SUMMARY:
Housing is a central aspect of financialization, which the global financial crisis of 2008 made quite apparent. It also became evident that housing financialization is a variegated and highly uneven process. While local variations are sometimes reflected in the literature, there is a lack of a more systematic consideration of how the unevenness of financialization is articulated in different locales of the world economy.
The workshop aims to refine the notion of financialization as a “global” phenomenon by examining the process in the context of semi-peripheral economies. We treat financialization as part of the long history of capitalism and uneven development, and propose analyses that:
- reflect on what a global semi-peripheral position implies for how housing financialization unfolds;
- reflect on what these processes mean in terms of uneven development at subnational and local scales.
The aim of this workshop is not merely to share research results with each other, but also to think collectively about a conceptualization of systemic unevenness within the process of housing financialization in the context of the semi-periphery.
ORGANIZERS:
Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, Central European University
sociology.ceu.edu
Collective for Critical Urban Research: The CUCR is a grassroots research collective engaged with urban and housing issues both from a theoretical and practical perspective. www.facebook.com/kritikaivaros
ORGANIZING PARTNER:
The "Housing, social mobilisations and urban governance in Central and Eastern Europe" research project at the University of Gothenburg
The conference has no registration fee, but registration is required. Please register through the following form by 16 July.
Friday, 20 July
13.30 - 15.00 Introductory remarks
Judit Bodnar, Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology, CEU
Zsuzsanna Pósfai, Collective for Critical Urban Research
Local governance and financialization 1.
Judit Veres: Who is playing the game well? Municipalities and local councils in the housing game. Reflections on Budapest’s 13th district housing projects
Zeynep Arslan: Financialization of housing in Turkey: economic and social results
Yahia Shawkat: Urban laws as tactics: the uneven financialization of the Cairo Corniche
15.00-16.00 Local governance and financialization 2.
Csaba Jelinek: Financialization in Hungarian second-tier cities
Michael Mießner: Financialization of housing in semi-peripheral cities of the (global) urban system
16.00 - 16.30 Coffee break
16.30-18.00 Economic holdings and housing financialization in Latin American cities
Eugenia Winter: Financialization, a critical look from Mexico City: a debate on real estate valuation techniques and influence on spaces
Ivana Socoloff: Privatization of the public estate, land acquisition strategies and the current financialization of the state in Argentina
Maria Beatriz Cruz Rufino: Performance of the largest developers in the RMSP: metropolization in the context of real estate expansion and crisis
Saturday, 21 July
10.00 - 11.30 Social consequences of housing financialization
Tomáš Samec: Living in the mortgage bubble: performativity of discourse in Prague’s housing affordability struggle
Alona Liasheva: Atlas pays off the mortgage: dead-end of the Ukrainian mortgage system
Enikő Vincze: The transformation of money into capital – from the commodification to the financialization of housing in Romania
11.30-11.45 Coffee break
11.45 - 13.15 Social conflicts and the politics of financialization
Natasa Szabó: The politicization of foreign-currency-based loan debtors in Hungary
Irene Sabaté: A central city in a semi-peripheral country? Activist tactics against the financialization of housing in Barcelona
Marek Mikuš: Contestations of household financialization in Croatia (and Hungary): disentangling semi-peripherality, national politics and movement trajectories
13.15 - 14.15 Lunch
14.15 - 15.45 Financial institutions
Sara Bencekovic: Housing and finance in the context of the European ‘semi-periphery’: transformation of banking strategies in two decades of Croatian transition
Giulia Dal Maso: Western banks in Central and Eastern Europe as drivers of housing financialization
Zsuzsanna Pósfai: Semi-peripheral housing financialization beyond foreign bank ownership
15.45 - 16.00 Coffee break
16.00 - 17.30 Scales of theory
Denys Gorbach, Aliona Liasheva: Theorising socio-spatial transformations in Kiev
Martin Sokol: Financialization of housing in the European ‘semi-periphery’: a ‘financial chains’ approach
Agnes Gagyi: Financialization in historical cycles of uneven development in Hungary
17.30 - 19.00 Discussion: Conceptualizing financialization on the semi-periphery
Sunday, July 22
10.00 - 11.30 Non-paper workshop session: Political stakes and intervention potential in housing financialization
Invited organizations:
- Cooperative for Ethical Financing
- Faircoop
- Our Money
- European Action Coalition for the Right to Housing
11.30 - 12.00 Coffee break
12.00 - 13.30 Continuing the non-paper workshop session: Political stakes and intervention potential in housing financialization
13.30 - 14.00 Wrap-up: publication, future cooperations
14.00 - 15.00 Lunch