Abstract
In this chapter, we examine how women on LG from different ethno-national, religious and class backgrounds developed strategies when it came to ‘getting by’, looking after children, forging and sustaining romantic relationships, and moving around the city. Though the voices of women are a prominent and integral part of other chapters in this book, the issues listed above were particularly central in the lives of LG’s female residents and would—we believe—be best considered and analysed in a separate chapter. In examining these issues, we draw on works such as McKenzie’s (Getting by: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain, 2012) study of St Ann’s estate in Nottingham, Watt’s (Urban Studies, 40(9), 1769–1789, 2003, Housing Studies, 20(3), 359–381, 2005) research into the housing and employment trajectories of council tenants in inner London and Fenster’s (A Companion to Feminist Geography, 2005) investigation into gendered dimensions of belonging and mobility in London and Jerusalem.
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Notes
- 1.
In the British context, the term ‘comfortable’ is often used euphemistically to denote the possession of savings which provide a buffer in the event of unexpected bills or expenses.
- 2.
Research shows that unscrupulous agencies may take as much as 40 per cent of the hourly rate charged to those enlisting the service (Shelley 2013).
- 3.
Most nanny agencies in London screen their workers using a Disclosure and Barring Check (DBS). This results in a certificate listing any criminal convictions.
- 4.
The number of personal training services available in Northtown Central had increased significantly over the last ten years. Some personal trainers charged their middle-class clients £40 per hour. The presence of so many instructors and clients in local parks, particularly during summer months, had led to instructors being charged an annual licence fee of £600 for regular use of park space.
- 5.
‘Dicey’ is a slang term which in this context means volatile and unstable.
- 6.
‘Interest-only’ mortgages are those in which the borrower pays only the interest on the principal sum, rather than making regular repayments.
- 7.
In 2012, the UK government introduced the Workplace Pension Scheme which saw employees (starting with workers at very large companies and rolling out to smaller entities over the subsequent six years) automatically enrolled, with a proportion of their monthly pay being diverted into pension savings. Employers were also obligated to make contributions while workers retained the option to ‘opt out’. The government, for its part, would contribute to individual pension pots through tax relief.
- 8.
Most high street banks in the UK require applicants to contribute a deposit of 10 per cent of the value of the property they are purchasing. With studio flats on LG currently worth between £250,000 and £300,000, the deposit needed would be between £25,000 and £30,000. Purchasers would also have to cover any arrangement fees, legal fees and stamp duty taxes.
- 9.
Here Ann alluded to the fact that the pension age in the UK will be raised from sixty-five to sixty-six in 2020, to sixty-seven by 2028, and to sixty-eight by 2039.
- 10.
Gumtree.com is a British website which hosts classified advertisements.
- 11.
Here Jhanvi refers to marital unions in which bride and groom are selected by their families (immediate and/or extended).
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Rosbrook-Thompson, J., Armstrong, G. (2018). Mater Out of Place? Women, Mobility, Livelihood and Power. In: Mixed-Occupancy Housing in London. Palgrave Studies in Urban Anthropology. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-74678-4_7
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