IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ucd/wpaper/202501.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Pathways Through Housing Precarity: suburbanisation, sharing and self-sacrifice among low-income Bangladeshi Migrants in Dublin

Author

Listed:
  • M. Altaf Hossain

    (Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland)

  • Michelle Norris

    (Geary Institute for Public Policy, University College Dublin, Ireland)

Abstract

This paper presents the results of ethnographic research on the strategies that recently arrived, low -income Bangladeshi migrants use to negotiate the highly inflated and undersupplied housing market in Dublin, Ireland. This analysis draws on Clapham’s (2005) widely used ‘housing pathways’ framework but extends this to incorporate insights from the literature on precarity. Thus, research participants’ housing pathways since their arrival in Ireland and how these were shaped by multiple and insertional precarities (in terms of legal status, employment, income, housing and racial and religious minority status), personal priorities and cultural norms are explored. The influence of these factors on migrants’ understandings of the meaning of home are also examined. The key insight offered here is that this combination of factors shaped distinctive housing pathways among Bangladeshi migrants’ which commonly encompass residential suburbanisation and sharing/ subletting of private rented accommodation as widespread strategies to manage housing and other precarities, coupled with the sacrifice of comfort, privacy and family life. These factors, in turn, shape distinctive understandings of the meaning of home among this population, which are instrumentalist and expansive and also focused on the aspects of the dwelling that support their religious and cultural traditions.

