The making of a racialized surplus population Romania's labor-housing nexus

Abstract In capitalist Eastern Europe, surplus population is created at the intersection of economic restructuring, leading to the decline of jobs, the absorption of housing in broader circuits of capital accumulation, and the state's disinvestment in social housing. Drawing on the lived experi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inFocaal Vol. 2023; no. 97; pp. 63 - 78
Main Author Vincze, Enikő
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Brooklyn Berghahn Books, Inc 01.12.2023
Subjects
Absorption
Accumulation
Affordable housing
Capital formation
Circuits
Cost control
Economic restructuring
Housing conditions
Housing costs
Industrial development
Labor force
Labor market
Manual workers
Neighborhoods
Postcommunist societies
Public housing
Racialization
Real estate
Romani people
Socialism
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Summary:Abstract In capitalist Eastern Europe, surplus population is created at the intersection of economic restructuring, leading to the decline of jobs, the absorption of housing in broader circuits of capital accumulation, and the state's disinvestment in social housing. Drawing on the lived experiences of the impoverished Roma from Baia Mare (Maramureș county, Romania), I analyze how racialization produces them as surplus-as-laborer and surplus-as-tenant. The article explores the historically constituted labor-housing nexus. Capitalist enterprises are interested in having permanent access to a cheap and flexible labor force that reproduces in housing conditions that are as low cost as they are inadequate. Private real estate capital excludes those who cannot afford the fast-rising level of the ground rent while the post-socialist state refuses to invest in public housing.
ISSN:0920-1297
1558-5263
DOI:10.3167/fcl.2023.970106