Exploring the spatial composition of UK social housing

This paper explores the potentials and challenges of organising in (and at times against-and-beyond) social housing. Drawing on extended research across the UK with a range of tenants, activists, and housing staff we illustrate the need for fine-grained and spatially attuned analysis. In particular we adopt an autonomist Marxist ‘spatial composition analysis’, arguing that this approach is ideally placed to examine social housing struggles. We show how although changes to social housing are grounded in accumulation and control, immanent to these shifts can be conditions for resistance. Insights from campaigns—both successful and otherwise—emphasise the need for collective, bottom-up inquiry in order to develop properly spatially-attuned analysis. We also consider the complexities that emerge when trying to build solidarity between social housing tenants and workers, with staff occupying ambivalent positions both in-and-against and in-and-for wider, often-racialised structures. Ultimately social housing struggles can be powerful and transformative, but one size does not fit all. By emphasising both the theoretical and practical value of a spatial composition analysis we argue that autonomist Marxist ideas can play a powerful role in housing studies and struggles.