In person icon Housing-Assets, Class, and Power I: From Homeownership to Funded Pensions in Asset-Based Welfare

Abstract

This panel explores the ideological foundations and socio-political implications of asset-based welfare grounded in property over land and housing. It covers both direct and indirect forms of ownership, ranging from homeownership to funded pension plan investments in residential real estate. Drawing on historical, theoretical, and empirical perspectives, the panel brings together scholars from diverse fields to interrogate how property ownership creates a tension between freedom and rootedness - while always relying on an unequal distribution of social power, risks, and benefits. Through a survey of canonical political thought, the panel explores how thinkers like Friedrich Engels, Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Noel Skelton, and James Meade theorized the homeowner as a socio-political actor, with contrasting visions of homeownership as a vehicle for either rooted conservatism or revolutionary potential. A class lens is moreover applied to the changing forms and functions of ownership as residential landscapes are transformed through processes of industrialisation, urbanisation and financialization. The different iterations of asset-based welfare involve shifting political and power dynamics. By tracing the continuities and ruptures from the petit proprietor to the global asset manager, the panel situates contemporary entanglements between economic security and residential property within longer historical trajectories. The combination of political theory with political economy allows for a discussion on the class contradictions and political possibilities presented by different property structures in land and housing. The panel is proposed jointly with Housing-Assets, Class, and Power II: Landlords, Tenants, and the Political Economy of Contemporary Residential Landscapes.

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