Rena Rädle & Vladan Jeremic

The Housing Question

Wall installation with video / 2013

Ever since the earliest days, people migrating to look for work have been part of urban life. Depending on the prevalent social and housing policies, the city provides accommodation for its new residents or leaves them to their own devices to develop their own urban lifestyle. A few succeed in climbing the social ladder. Some informally established city quarters are legalised and upgraded, while others remain shantytowns and an open point of contact for immigrants and seasonal workers. Rädle and Jeremić take the example of Rome’s Roma population, turned out of the city and accommodated in shipping containers in ghettos monitored by security forces, to examine the initial forms of a minimised market-oriented social welfare for a European lower class denied the right to urbanity. The work on show combines the results of previous research and documentation on the forced migration of Roma refugees fleeing war and poverty from the urban spaces of Belgrade and Helsinki, and offers thoughts on possible solutions on how to house migrant workers.