more Chapter in "22 texter om humaniora och politisk handling" edt Meri Alarcón, Matilda Amundsen Bergström, Tania Kaveh. Göteborgs universitet.
Radical Housing Journal, 2019
Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housi... more Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housing deregulation. In this text, we explore different manifestations of these injustices, and reflect upon consequences and responses as they crystalize locally. By visiting the three cities of Stockholm, Malmö and Uppsala, we highlight three different examples of how tenants respond and formulate protests vis-a-vis privatization through tenure conversion (Stockholm), gentrification spurred by private rental actors (Malmö) and battles over green space and displacement in the rental housing stock (Uppsala). These vignettes exemplify how policy changes play out in different local settings and illustrate how resistance manifests itself on the ground.
This Master’s thesis is based on a field study conducted at the IdeA, a public library and meetin... more This Master’s thesis is based on a field study conducted at the IdeA, a public library and meeting place in Drottninghog, Helsingborg, chosen because of its urban development mission. This mission should be understood in relation to the redevelopment plan of the Million Program area Drottninghog, where IdeA is located. In this thesis formulations and interpretations of the urban development mission of IdeA are investigated and discussed in relation to the democratic role of public libraries. The methods utilized are semi-structured interviews and text analysis. I analyze the material through the use of a critical discourse analysis. Furthermore, I conceptualize the public library institution as embedded in, yet reconstituting its environment. I discuss how discursive practices (re)produce logics of appropriateness which influence the role of the public library in urban transformation-processes, as well as, how these logics stand in a dialectical relationship with social practices. T...
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2021
This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multiface... more This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted relations with the public through an in-depth qualitative case study of municipal housing privatization and urban renewal in one of the heartlands of the Swedish welfare state project, Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on the political-economic literature, I argue that housing privatization is entangled with complex interrelations among the (municipal) local state, the market, and the public and that an exploration of these relations reveals contemporary features of the local state. Hence, this investigation highlights the local state's motivation for privatization, the remaking of a market in a place where the market is believed to have failed, and the powers the local state retains. Additionally, the paper elucidates how the function of public assets changes due to privatization and considers tenants’ and residents’ worries, criticism, and concerns about municipal interventio...
"They had already sold": Uncovering relations among the local state, the market and the public in the case of municipal housing privatization, in Rosengård, Sweden, 2021
This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted ... more This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted relations with the public through an in-depth qualitative case study of municipal housing privatization and urban renewal in one of the heartlands of the Swedish welfare state project, Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on the political-economic literature, I argue that housing privatization is entangled with complex interrelations among the (municipal) local state, the market, and the public and that an exploration of these relations reveals contemporary features of the local state. Hence, this investigation highlights the local state's motivation for privatization, the remaking of a market in a place where the market is believed to have failed, and the powers the local state retains. Additionally, the paper elucidates how the function of public assets changes due to privatization and considers tenants' and residents' worries, criticism, and concerns about municipal interventions. Subsequently, by grounding these findings in the historical function of municipalities in Sweden, the study contributes new knowledge on the local state in a deepened neoliberalized and financialized urban landscape.
Housing, Theory and Society
Housing, Theory and Society, 2019
Public housing has been one of the primary tools mobilized in Sweden historically to fulfil citiz... more Public housing has been one of the primary tools mobilized in Sweden historically to fulfil citizens’ right to housing. However, the nominally universal character of public housing in the Swedish context has increasingly been circumvented through processes of segregation, residualisation, gentrification and displacement. Furthermore, previous housing research points to the neoliberal shift of Sweden’s housing politics since the early 1990s, encompassing the deregulation of public housing at the national level. Focusing on the example of public housing, this paper argues for a multiscalar and nuanced understanding of housing neoliberalisation in Sweden, by investigating the change of public housing locally. The political landscape of public housing in different localities has been transformed as a result of interacting trajectories of spatial restructuring, financialisation and ideological reconstruction. The paper examines this “conjunctural” transformation empirically through a case study of public housing in the city of Malmö.
