Un/doing Displacement in Vienna: Tenants’ Agency and Their Co-Produced Spatio-Temporal Experiences Under Economic Pressure

Abstract

Since the Covid-19 pandemic, the ongoing housing crisis has escalated for tenants in Vienna, Austria. Embedded in a welfare-state environment that hinders eviction, this article considers under-explored everyday forms of displacement and tenants’ agency in “un/doing” displacement. It draws on interviews with tenants in the commodified private rental sector who experience displacement pressure through increasing rents and who have sought different forms of counselling or help in that regard. Results reveal the ways in which tenants enact adaptive and interventive practices. Not only do these practices contribute to or counteract the progress of displacement, but they also shape the spatio-temporal effects relating to various dispossessions. Attempts to alleviate these effects result in modes that “dictate” tenants’ everyday lives through materialities, human bodies, mental activities, and spatio-temporal configurations. Overall, this article provides a relational understanding of subtler forms of displacement, which are co-produced by the affected tenants.

Keywords

• agency
• austria
• displacement
• economic pressure
• housing affordability
• housing inequality
• private rental sector