Financialisation, home equity, and social reproduction : relational pathways of risk

• Authors: Amy Castro Baker
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper argues that financialisation exacerbates gender inequity in the United States. During the Recession, wealth-stripping activities were targeted at single female homeowners prompting severe asset depletion among single women, people of color, and those who depend on them. Rather than protecting them from risk, their home equity and bodies absorbed the failures of capitalism within their network. The paper draws on a thematic analysis of interviews with 21 single female homeowners who experienced mortgage default. Rather than focusing on risk incidence, I take their relational pathways as the object of inquiry demonstrating how activities of gendered care work act as conduits and amplifiers of financialised risk that extends the responsibility for unpaid social provision throughout the lifespan. The analysis demonstrates how their status as homeowners positioned them in between market failures and the consequences of austerity thereby restructuring the function of home equity.

Keywords

EN

financialisation; female homeowners; mortgage default; social reproduction

Discipline

• SOCIOLOGY: SOCIOLOGY

• Publisher: Institute of Sociology, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Critical Housing Analysis
• Year: 2018
• Volume: 5
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 27-34
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Amy  Castro Baker

• Critical Housing Analysis, redakce,Sociologický ústav AV ČR, v. v. i. Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic

Identifiers

DOI

10.13060/23362839.2018.5.2.440