Exploring biographical case reconstructions of women with housing instability experience in South Brazil

Abstract

How do women who have faced housing instability interpret and set up strategies to access housing? This article reflects on biographical narrative interviews conducted with women who have experienced compulsory housing removal and with women who were living in squats organized by social movements in the city of Porto Alegre, Southern Brazil. These interviews were further analysed through the use of the biographical case reconstruction method. This method aims to comprehend the interviewees’ past and present perspectives on experiences of struggle related to housing, and its connection to individual and family stories and broader socio-historical processes. The two cases discussed in this article show that to access formal housing through social policy, not rarely women confront socially and politically legitimate discourses and practices by adopting strategies beyond legal or formal means. The selected cases have demonstrated distinct perspectives on similar conditions, revealing that women who have faced housing instability can interpret and experience the consequent processes of temporariness and of changing geographical and social ties in different ways.