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Accepted Paper:

The land of freedom? Precarious housing and agency in allotment gardens   
András Vigvári (HUN-REN Centre for Economic and Regional Studies)

Paper Short Abstract:

In Hungary, after the postsocialist transition, allotment gardens became a housing target destination of the financial precariat. In spite of precarious housing conditions, allotments enable affordable housing, which mitigate various social risks and empowering pepole living in housing poverty.

Paper Abstract:

Three decades after the post socialist transition, precarious housing is one of the most desperate social problems in Hungary. One of the most typical examples of the spread of precarious housing is the use of allotment gardens for permanent housing. Whereas in the socialist era, allotment gardens were the space of farming and leisure time, after the post-socialist transition they have become the homes of the financial precariat.

On the one hand, allotment gardens provide extremely precarious housing condition without basic infrastructures and amidst extreme physical exclusion. On the other hand, allotments offer affordable housing, where housing disadvantages are mitigated by self-sufficient and reciprocal practices, and dwellers can restart their housing pathways after the shock of different housing crisis. In my presentation I attempt to show this ambiguity demonstrating the perceptions and everyday practices of dwellers based on my field work conducted in a peri-urban allotment garden near Budapest. I will show to what extent do the inhabitants consider the precarious status of allotment gardens as a decline and loss of status compared to their former place of residence, and what factors are essential for them to successfully rebuild their lives in a radically different space? How do they reflect on the lack of infrastructure as a civilizational achievement and what strategies do they use to replace it? How do they reflect on the former urban dwelling and way of life they have left behind and what meanings and feelings do they associate with their new dwelling in allotment gardens?

Panel P37
Precarious futures: built environments in motion
  Session 1