Gender and sexual identity, ethnicity and austerity: exploring family housing support in contemporary Greece

Family support for housing is a strong cultural and economic feature of Southern European and especially Greek culture and welfare state. Thanks to this support, people, and especially the younger family members, are able to achieve housing solutions that they would not be able to sustain otherwise. The acceptance, nevertheless, of this support creates obligations and power relations that can lead to control from the family over the receiver’s life choices. This work aims to cover some of the multiple dimensions of this support, focusing especially on the support provided to younger family members and the family housing strategies. The dissertation is constituted of 4 chapters/papers with each of them investigating a different dimension of the family housing support: gender identity, sexual orientation, ethnicity/transnationality and austerity impact. Firstly, the dissertation focuses on the way the receiver’s gender identity affects the type of family support that is destined for him/her. The differentiated types of support refer to different perceived gender roles between men and women. These roles are in such a degree self-evident in Greek culture that is hard for the people themselves to distinguish them as gendered. However, by investigating the housing pathways of young people, the differences arise that are connected with different imaginaries of the gender obligations towards family and society. Furthermore, the impact of non-heteronormative sexual orientation is explored. In Greece, LGBTQ+ are still in a precarious social position as society is conservative, (heteronormative) family-centric and strongly religious. Because of this, it is urgent to investigate how housing support and their housing practices are impacted, directly and indirectly by their sexual identity. Concerning the ethnic dimension, the family’s housing strategies are investigated in connection to the transnationalism and cultural characteristics of people born in Albania. This social group is regarded as the most appropriate to be researched in the Greek territory as they constitute the most integrated migrant group that is evident also in their housing practices. Simultaneously, it is explored whether the Albanian and Voreioipirotes1 culture is similar to the one of the country of destination, Greece. Some of the main cultural similarities include the significance of the family, home and the act of hosting. Do these similarities create intra-familial obligations and power relations that may allow family control over the receiver’s life choices? The ability of family to support its members is expected to be diminished and the family housing strategies to be burdened by the global financial crisis and the related austerity measures that are imposed in Greece. The people that are employed in the local economy are facing financial difficulties while the already weak welfare state is being shrunk even more. However, by researching the crisis impact on family support, the ‘cultural obligation’ of the family seems to be still stronger; The family struggles even harder to support its members although its housing strategies may have been cancelled. Usually, both the receiver and the giver have to compensate with solutions that are not favourable and can be even suppressive, striving to survive the economic downturn. The parameters investigated in the present research are only some of the existing ones that should be researched in order to visualize the multi-dimensional impact of this cultural and financial “habit” of housing support from the family. The drawbacks of this self-evident support have to be acknowledged and criticized to promote both critical understanding and active engagement as well as the demand for appropriate housing and social policies.