The experience of precarity: low-paid economic migrants’ housing in Manchester

Abstract

Concerns about increasingly precarious working and living conditions have highlighted the particularly vulnerable nature of low-income economic migrants, who often experience high levels of housing precarity, alongside precarious employment. Economic migrants to the UK often lack housing support, and access housing in the private rented sector (PRS), where they struggle to secure safe, decent and affordable accommodation. This article presents a qualitative exploration of low-income economic migrants’ lived experiences of housing precarity, based on research in Manchester. Housing represents a critical element of migrants’ experiences, which can have a determining effect on other outcomes. Yet despite the acknowledged higher levels of precarity in the PRS, there have been few in-depth studies of how tenants experience this, particularly at the lower end of the sector. The conceptual lens of precarity offers a deeper understanding of the affective dimension, multidimensionality and structure-agency dynamics of low-income migrants’ housing experiences. In this way, the paper contributes to debates on insecurity, perception, and agency in housing studies.