PROCESSES OF HOUSING ACCESS - A DYNAMIC APPROACH TO HOUSING CONSUMPTION

This paper outlines an analytic framework for the comparative study of housing access, based upon the concept of the 'processes of housing a ccess'. The aim is to devise a framework which is generalised enough t o permit systematic cross-national comparison, but sufficiently ground ed to take on board the wealth of empirical detail on a country by cou ntry basis. Defining the processes of housing access in any specific c ontext involves the identification of. a) the sets of social relations that consumers enter into in gaining access to particular forms of ho using; and b) the formal and informal conditions of negotiation surrou nding access, defined in terms of the characteristics of both consumer s and housing. The identification of the dynamic constituents of the n egotiation of housing access (during which the underlying relations of power are concretised and reproduced in housing outcomes) involves an explicit focus on the interface of macro- and micro-level analyses. I t is hoped that a more widely applicable model for the analysis of acc ess may be developed from the attempt to model housing access in this way.