'Fighting him': Following distress in hostile housing regimes

Abstract

This study explores the psychological impacts of the UK housing crisis among a collective of Somali women in Birmingham. We build a framework from anthropological theories of social distress, applied through a participatory methodology consisting of housing biographies and therapeutic workshops. Research was conducted between June 2022-December 2023. Our findings reveal the cumulative forms of distress generated through poor housing, eviction and placement in temporary forms of accommodation. Such distress was articulated in multiple genres which spanned somatic, social reproductive, bureaucratic and psychological harms. Participants pushed back on biomedical categories of mental ill-health in relation to housing distress. We argue that hostile migratory contexts contour the expression of suffering generated through poor housing, particularly in relation to women's mental health. We suggest that ethnographic approaches can lead us beyond social determinants models, revealing forms of distress which accumulate across and within policy domains.