Papers by Stuart Hodkinson
Manchester University Press eBooks, May 1, 2019
This chapter is the conclusion of the book. It sets out a vision of immediate and gradual reforms... more This chapter is the conclusion of the book. It sets out a vision of immediate and gradual reforms needed for ending the era of unsafe regeneration and housing provision in the outsourced state. A first section sets out the scale of the housing safety and insecurity crisis that confronts us. A second section then sets out three policy lessons raised by Grenfell and my own research on outsourced regeneration under PFI still being ignored by government to ensure that all homes are secure and safe to live in and that residents’ voices are democratically enshrined in housing governance: the need to restore accountability and power to residents; the need to re-regulate construction and housing provision in the interests of safety; and the need to end the privatisation disaster through a programme of gradual reforms that will gradually phase out PFI and outsourcing, push back the financialisation of housing and land, and restore a reinvented public housing model based on the Bevanite principle of treating housing as ‘a social service’ and not a commodity that is democratically accountable to its residents.
La economía política global del siglo XXI se enfrenta por todo el mundo con “la aparición de nuev... more La economía política global del siglo XXI se enfrenta por todo el mundo con “la aparición de nuevas lógicas de expulsión”. Estas lógicas son extremadamente variadas: desde la expulsión de trabajadores con bajos ingresos o en paro de sus puestos de trabajo seguros y sus derechos de seguridad social en el mundo occidental; el desplazamiento forzoso de comunidades agrícolas en el Sur Global a través
<p>Extended abstract for the proceedings of the GISRUK 2015 conference in Leeds which links... more <p>Extended abstract for the proceedings of the GISRUK 2015 conference in Leeds which links to the full paper that will be presented.</p
In the search for strategies that work in the continued fight against the corporate takeover of e... more In the search for strategies that work in the continued fight against the corporate takeover of education and in taking solidarity with oppressed peoples, this short article reports back to fellow academics, action researchers and other activists on the first year of a brand new Masters programme dedicated to campaigning and social change. It argues that in the present neoliberal context, teaching radical politics and encouraging students to engage with social movements and struggles as part of their studies is vital, both to stop the further corporate takeover of higher education and to generate new ideas and solutions for emancipatory politics. Following a brief introduction to the broad processes of neoliberalisation underway, the article provides a glimpse into the commodification project enclosing university education through the journey of the MA course. I then set out the main aims and structure of the MA, recount some of the experiences so far and respond to some of the main...
Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence This ground breaking book presents the first evid... more Available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence This ground breaking book presents the first evidence of forced labour among displaced migrants who seek refuge in the UK. Through a critical engagement with contemporary debates about precarity, unfreedom and socio-legal status, the book explores how asylum and forced labour are linked, and enmeshed in a broader picture of modern slavery produced through globalised working conditions. Drawing on original evidence generated in fieldwork with refugees and asylum seekers, this is important reading for students and academics in social policy, social geography, sociology, politics, refugee, labour and migration studies, and policy makers and practitioners working to support migrants and tackle forced labour
Entrapping Asylum Seekers, 2017
This chapter discusses how recent changes in UK immigration policy to create an intentionally ‘ho... more This chapter discusses how recent changes in UK immigration policy to create an intentionally ‘hostile environment’ for irregular migrants relate to susceptibility to forced labour. The key changes in the Immigration Act 2014 and Immigration Act 2016 target spaces of everyday life by restricting access to housing, healthcare services, banking and legal representation, and increasing penalties for unauthorized working. Drawing on our research on experiences of forced labour among refugees and asylum seekers, we highlight how such policies could operate to increase labour exploitation among people seeking asylum and other irregular migrants. This outcome is quite contradictory with government claims that it wishes to tackle ‘modern slavery’ in the UK through the Modern Slavery Act 2015.
<p>This chapter introduces the context, main arguments and chapter structure of the book. A... more <p>This chapter introduces the context, main arguments and chapter structure of the book. A first section recounts the main events of the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017 and the ensuing political fallout, explaining that the disaster had been foretold in previous deadly fires and warnings about the impact of building and fire safety deregulation. A second section argues that this refusal to listen made Grenfell an act of what Friedrich Engels called 'social murder' at the hands of unregulated private greed. This is followed by a third section outlining the book's overall argument that Grenfell has exposed a deeper neoliberal fault line in the governance of housing safety from decades of privatisation, outsourcing and deregulation. A fourth section sets out the three main case studies of regeneration under PFI underpinning the book's argument, and a chapter-by-chapter breakdown of the book. The chapter ends by detailing the empirical evidence and research process underpinning the book.</p>
<p>This chapter turns to the bottom line of outsourced regeneration and self-regulation – t... more <p>This chapter turns to the bottom line of outsourced regeneration and self-regulation – the colossal financial riches made, following the money from government to the immediate companies and then through to their ultimate owners, often offshored in tax havens. A first section recaps on the variety of unnecessary costs imposed on the public sector through PFI procurement that would simply not be possible if the scheme was financed and procured directly through the public sector. A second section focuses on the complex yet lucrative financial deals done to raise the upfront investment that provide private banks, financial market traders and PFI investors with enormous, risk-free profits. A third section turns to the generous profit margins commanded by the construction and maintenance firms in these PFI schemes from the lack of genuine competition in the procurement process. A fourth section details how corporate consultants and the big four accountancy firms also financially benefit from advising and auditing on these schemes in ways that create real conflicts of interest. A final section that follows these different profitable financial flows through the MFN regeneration scheme.</p>
This report details the main findings from a pilot project funded by RCUK's Digital Economy p... more This report details the main findings from a pilot project funded by RCUK's Digital Economy programme exploring the impacts and implications of a digitally transformed UK welfare system in the city of Leeds. This report updates our interim report (Hodkinson et al, 2014).
