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CfP: Special Issue on precarious housing in Global Discourse, guest edited by UQ Architecture staff

Housing is amongst the most fundamental of human needs.  Housing is enshrined as one of the universal rights to which all humans are entitled, and is correlated with the standards of residents’ health, education, mobility, safety, social connection and overall wellbeing. Nonetheless, housing has reduced in quality, affordability and availability over recent decades enabling a crisis across the globe.  In cities around the world, housing has become a means of parking excess global capital, resulting in its use value as shelter for citizens becoming a secondary, and often unfulfilled objective. Particular groups are vulnerable within these changed settings – young adults, children, University students, disabled people, slum dwellers, Indigenous peoples, refugees and migrant populations, and older single women and men. Most of these vulnerable groups experience housing precariousness of some sort including overcrowding, lack of basic services, exposure to landslides and other natural disasters, unaffordable mortgage and rent repayments, debt, insecurity of tenure, domestic violence, limited and inappropriate housing types and design, and isolation. Housing precariousness is then correlated with people’s physical, emotional and mental health and well-being and directly impacts on collective efforts to create sustainable and just cities such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). This issue will draw together analyses of various modalities of housing precariousness experienced by vulnerable groups in the global North and South, in which the impacts on the specific population groups’ health and wellbeing, informal and formal strategies used by these groups to adapt and improve housing, health and well-being outcomes, and governance approaches to remedy the structural causes of this issue, are key topics. Specific issues for examination include:

  • Young adults
  • Older women
  • People with disabilities
  • Indigenous peoples
  • Refugees and migrants
  • Low income groups/social housing
  • Global South (disasters and climate change)

Call for papers: Precarious housing, health and well-being

Global Discourse, volume 11, issue 3

Edited by Kelly Greenop (k.greenop1@uq.edu.au) and Johanna Brugman Alvarez (j.brugmanalvarez@uq.edu.au), School of Architecture, The University of Queensland

Submission instructions and deadlines

Abstracts of 400 words: 1st February 2020

Articles (solicited on the basis of review of abstracts): 1st July 2020

Publication: Summer 2021

Instructions for authors

Please submit by email all abstracts and articles to Johanna Brugman Alvarez (j.brugmanalvarez@uq.edu.au),

Further detailshttps://bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/journals/global-discourse/calls-for-papers

Journal Aims and Scope

Global Discourse is an interdisciplinary, problem-oriented journal of applied contemporary thought operating at the intersection of politics, international relations, sociology and social policy. The Journal’s scope is broad, encouraging interrogation of current affairs with regard to core questions of distributive justice, wellbeing, cultural diversity, autonomy, sovereignty, security and recognition. All issues are themed and aimed at addressing pressing issues as they emerge. Rejecting the notion that publication is the final stage in the research process, Global Discourse seeks to foster discussion and debate between often artificially isolated disciplines and paradigms, with responses to articles encouraged and conversations continued across issues. The Journal features a mix of full-length articles, each accompanied by one or more replies, policy papers commissioned by organizations and institutions and book review symposia, typically consisting of three reviews and a reply by the author(s). With an international advisory editorial board consisting of experienced, highly-cited academics, Global Discourse publishes themed issues on topics as they emerge. Authors are encouraged to explore the international dimensions and implications of their work. All research articles in this journal have undergone rigorous peer review, based on initial editor screening and double-blind peer review. All submissions must be in response to a specific call for papers.