Paper short abstract:

This paper focuses on 'gut feeling' as an important tenant selection tool, with the aim of understanding its discriminatory (and potentially subversive) agency.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from the persistent discrimination in the tenant selection process revealed by studies on the private rental housing market in various places (e.g., SORA 2023), this paper focuses on 'gut feeling' as an important tenant selection tool (also revealed by other studies, e.g. Garboden et al. 2018, Reosti 2020, Rosen et al. 2021, Rosen and Garboden 2022, without further conceptualising it). Previous conceptualisations of 'gut feeling' have mainly problematised it as a way of legitimising and enacting racism (e.g., Stoler 2018) or accessing visceral knowledge (e.g., Gigerenzer 2007), the latter wrongly equating it with mere subjective judgement. Rather than seeing 'gut feeling' as an intentional legitimation strategy or as unintentional knowledge based on subjective experience, this paper draws on empirical evidence to argue that in order to understand the discriminatory and potentially subversive agency of 'gut feelings', it needs to be understood as a practice in the specific context (cultural, social and political) in which it is adopted.