Abstract
For the residents of social housing estates, their quality of life may suffer on the various dimensions of ‘housing hardship’. Several of these dimensions are structural (e.g. the quality of the dwelling and of communal spaces) or social (e.g. the relationships between housing quality and economic, family-related, psycho-social factors). Some social housing projects may be particularly exposed to the harmful effects of social fragmentation and isolation, as well as the loss of a sense of community.
In this article we present the results of ethnographic research conducted on two social housing estates in Livorno, one of the Italian cities with the highest percentages of public housing.
Using a qualitative approach, with participant observation and life stories, our research sought to reconstruct the micro processes: the views of residents, the meanings they gave to the quality of their lives, their actions and interactions. These are aspects that cannot be investigated with statistical data.
The article discusses the complexity of the concept of housing quality, defines its dimensions, and studies it by using an ethnographic approach.
Although this paper is the result of a joint effort, sections “The dimensions of housing quality” and “The context and the method of the study” were written by Erika Cellini, sections “Structures and people” and “Sense of community and conflicts” were written by Barbara Saracino, sections “Relations in spaces”, “The symbolic elements of space” and “‘Incivilities’ as signals of the relationship with the institutions” were written by Livia Bruscaglioni; the conclusions were written by the authors together.
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Notes
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- 2.
The ARCI is the Italian Recreation and Cultural Association, and is one of the most important in the country. It was created in the 1950s with the aim of uniting the clubs, social centres (“case del Popolo”), and mutual assistance societies (“società di mutuo soccorso”) expressing democratic and anti-fascist ideals. ARCI clubs are still today places where people gather, above all in the regions of central Italy that typified the so-called ‘Red’ sub-culture (Trigilia 1983), for political as well as recreational and cultural social activities. Many of them housed local branches of the Italian Communist Party, and these days they host the local offices of the left or centre-left parties.
- 3.
The sample for life histories was constructed based on the criteria of social representativeness, taking emerging theory, previous knowledge and the specificity of the field into account. The main strategy was the maximization of diversity. The operating principle was that of constructing subsets: the research group divided the populations of the two districts into subgroups based on both individual and context dimensions: age and sex of the individual, the year of settlement in the area, and the building of residence.
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During the research time the following people have been members of the research group: Serena Borgi, Fabrizio Bruno, Livia Bruscaglioni, Erika Cellini, Rosa Di Gioia, Gianluca La Bruna, Valentina Pappalardo, Elisa Proietti, Dario Raspanti, Barbara Saracino, and Barbara Vidili.
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- 6.
The data cited in this section are own calculations on matrices supplied by Casalp.
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I did the work, and the rain kept coming into the flat […] Everything was damp, because the window frames weren’t fitted properly […] so we turned the windows round. For instance, the windows in the living room and the kitchen both opened towards the door… so the work had been shoddy, I don’t know who could have made them. Also the builder, the surveyor, the engineer who designed these houses, I mean, they can’t have studied very much (woman, 36–50 years old, resident for ten years).
- 8.
According to data issued by the City of Livorno Housing Department relative to the allocation of emergency accommodation between 2006 and 2010, out of a total of 99 dwellings, 43 were assigned to Barriera Garibaldi and only one to La Leccia.
- 9.
I don’t know why, but they tell us that tree over there is called the tree of the dead birds and laugh. I ask them to tell me why, and they laugh and talk about their age and how they are close to death. In fact, they were referring to their genitalia, which no longer function. But I hadn’t understood this properly… (ethnographic note, 09.22.2011).
- 10.
The use of Elias’s categories and the description of outsiders as opposed to established people are based on the roles we took on the field. The way the research is conducted and the roles taken on by the researchers or assigned to them by social actors may lead to the construction of knowledge which is based on the perceptions and viewpoints of a specific group of social actors, or on what the researcher has experienced most intensely on the field. Due to roles we assumed on the field, and to the centrality of the established people in the life of the area, the perspective of the latter was predominant, but not exclusive, in our interpretive process.
- 11.
We carried out interviews with residents in apartment in all the three blocks of the area, collecting the points of view both of those who live in the district since its construction, both residents of the most recent, both men, both women.
- 12.
Places are so important for the identities of the established residents that every public space and every courtyard is identified by them with a nickname.
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Acknowledgments
The research reported in this paper was part of the “PONEC (Public housing is not a concept)” project funded by the Region of Tuscany (“decreto dirigenziale” no. 7039 of 24 December 2009). The partners in the project are the Centro Interdisciplinare di Metodologia delle Scienze Sociali of the University of Florence, the Livorno City Council, and Casalp S.p.A. Fondazione Michelucci provides consultancy services. The authors wish to thank the members of the research group and those persons who helped them in the field, the residents, the workers at the Portineria sociale di condominio di Livorno, and all those who gave them first-hand information.
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Bruscaglioni, L., Cellini, E., Saracino, B. (2015). Life on Social Housing Estates: Studying Housing Quality with an Ethnographic Approach. In: Maggino, F. (eds) A New Research Agenda for Improvements in Quality of Life. Social Indicators Research Series, vol 57. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-15904-1_3
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