Surveillance in supportive housing: Intrusion or autonomy?

Cameron Parsell

Urban Studies, 2016, vol. 53, issue 15, 3189-3205

Abstract: The interdisciplinary literature demonstrates that the built form constitutes home when people have capacity to exercise control. Consistent with normative ideas of autonomy and freedom, home is a place where we are free from surveillance; at home we expect to live of our own volition. Freedom and autonomy in the home are contrasted with the public realm, and the value of privacy in the home is central for self-determination and identity construction. In line with such reasoning, surveillance in housing is theorised, and indeed widely assumed, as antithetical to home. This paper presents empirical material to examine how surveillance in supportive housing is understood by those with firsthand experiences as tenants and service providers. The research draws on in-depth interviews with tenants (n = 28) and service providers (n = 22) in single-site supportive housing in Australia. The empirical material demonstrates how surveillance is experienced as intrusive, but that surveillance also promotes the conditions for people to feel safe and to exert control over their lives. The research shows how tenants actively used surveillance as a desirable resource, including using surveillance to restrict unwanted visitors. Surveillance achieved functions, particularly safety and security, that individuals were unable to experience as homeless or achieve in housing through informal controls.

Keywords: autonomy; control; home; supportive housing; surveillance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0042098015613205 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:urbstu:v:53:y:2016:i:15:p:3189-3205

DOI: 10.1177/0042098015613205

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Urban Studies from Urban Studies Journal Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().