Neo-liberalization, Devolution, and Refugee Well-Being: A Case Study in Winnipeg, Manitoba

Abstract

Introduction In Canada, trends in social and private housing demonstrate neoliberalism in action, whereby increasing numbers of people in marginalized communities must obtain housing through private, rather than public, mechanisms. Obtaining adequate housing is at the center of refugees' resettlement experiences; however, successfully doing so is becoming increasingly challenging due to a combination of tight private housing markets, particularly for low income home-seekers, and an inadequate supply of social housing. Refugee housing outcomes and strategies undertaken by refugee-serving organizations to improve such outcomes can and should be situated within the broader trend of neoliberal housing policies in Canada, which are a reflection of the federal government's retreat from social housing provision coupled with a propensity to offload social responsibility to lower levels of government, communities, and individuals (see for example Silver 2011). Devolving authority and responsibility for the attainment of housing and the provision of settlement services to the level of community does provide opportunities for input and decision-making autonomy on the part of community-based organizations (CBOs). However, when such processes are accompanied by funding and service retrenchment, refugee-serving communities and resettled refugees themselves can land in tricky positions. On the one hand, they are best-positioned to respond to the needs of newly arrived refugees in complex social environments due to their deep situated knowledge, local competencies, and placement on the ground.' On the other hand, the well-being of newly arrived refugees is attained by voluntary and non-compensated means and often in the context of accessing necessities, such as housing, by way of market mechanisms. This latter point suggests that well-intentioned community-based experts and resilient refugee communities are charged with the task of ensuring refugee settlement without sufficient financial support from governments. Moreover, the devolution of roles and responsibilities for housing from the federal government to provincial and municipal levels, as well as private and 'community' actors, and the categorical distinction between refugees who receive government support for housing and those who do not, demonstrate that commitments to refugees are increasingly being met by ethnocultural communities, religious groups, refugee kinship networks, and community-based organizations. 'Community'--who for our purposes may be considered as the voluntary and paid non-governmental actors who have a binding commitment to refugee settlement --undoubtedly has a robust function in refugee service provision; however, such a function is realized amidst structures of differential market access and market power, varying degrees of familiarity and capability within the local environment. Using a case study situated in Winnipeg, Manitoba, this article considers the role of refugee status and the efforts of community actors in structuring refugee housing outcomes in a context in which refugee well-being is more and more becoming a 'private' affair, predicated on market processes and voluntary contributions. Community-based research can help academics guard against an abstract, and an ahistorical analysis of community and institutional change, analysis which tempts us to abstract from the particular and ascribe such change to the often ungrounded, but always powerful, meta-value and meta-narrative of neoliberalism. Community-based research can write agential actors back into the narratives and analysis of wide-scale political, economic and social change. In short, this article offers an approach that recognizes both the possibilities and limitations within community-based approaches to refugee service provision. This work proceeds in the following manner. In section two I set out the theoretical terrain upon which an analysis of refugees as market agents in the context of housing provisions takes place. …