I am happy to announce that I will co-edit a special issue for the journal Housing Policy Debate on the financialization of home in the Global South. The international comparative special issue is planned to be published in 2019 and will also be edited by Manuel B. Aalbers (KU Leuven, Belgium), and Raquel Rolnik (University of São Paulo, Brazil). Interested researchers are encouraged to submit an abstract! Instructions below.

Deadline for Abstracts: June 1, 2018
Notification of Abstract Selection: July 1, 2018
Deadline for Full Paper Submissions: December 1, 2018

Financialization has become a new key word in describing and analyzing contemporary developments in economies and societies. It has also become a key concept in understanding recent trends in housing markets and policies. The literature on the financialization of housing initially looked at the connections between booming mortgage markets, subprime lending and securitization in the U.S., but has steadily expanded to, first, more countries in the Global North, and second, to other processes and mechanisms of financialization in the housing sector, including but not limited to social housing bonds, derivatives and corporate landlords such as private equity funds and REITs buying up large portfolios of affordable rental housing.

There is an implicit understanding that these financialization processes are happening in countries with developed, sophisticated financial markets. This special issue would like to challenge that assumption by presenting a range of studies on the financialization of housing in the Global South. We aim to break down the binary thinking of south versus north by demonstrating that financialization is not restricted to a limited number of countries, while at the same time acknowledging the variegated nature of this process. We therefore invite submissions that discuss, among other possible topics:

• The history of housing financialization processes in a particular country;
• The role of the global financial crisis or capital switching in such processes;
• The forms that the financialization of housing takes (mortgage lending, financialization of rental housing, “bankable” slums, …);
• The geographies and political economy of such processes, including the role of national housing and lending policies, the uneven geographies of finance-based housing in local real estate and housing markets, and its impacts on the lives of affected subjects;
• The interconnections and interdependencies between local housing markets and global as well as local flows of capital. 

Submission Instructions

Interested authors must submit an extended abstract of no more than 450 words to info@mariekekrijnen.com by June 1, 2018. By July 1, 2018, the authors of selected abstracts will be invited to submit a first draft by December 1, 2018, followed by an internal peer review, after which papers will be submitted to the journal. These papers will undergo the standard Housing Policy Debate peer review process. Papers submitted but not accepted in time for this special issue will also be considered for publication in a later issue.

Housing Policy Debate’s “Instructions for authors” apply.