Situating 'paternalism' in housing and welfare policy: a typological framework

The aim of this paper is to advocate a new approach to paternalism in housing and welfare policy. In current public and academic debate the concept of paternalism is very restrictively used and mostly in a negative way, to... [ view full abstract ]

The aim of this paper is to advocate a new approach to paternalism in housing and welfare policy. In current public and academic debate the concept of paternalism is very restrictively used and mostly in a negative way, to such an extent that it has almost become impossible to argue in defence of its legitimacy in certain housing and welfare contexts. Dominant interpretations of paternalism tend to view it as a means of social control, using housing and homelessness policy to shape the identity and behaviours of working class households. This feeds into long-established narratives of an ‘underclass’, ‘dependency’ and the ‘the nanny state’, which is claimed to undermine the individual’s freedom of choice and autonomy. However, a number of authors have recently suggested that a broader conceptualisation of paternalism, which also includes positive interpretations, would indeed be necessary to develop a better understanding for some contemporary housing problems, such as in the field of homelessness (Gregory, 2015; Parsell and Marston, 2016; Watts et al., forthcoming).

In this paper, we aim to build upon these recent developments by developing a new typology of paternalisms. We bypass debates about the normative desirability of different types of paternalism in housing and urban policy, arguing instead that we first need far greater analytical clarity before we can make such judgements in applied housing policy scenarios. We base our typology on a systematic literature review method (Jones et al., 2011). We find that a wide range of terms are used in the literature – often interchangeably – to describe similar phenomena in housing and urban studies, yet with limited systematic elaboration on the commonalities and differences between them. Finally, we discuss the potential of this approach for empirical research, potentially opening up a new dimension in research on housing, class and broader welfare regimes.