The Problem that Had a Name: French High‐Rise Developments and the Fantasy of a Suburban Homemaker Pathology, 1954–73

Within Western Europe, France had the largest and longest postwar commitment to private social‐market housing inside dense residential suburbs called grands ensembles d'habitation (GEs). Social‐Catholic activists and planners viewed the GEs as facilitating women's maternal mission within egalitarian communities, but others across the political spectrum saw them as pathological spaces, especially for women who supposedly contracted a psychological disease dubbed ‘sarcellite’, after France's flagship GE of Sarcelles. This article analyses how a phantasmatic gendered discourse of housing disaster, first circulated by the media, strategically influenced gendered actors’ residential desires and legitimised policy shifts toward single‐family housing. The discourse of sarcellite reveals how housing realities and imaginaries shaped gendered claims to housing as an evolving aspect of social citizenship. The article considers both suburban women's demands for subsidised childcare and other services and the nuances and contradictions of the evolving discourse of sarcellite.     

From Contention to Co‐governance: The Case of the Right to Inhabit Movement in Rome (2000–2013)

Based on interviews with activists and local government officials and on secondary data, this paper analyzes the development and effects of the Roman Right to Inhabit Movement (RIM) from its origins till 2014. The first section describes the origins and characteristics of the new housing question in Rome. The second presents a brief genealogy of the RIM, paying special attention to how it has framed the housing question. The third describes the activities of the RIM by focusing on its interplay with the city politics and administration and the resulting changes in the housing policy of the city of Rome. The fourth section analyzes the modes of state regulation and of political articulation of the housing question that these transformations have brought about. The final section argues that these emerging arrangements are a significant example of how new forms of social protection are being created by urban movements after the neoliberal erosion of the welfare mechanisms.