AFFECTIVE-PRS

Project partners:

University of Bucharest (coordinator)

Contracting authority of Romania: European Research Executive Agency (REA)
Project type and number: Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship, Horizon Europe Project 101059188
Project title: The affective economies of private renting: Understanding tenants and landlords in postcommunist Romania
Acronym: AFFECTIVE-PRS
Duration: 24 months
Total project budget: €133.735,68
Implementation period: 01.12.2022 – 30.11.2024

Summary

The Global Financial Crisis and the Covid-19 pandemic have exposed rental housing as a mechanism that generates important inequalities of wealth, health and wellbeing in much of the world, while failing to give many tenants a ‘home’. Recent academic interest in the Anglo-Saxon countries and elsewhere has contributed disturbing insights (e.g. poor housing quality, insecurity, eviction, economic stress), raising legitimate concerns about tenants’ wellbeing in more hidden private renting sectors, where informal transactions increase risks and hide vulnerability away from the state. Sharing these legitimate concerns, AFFECTIVE-PRS examines rental experiences in the emerging markets of the postcommunist EU space, taking Romania as a case study.

Aims

AFFECTIVE-PRS aims to: (1) understand a hidden social world, asking why tenants and landlords operate in the sector and whether their practices enable the construction of a sense of “home”; (2) to advance academic theory by conceiving “home” as an assemblage of materials, money, institutions, social relations, and emotions; (3) to inform the (inter)national debate on the regulation of private rental sectors. To achieve these goals, AFFECTIVE-PRS creates synergies between methods developed in meta-ethnography (critical interpretive synthesis), sociology and visual studies (qualitative questionnaires, interviews, photographs) and public policy (scenario building).

Expected findings

AFFECTIVE-PRS wants a sustainable and fair residential sector in Romania. For this, the project will provide answers to the following questions:
1. Why are tenants and landlords active in this residential sector?
2. How do they construct ideas of risk and trust when navigating market transactions, legal regulations, and cultural values?
3. In what ways tenants’ and landlords’ practices facilitate a sense of home within a dwelling’s physical, subjective and abstract space?
4. To what extent could the temporal aspects of living be understood through “rhythmanalysis”?
5. What are the social and political implications of current practices for a sustainable and equitable residential rental sector in the face of increasing economic inequality, aging and depopulation?
Findings are actively disseminated through publications and academic presentations that attest to the rigor of the research and through press releases, blogs, video clips, press articles addressed to the general public. Some can be consulted below.

 

Publications

• Critical Interpretative Synthesis: Process Protocol – Locating Publications for Reviewing (Briefing Paper 1)
• Qualitative Online Questionnaire: Design Protocol (Briefing Paper 2)
• Briefing Paper 3: What “structures of feeling” charge the affective economies of renting in the Majority World? 
• The private renting sector in Romania: current practices (Briefing Paper 4)
• Article 1, under review, Geoforum
• Article 2, under review, Housing Studies

Dissemination

1. Editorial: For a better private renting system: learning from ignored geographiesENHR Newsletter. Delft: European Network for Housing Research (ENHR) pp. 3-4.
2. Proprietari si chiariasi: De ce inchiriem? Radar Imobiliar. Radar Imobiliar: Bucharest, Apr- 2024.
3. “The private renting sector in Romania: Tenants’ and landlords’ experiences”, online invited speaker at the HouseInc project launch webinar, Fraunhofer-Institut für System- und Innovationsforschung ISI Germany, Feb-2024.
4. The social vibe of a tenant/landlord relationship in a ‘tenant-market’: the case of Romania, invited presentation at the Urban Studies’ Monday Research Workshop, University of Glasgow, Mar-2024.
5. Structures of feeling: the affective economies of private renting in the Majority World, invited presentation at the Urban Studies Seminar Series, University of Glasgow, Oct-2023.
6. Structures of feeling in the affective economies of private renting in the Majority World, invited presentation at the Build Environment, University of York (BE@YORK), Oct-2023.
7. PROJECT WORKSHOP 2: “The Affective Economies of Private Renting in the Majority World”, organized at the Royal Geographical Society – IBG Annual International Conference, 29 August – 2 September 2023, London, with presentations (short-titles) by Prof Adrienne Csizmady et al (“Generation Rent in Hungary”), Prof Esther Yeboah Danso-Wiredu (“Rent Advance in Ghana”), Prof Paula Meth (“Youth, Renting & Residing in Ethiopia and South Africa”), Dr Hannah Sender (“Private Rental Markets in Lebanese Border Towns”), Dr Shaghla Parveen et al (“Renting in Dehli and Dhaka”) and Dr Adriana Soaita (workshop homonym). Participation partially sponsored by the Development Geographies Research Group.  
8. The affective economies of private renting in the Majority World, presentation given at the ENHR International Conference, Urban Regeneration – Shines and shadows, 28-30 June 2023, Lodz, Poland.
9. PROJECT WORKSHOP 1: “Private renting, tenants and landlords in postcommunist societies”, international launch webinar, co-organizers University of Bucharest and the UK Collaborative Centre for Housing Evidence (CaCHE), 12 April 2023, with presentations by Prof Alan Morris (UT of Sydney), Dr Jane Zavisca (U of Arizona), Mr Claudio Acioly (CIFHP Albania) and Dr Adriana M Soaita (U of Bucharest).