Households and Financialization in Europe: Mapping Variegated Patterns in Semi-Peripheries by Marek Mikus & Petra Rodik

Author:Marek Mikus & Petra Rodik [Mikus, Marek & Rodik, Petra]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780367464554
Google: GEYdzgEACAAJ
Barnesnoble:
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2021-01-15T09:56:18+00:00

Case study: informal housing in the urban fringe of Budapest

Our case study follows the strategies of households who found themselves in intermediate geographical areas as defined above, yet instead of participating in the new wave of inclusion in household lending chose to compensate for their losses through informal housing solutions and inputs of their own informal labour while accepting the risk of an informal dwelling situation. This serves to highlight the organic connection between the consequences of over-indebtedness and the use of informal household-level reproductive strategies within the broader process of accumulation. Our focus is on an allotment garden that has been transformed from a recreational and agricultural place into a residential neighbourhood after the political and economic transformation of the 1990s but that is legally still not considered a residential area. This space has a specific peripheral position in the settlement structure. It is situated on the eastern edge of the Budapest functional urban area while also being a local periphery: it lies just outside the administrative territory of the nearest local town, which is itself one of the more peripheral suburbs of Budapest. Our case shows how people excluded from inner-city neighbourhoods strive to stay within the reach of income opportunities provided by core areas through reliance on informal practices, which has become increasingly significant after the GFC.

In previous sections, we have described how non-core parts of the Budapest functional urban area can be seen as intermediate spaces where the moving frontline of inclusion to and exclusion from housing financialization can be grasped. This pulsation of inclusion and exclusion creates highly diverse spaces where some suburban areas are the most striking examples of rapid mortgage penetration while other, more marginal (fringe) areas concentrate those excluded from the mortgage-based housing regime (Pósfai 2018; Székely 2018). Our case study is an example of the latter while also demonstrating how the movement of households between the two types of zones manifests their exposure and agency in the face of capital’s inclusion/exclusion techniques. While the allotment works for some households as a space of (self-) exclusion from direct involvement in circuits of financialization, the residents’ turn to informal dwelling is still shaped by the conditions of financialized housing – either through their exclusion from formal channels of housing finance due to previous debt default or through their active avoidance of financialized, debt-based access to housing. Furthermore, their informal work and risk-taking props up their ability to reproduce themselves as labour.

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