A politics of care in urban public housing: housing precarity amongst Yolŋu renal patients in Darwin

Abstract

People with chronic diseases are likely to require some form of domestic care, however their care needs acquire low visibility in housing policy frameworks. Amongst Yolŋu (Indigenous Australians from north-east Arnhem Land), high rates of kidney disease reinforce needs for housing and care. I consider how access to housing shapes relations and practices of care in the families of Yolŋu renal patients in Darwin, Australia; and how Yolŋu relations and practices of care are implicated in housing policy. Through an ethnographic case study approach, I show that in Yolŋu families, practices of extending shelter to kin are care practices fundamental to the performance of domestic labour. I argue that while housing policy frameworks rely on familial relations and practices of care to reduce rough sleeping and achieve other policy objectives, Yolŋu relations and practices of care are also marginalised through the governance of public housing. The politics of care that play out in their places of residence reproduce housing precarity.