Getting a 'grip' on the 'troubled family' : the familial consequences of the eviction process in a neoliberal society

• Main Author: Sykes, Neil
• Published: University of Surrey 2017
• Subjects: 362.82
• Online Access: http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.703527

Despite consistent political, academic and media interest in ‘troublesome’ families and antisocial behaviour the voices of those on the receiving end of various familial interventions largely remain unheard. However, it has been increasingly recognised that white, lone female parents are the primary recipients of political interventions to alleviate anti-social behaviour. This qualitative research addressed this gendered, classed, ethnicity and disability based phenomenon by eliciting the experiences of those threatened, and/or evicted from social housing because of the anti-social behaviour of other members of the household. In-depth, semi-structured interviews were undertaken with those at various stages of the eviction process who were working with a Family Intervention Project in the south of England. The participants employed various practices and strategies to mediate the familial consequences of the eviction process and were far from the feckless parents portrayed in popular and policy discourses. These mediatory practices and strategies entailed engaging with the temporal demands of numerous tutelary agencies and were undertaken against a backdrop of ongoing intra familial violence and intra communal conflict, which blurs any simplistic dichotomy between the victims and perpetrators of anti-social behaviour. The narratives of the participants also revealed the necessity of having a voice within these multi-agency interactions and their own recommendations for alleviating their circumstances, and as such provide valuable insights for academics, policy makers, practitioners and other ‘troubled’ families experiencing similarly deleterious housing sanctions.