A1 Refereed original research article in a scientific journal
Navigating precarity in everyday (sub)urban space in Helsinki, Finland
Authors: Jaatsi Mia, Kymäläinen Päivi
Publisher: WILEY
Publication year: 2023
Journal: City and Society
Journal name in source: CITY & SOCIETY
Journal acronym: CITY SOC
Number of pages: 12
ISSN: 0893-0465
eISSN: 1548-744X
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12461
Web address : https://doi.org/10.1111/ciso.12461
Self-archived copy’s web address: https://research.utu.fi/converis/portal/detail/Publication/180330350
Abstract
This article addresses the everyday forms of urban precarity, which is under-studied in the context of Finnish cities. We examine how urban precarity becomes lived, practiced, and resisted in the case of a suburban open-air shopping center in Helsinki, Finland. Referring to precarity as a socio-spatial condition that reveals the precariousness of urban people and places, this study discovered everyday forms of urban precarity in detailed materialities and tactics; in housing, food, and addiction struggles; and in movements and networks. These mundane manifestations revealed that precarity could be approached in more relative terms that are not linked with certain neighborhoods but that emerge as spaces with intersecting nodes of services, networks, mobilities, and sociality. We conclude that particular places across urban spaces, where these aspects intersect, can be central to the ways precarity is navigated in the city and to increasing understandings of the mechanisms through which spaces of precarity are constructed in the city. The methodological choices used in this article-volunteer ethnography and vignettes-present profound accounts of the microscale lived experience, and bring humanness to a context that often exhibits stereotypes and marginality.
This article addresses the everyday forms of urban precarity, which is under-studied in the context of Finnish cities. We examine how urban precarity becomes lived, practiced, and resisted in the case of a suburban open-air shopping center in Helsinki, Finland. Referring to precarity as a socio-spatial condition that reveals the precariousness of urban people and places, this study discovered everyday forms of urban precarity in detailed materialities and tactics; in housing, food, and addiction struggles; and in movements and networks. These mundane manifestations revealed that precarity could be approached in more relative terms that are not linked with certain neighborhoods but that emerge as spaces with intersecting nodes of services, networks, mobilities, and sociality. We conclude that particular places across urban spaces, where these aspects intersect, can be central to the ways precarity is navigated in the city and to increasing understandings of the mechanisms through which spaces of precarity are constructed in the city. The methodological choices used in this article-volunteer ethnography and vignettes-present profound accounts of the microscale lived experience, and bring humanness to a context that often exhibits stereotypes and marginality.
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