Kapitel i antologin "22 texter om humaniora och politisk handling", Göteborgs Universitet
Books by Jennie Gustafsson
Allas rätt till bostad: Marknadens begränsningar och samhällets ansvar / [ed] Bo Bengtsson, Markus Holdo, Emma Holmqvist, Falun: Daidalos, 2022, s. 205-2017, 2022
Radical Housing Journal, 2019
Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housi... more Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housing deregulation. In this text, we explore different manifestations of these injustices, and reflect upon consequences and responses as they crystalize locally. By visiting the three cities of Stockholm, Malmö and Uppsala, we highlight three different examples of how tenants respond and formulate protests visa -vis privatization through tenure conversion (Stockholm), gentrification spurred by private rental actors (Malmö) and battles over green space and displacement in the rental housing stock (Uppsala). These vignettes exemplify how policy changes play out in different local settings and illustrate how resistance manifests itself on the ground.
Thesis Chapters by Jennie Gustafsson
The state of tenancy: Rental housing and municipal statecraft in Malmö, Sweden, 2022
Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to marke... more Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to market pressures. This thesis provides empirical and conceptual insights into the processes by which market and financial practices and logics shape the housing sector, through a critical analysis of rental housing in Malmö, Sweden. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the role of rental housing within the context of municipal governance and, in turn, to explore how the relationship between rental housing and municipal governance affects residents. Empirically, the thesis focuses on developments in and around the area of Rosengård. The methods used include an interpretive analysis of official documents and secondary statistics, interviews, focus group meetings, participant observations, photos, and analysis of register data. The thesis comprises four papers and a comprehensive summary (the “kappa”).
Inspired by the regulation approach to political economy, the thesis engages with theoretical literatures on trajectories of rental housing market change, the financialization of rental housing, and local-state restructuring. In demonstrating how tenants and residents are affected by municipalities’ governance of rental markets, the thesis offers fresh perspectives on the nature of contemporary Swedish municipal “statecraft”.
The thesis finds that mounting market pressures from the 1980s initially resulted in a relocation of Malmö’s public housing stock to more attractive urban areas, and greater financial independence for the municipal housing company (MKB). In the process, the municipality used its ownership of public housing to support rebranding of the city following deindustrialization. However, more recently, the municipality has integrated management of MKB’s finances into the governance of municipal finances more broadly. The thesis argues that recent examples of public housing privatization and urban renewal have seen the municipal housing stock come to function as a quasi-financial asset, one bearing local urban development-risk and signaling municipal economic flexibility to credit rating analysts. It also argues that residential property investors’ local use of renovations as an investment strategy strengthens their financial position while leading to declining affordability for tenants. Residents experience increasing rent levels, worry, and a lack of influence within – and disclosure of information about – processes of renovation and privatization. Meanwhile, the thesis finds that the spatial distribution of public and private rental housing has changed as a result of municipal governance initiatives to create attractive new urban spaces, with rental tenants being increasingly marginalized.
In sum, the thesis concludes that market and financial practices and logics are progressively undermining Sweden’s renowned universal housing system, while reinforcing inequality.
The state of tenancy: Rental housing and municipal statecraft in Malmö, Sweden, 2022
Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to marke... more Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to market pressures. This thesis provides empirical and conceptual insights into the processes by which market and financial practices and logics shape the housing sector, through a critical analysis of rental housing in Malmö, Sweden. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the role of rental housing within the context of municipal governance and, in turn, to explore how the relationship between rental housing and municipal governance affects residents. Empirically, the thesis focuses on developments in and around the area of Rosengård. The methods used include an interpretive analysis of official documents and secondary statistics, interviews, focus group meetings, participant observations, photos, and analysis of register data. The thesis comprises four papers and a comprehensive summary (the “kappa”).