Suggested Citation

  • M. Altaf Hossain & Michelle Norris, 2025. "Pathways Through Housing Precarity: suburbanisation, sharing and self-sacrifice among low-income Bangladeshi Migrants in Dublin," Working Papers 202501, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
  • Handle: RePEc:ucd:wpaper:202501
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.ucd.ie/geary/static/publications/workingpapers/gearywp202501.pdf
    File Function: First version, 2025
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. McGinnity, Frances & Russell, Helen & Privalko, Ivan & Enright, Shannen & O'Brien, Doireann, 2021. "Monitoring adequate housing in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT413.
    2. Fahey, Éamonn & Russell, Helen & McGinnity, Frances & Grotti, Raffaele, 2019. "Diverse neighbourhoods: an analysis of the residential distribution of immigrants in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT376.
    3. Michael Byrne & Michelle Norris, 2022. "Housing market financialization, neoliberalism and everyday retrenchment of social housing," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 54(1), pages 182-198, February.
    4. Nicole Gurran & Madeleine Pill & Sophia Maalsen, 2021. "Hidden homes? Uncovering Sydney’s informal housing market," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 58(8), pages 1712-1731, June.
    5. Noah J. Durst & Jake Wegmann, 2017. "Informal Housing in the United States," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 41(2), pages 282-297, March.
    6. Grotti, Raffaele & Russell, Helen & Fahey, Éammon & Maître, Bertrand, 2018. "Discrimination and inequality in housing in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT361.
    7. Alicja Bobek & Sinead Pembroke & James Wickham, 2021. "Living in precarious housing: non-standard employment and housing careers of young professionals in Ireland," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 36(9), pages 1364-1387, October.
    8. Michael Byrne, 2020. "Generation rent and the financialization of housing: a comparative exploration of the growth of the private rental sector in Ireland, the UK and Spain," Housing Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 35(4), pages 743-765, April.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Laurence, James & Russell, Helen & Smyth, Emer, 2022. "Housing adequacy and child outcomes in early and middle childhood," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS154.
    2. McGinnity, Frances & Russell, Helen & Privalko, Ivan & Enright, Shannen & O'Brien, Doireann, 2021. "Monitoring adequate housing in Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT413.
    3. McGinnity, Frances & Privalko, Ivan & Russell, Helen & Curristan, Sarah & Stapleton, Amy & Laurence, James, 2022. "Origin and Integration: Housing and family among migrants in the 2016 Irish Census," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT422.
    4. Jakub Galuszka, 2024. "BOATS AS HOUSING IN OXFORD, UK: Trajectories of Informality in a High‐Income Context," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 48(1), pages 126-144, January.
    5. Ferreri, Mara & Sanyal, Romola, 2022. "Digital informalisation: rental housing, platforms, and the management of risk," LSE Research Online Documents on Economics 112794, London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library.
    6. Michael Byrne & Juliana Sassi, 2021. "Experiences of 'home' in the Irish private rental sector: a qualitative research study of the experience of tenants during the COVID-19 pandemic," Working Papers 202109, Geary Institute, University College Dublin.
    7. Zahra Nasreen & Nicole Gurran & Pranita Shrestha, 2024. "Supplementary rental supply? The digital market for low-cost and informal housing in Sydney, Australia," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(16), pages 3086-3109, December.
    8. McGinnity, Frances & Enright, Shannen & Quinn, Emma & Maître, Bertrand & Privalko, Ivan & Darmody, Merike & Polakowski, Michal, 2020. "Monitoring report on integration 2020," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT403.
    9. Lorenzo Vidal & Javier Gil & Miguel A Martínez, 2024. "Accommodating ‘generation rent’: Unsettling dominant discourses on rental housing reform in Catalonia and Spain," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 61(11), pages 2060-2079, August.
    10. Nikos Karadimitriou & Sonia Guelton & Athanasios Pagonis & Silvia Sousa, 2022. "Public Value Capture, Climate Change, and the ‘Infrastructure Gap’ in Coastal Development: Examining Evidence from France and Greece," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(12), pages 1-17, June.
    11. Jose Torres-Pruñonosa & Pablo García-Estévez & Josep Maria Raya & Camilo Prado-Román, 2022. "How on Earth Did Spanish Banking Sell the Housing Stock?," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, March.
    12. Colin Marx & Emily Kelling, 2019. "Knowing urban informalities," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 56(3), pages 494-509, February.
    13. Groarke, Sarah & Polakowski, Michal & Quinn, Emma & McGinnity, Fran, 2020. "Supporting integration? International practices on civics and language requirements linked to naturalisation: policy implications for Ireland," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT398.
    14. Gavin Shatkin & Vivek Mishra & Maria Khristine Alvarez, 2023. "Debates Paper: COVID-19 and urban informality: Exploring the implications of the pandemic for the politics of planning and inequality," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 60(9), pages 1771-1791, July.
    15. McGinnity, Fran & Fahey, Éamonn & Quinn, Emma & Arnold, Samantha & Maître, Bertrand & O’Connell, Philip, 2018. "Monitoring report on integration 2018," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number BKMNEXT364.
    16. Cory Parker, 2020. "Tent City: Patterns of Informality and the Partitioning of Sacramento," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 329-348, March.
    17. Bryan Dorsey, 2021. "Refocusing on Sustainability: Promoting Straw Bale Building for Government-Assisted, Self-Help Housing Programs in Utah and Abroad," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(5), pages 1-18, February.
    18. Hualuoye Yang & Declan Redmond & Brendan Williams, 2024. "Planning Policies and Housing Development: Evaluating Ireland’s Fast-Track Planning Scheme 2017–2021," Land, MDPI, vol. 13(12), pages 1-36, November.
    19. Juan-Gabriel Gonzalez-Morales & Marina Checa-Olivas & Rafael Cano-Guervos, 2021. "Impact of Evictions and Tourist Apartments on the Residential Rental Market in Spain," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(13), pages 1-13, July.
    20. Kholodilin, Konstantin A. & Kohl, Sebastian & Müller, Florian, 2022. "The rise and fall of social housing? Housing decommodification in long-run perspective," MPIfG Discussion Paper 22/3, Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    housing precarity; migration; sub-letting; private rented housing;
    All these keywords.

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ucd:wpaper:202501. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Geary Tech (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/geucdie.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.