Where the Other Half Lives
ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 2015
This paper is concerned with the interplay between vulnerability, resistance and agency for force... more This paper is concerned with the interplay between vulnerability, resistance and agency for forced migrants. Such concepts are yoked together as soon as the vulnerability inherent in the life-worlds of many migrants is seen to align not solely with victimhood, but also potentially to act as a springboard for agentic resistance, mobilisation and activism. As such, this paper is oriented towards a critical theoretical, and empirically insightful, engagement with the concept of resistance. Most particularly, we ponder the possibilities for resistance in situations of subjugated unfreedom within realms of forced labour. The backdrop for this paper is a broader research project that aims to gain an in-depth understanding of the experiences of severe labour exploitation and unfree labour among asylum seekers and refugees living in the UK (see http://precariouslives.org.uk/ ). The lives of many refugees and asylum seekers are widely recognised as characterised by poverty, social exclusion ...
The global financial crisis, rooted so fundamentally in the private market model of housing provi... more The global financial crisis, rooted so fundamentally in the private market model of housing provision, reminds us that neoliberal housing policies work primarily in the interest of the powerful capitalist property sector and not the public. In this essay, I address the political question of what anticapitalists should do about housing by returning to the stage of an often ferocious debate between Marxists, socialists and anarchists that dates back beyond Friedrich Engels’ famous 1872 polemic, The housing question (Engels, 1872). In what follows, I draw on the various insights as well as the commonalities and tensions present in these debates to devise a set of ‘ethical coordinates’ (Gibson-Graham, 2006) that might guide an anticapitalist housing politics. These coordinates are built out of recent theoretical discussions of Peter Linebaugh’s concept of ‘commoning’, and particularly the work of Massimo De Angelis (2006, 2007), and they rest on three ethics of commoning: the prefigurat...
Housing Studies, 2021
Raquel Rolnik is no ordinary academic, which perhaps explains why her book, Urban Warfare, is suc... more Raquel Rolnik is no ordinary academic, which perhaps explains why her book, Urban Warfare, is such an extraordinary glimpse into the world of housing financialisation. A highly respected and influe...
Critical Social Policy, 2020
Abolishing ‘modern slavery’ has now achieved international policy consensus. The most recent UK i... more Abolishing ‘modern slavery’ has now achieved international policy consensus. The most recent UK initiative – the 2015 Modern Slavery Act (MSA) – includes amongst other aspects tougher prison sentencing for perpetrators and the creation of an independent anti-slavery commissioner to oversee its implementation. However, drawing on research into forced labour among people seeking asylum in England, this article argues that when considered alongside the UK government’s deliberate creation of a ‘hostile environment’ towards migrants, not least in the Immigration Acts of 2014 and 2016, state action to outlaw modern slavery is flawed, counter-productive and disingenuous. We show how the MSA focuses only on the immediate act of coercion between ‘victim’ and ‘criminal’, ignoring how the hostile state vulnerabilises migrants in ways that compel their entry into and continued entrapment within severe labour exploitation.
Housing Policy Debate, 2017
The 2008 financial crisis and its subsequent economic and political shockwaves are widely linked ... more The 2008 financial crisis and its subsequent economic and political shockwaves are widely linked to housing policy failures in North America and Europe. Encouraging home ownership and asset-based welfare while failing to regulate high-risk lending fueled both an unsustainable housing boom and a toxic asset bubble in housing-backed financial instruments (Aalbers, 2016). The resulting housing crisis has been international in scope, headlined by housing market crashes across wealthy countries and the loss of millions of homes to foreclosure with the US and Spain hit the hardest (Beswick et al., 2016). What is striking, however, is that the geography of this global housing crisis extends far beyond the core capitalist countries affected by the 2008 financial crash: housing systems everywhere increasingly are prone to volatility, placing the sustained reproduction of economic and social life under threat. The scale of the international housing crisis has been brought to light in recent years by the work of successive United Nations Special Rapporteurs on Adequate Housing (Rolnik, 2014;
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Papers by Stuart Hodkinson