Inspired by the regulation approach to political economy, the thesis engages with theoretical literatures on trajectories of rental housing market change, the financialization of rental housing, and local-state restructuring. In demonstrating how tenants and residents are affected by municipalities’ governance of rental markets, the thesis offers fresh perspectives on the nature of contemporary Swedish municipal “statecraft”.
The thesis finds that mounting market pressures from the 1980s initially resulted in a relocation of Malmö’s public housing stock to more attractive urban areas, and greater financial independence for the municipal housing company (MKB). In the process, the municipality used its ownership of public housing to support rebranding of the city following deindustrialization. However, more recently, the municipality has integrated management of MKB’s finances into the governance of municipal finances more broadly. The thesis argues that recent examples of public housing privatization and urban renewal have seen the municipal housing stock come to function as a quasi-financial asset, one bearing local urban development-risk and signaling municipal economic flexibility to credit rating analysts. It also argues that residential property investors’ local use of renovations as an investment strategy strengthens their financial position while leading to declining affordability for tenants. Residents experience increasing rent levels, worry, and a lack of influence within – and disclosure of information about – processes of renovation and privatization. Meanwhile, the thesis finds that the spatial distribution of public and private rental housing has changed as a result of municipal governance initiatives to create attractive new urban spaces, with rental tenants being increasingly marginalized.
In sum, the thesis concludes that market and financial practices and logics are progressively undermining Sweden’s renowned universal housing system, while reinforcing inequality.
Housing, Theory and Society, 2024
How can struggles for housing justice act as a lens to expand housing researchers’ understanding ... more How can struggles for housing justice act as a lens to expand housing researchers’ understanding of the rental crisis and of the systems that underpin this crisis? By presenting papers from Sweden, Spain, Greece, the UK, and Australia this special issue contributes with knowledge on how housing struggles can inform new theoretical and methodological approaches within the field of housing studies. In turn, the SI presents three tenets that together form a framework for housing scholars: institutionalization as politics, tenants as political actors, and learning housing justice. We argue that it is crucial for housing scholars to recenter on struggles for housing justice in their readings of contemporary housing systems.
Plan: tidskrift för samhällsplanering, 2022
Chapter in "22 texter om humaniora och politisk handling" edt Meri Alarcón, Mat... more Chapter in "22 texter om humaniora och politisk handling" edt Meri Alarcón, Matilda Amundsen Bergström, Tania Kaveh. Göteborgs universitet.
Radical Housing Journal, 2019
Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housi... more Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housing deregulation. In this text, we explore different manifestations of these injustices, and reflect upon consequences and responses as they crystalize locally. By visiting the three cities of Stockholm, Malmö and Uppsala, we highlight three different examples of how tenants respond and formulate protests vis-a-vis privatization through tenure conversion (Stockholm), gentrification spurred by private rental actors (Malmö) and battles over green space and displacement in the rental housing stock (Uppsala). These vignettes exemplify how policy changes play out in different local settings and illustrate how resistance manifests itself on the ground.
This Master’s thesis is based on a field study conducted at the IdeA, a public library and meetin... more This Master’s thesis is based on a field study conducted at the IdeA, a public library and meeting place in Drottninghog, Helsingborg, chosen because of its urban development mission. This mission should be understood in relation to the redevelopment plan of the Million Program area Drottninghog, where IdeA is located. In this thesis formulations and interpretations of the urban development mission of IdeA are investigated and discussed in relation to the democratic role of public libraries. The methods utilized are semi-structured interviews and text analysis. I analyze the material through the use of a critical discourse analysis. Furthermore, I conceptualize the public library institution as embedded in, yet reconstituting its environment. I discuss how discursive practices (re)produce logics of appropriateness which influence the role of the public library in urban transformation-processes, as well as, how these logics stand in a dialectical relationship with social practices. T...
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2021
This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multiface... more This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted relations with the public through an in-depth qualitative case study of municipal housing privatization and urban renewal in one of the heartlands of the Swedish welfare state project, Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on the political-economic literature, I argue that housing privatization is entangled with complex interrelations among the (municipal) local state, the market, and the public and that an exploration of these relations reveals contemporary features of the local state. Hence, this investigation highlights the local state's motivation for privatization, the remaking of a market in a place where the market is believed to have failed, and the powers the local state retains. Additionally, the paper elucidates how the function of public assets changes due to privatization and considers tenants’ and residents’ worries, criticism, and concerns about municipal interventio...
"They had already sold": Uncovering relations among the local state, the market and the public in the case of municipal housing privatization, in Rosengård, Sweden, 2021
This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted ... more This paper uncovers the local state's complex intersections with the market and its multifaceted relations with the public through an in-depth qualitative case study of municipal housing privatization and urban renewal in one of the heartlands of the Swedish welfare state project, Rosengård in Malmö, Sweden. Drawing on the political-economic literature, I argue that housing privatization is entangled with complex interrelations among the (municipal) local state, the market, and the public and that an exploration of these relations reveals contemporary features of the local state. Hence, this investigation highlights the local state's motivation for privatization, the remaking of a market in a place where the market is believed to have failed, and the powers the local state retains. Additionally, the paper elucidates how the function of public assets changes due to privatization and considers tenants' and residents' worries, criticism, and concerns about municipal interventions. Subsequently, by grounding these findings in the historical function of municipalities in Sweden, the study contributes new knowledge on the local state in a deepened neoliberalized and financialized urban landscape.
Housing, Theory and Society
Housing, Theory and Society, 2019
Public housing has been one of the primary tools mobilized in Sweden historically to fulfil citiz... more Public housing has been one of the primary tools mobilized in Sweden historically to fulfil citizens’ right to housing. However, the nominally universal character of public housing in the Swedish context has increasingly been circumvented through processes of segregation, residualisation, gentrification and displacement. Furthermore, previous housing research points to the neoliberal shift of Sweden’s housing politics since the early 1990s, encompassing the deregulation of public housing at the national level. Focusing on the example of public housing, this paper argues for a multiscalar and nuanced understanding of housing neoliberalisation in Sweden, by investigating the change of public housing locally. The political landscape of public housing in different localities has been transformed as a result of interacting trajectories of spatial restructuring, financialisation and ideological reconstruction. The paper examines this “conjunctural” transformation empirically through a case study of public housing in the city of Malmö.
Kapitel i antologin "22 texter om humaniora och politisk handling", Göteborgs Universitet
Allas rätt till bostad: Marknadens begränsningar och samhällets ansvar / [ed] Bo Bengtsson, Markus Holdo, Emma Holmqvist, Falun: Daidalos, 2022, s. 205-2017, 2022
Radical Housing Journal, 2019
Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housi... more Tenants in Sweden increasingly face rising rents and displacement due to decades of ongoing housing deregulation. In this text, we explore different manifestations of these injustices, and reflect upon consequences and responses as they crystalize locally. By visiting the three cities of Stockholm, Malmö and Uppsala, we highlight three different examples of how tenants respond and formulate protests visa -vis privatization through tenure conversion (Stockholm), gentrification spurred by private rental actors (Malmö) and battles over green space and displacement in the rental housing stock (Uppsala). These vignettes exemplify how policy changes play out in different local settings and illustrate how resistance manifests itself on the ground.
The state of tenancy: Rental housing and municipal statecraft in Malmö, Sweden, 2022
Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to marke... more Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to market pressures. This thesis provides empirical and conceptual insights into the processes by which market and financial practices and logics shape the housing sector, through a critical analysis of rental housing in Malmö, Sweden. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the role of rental housing within the context of municipal governance and, in turn, to explore how the relationship between rental housing and municipal governance affects residents. Empirically, the thesis focuses on developments in and around the area of Rosengård. The methods used include an interpretive analysis of official documents and secondary statistics, interviews, focus group meetings, participant observations, photos, and analysis of register data. The thesis comprises four papers and a comprehensive summary (the “kappa”).
Inspired by the regulation approach to political economy, the thesis engages with theoretical literatures on trajectories of rental housing market change, the financialization of rental housing, and local-state restructuring. In demonstrating how tenants and residents are affected by municipalities’ governance of rental markets, the thesis offers fresh perspectives on the nature of contemporary Swedish municipal “statecraft”.
The thesis finds that mounting market pressures from the 1980s initially resulted in a relocation of Malmö’s public housing stock to more attractive urban areas, and greater financial independence for the municipal housing company (MKB). In the process, the municipality used its ownership of public housing to support rebranding of the city following deindustrialization. However, more recently, the municipality has integrated management of MKB’s finances into the governance of municipal finances more broadly. The thesis argues that recent examples of public housing privatization and urban renewal have seen the municipal housing stock come to function as a quasi-financial asset, one bearing local urban development-risk and signaling municipal economic flexibility to credit rating analysts. It also argues that residential property investors’ local use of renovations as an investment strategy strengthens their financial position while leading to declining affordability for tenants. Residents experience increasing rent levels, worry, and a lack of influence within – and disclosure of information about – processes of renovation and privatization. Meanwhile, the thesis finds that the spatial distribution of public and private rental housing has changed as a result of municipal governance initiatives to create attractive new urban spaces, with rental tenants being increasingly marginalized.
In sum, the thesis concludes that market and financial practices and logics are progressively undermining Sweden’s renowned universal housing system, while reinforcing inequality.
The state of tenancy: Rental housing and municipal statecraft in Malmö, Sweden, 2022
Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to marke... more Rental housing tenants in Sweden and Europe are increasingly seeing their homes subsumed to market pressures. This thesis provides empirical and conceptual insights into the processes by which market and financial practices and logics shape the housing sector, through a critical analysis of rental housing in Malmö, Sweden. The aim of the thesis is to investigate the role of rental housing within the context of municipal governance and, in turn, to explore how the relationship between rental housing and municipal governance affects residents. Empirically, the thesis focuses on developments in and around the area of Rosengård. The methods used include an interpretive analysis of official documents and secondary statistics, interviews, focus group meetings, participant observations, photos, and analysis of register data. The thesis comprises four papers and a comprehensive summary (the “kappa”).
Inspired by the regulation approach to political economy, the thesis engages with theoretical literatures on trajectories of rental housing market change, the financialization of rental housing, and local-state restructuring. In demonstrating how tenants and residents are affected by municipalities’ governance of rental markets, the thesis offers fresh perspectives on the nature of contemporary Swedish municipal “statecraft”.
The thesis finds that mounting market pressures from the 1980s initially resulted in a relocation of Malmö’s public housing stock to more attractive urban areas, and greater financial independence for the municipal housing company (MKB). In the process, the municipality used its ownership of public housing to support rebranding of the city following deindustrialization. However, more recently, the municipality has integrated management of MKB’s finances into the governance of municipal finances more broadly. The thesis argues that recent examples of public housing privatization and urban renewal have seen the municipal housing stock come to function as a quasi-financial asset, one bearing local urban development-risk and signaling municipal economic flexibility to credit rating analysts. It also argues that residential property investors’ local use of renovations as an investment strategy strengthens their financial position while leading to declining affordability for tenants. Residents experience increasing rent levels, worry, and a lack of influence within – and disclosure of information about – processes of renovation and privatization. Meanwhile, the thesis finds that the spatial distribution of public and private rental housing has changed as a result of municipal governance initiatives to create attractive new urban spaces, with rental tenants being increasingly marginalized.
In sum, the thesis concludes that market and financial practices and logics are progressively undermining Sweden’s renowned universal housing system, while reinforcing inequality.