Social housing as paradoxical space: Migrant women’s spatial tactics inside Toki Uzundere Blocks

Abstract

This study focuses on migrant women’s experiences in TOKI Uzundere, a housing settlement built in Izmir (2009) by the Mass Housing Administration of Turkey (TOKI). It problematizes the incompatibility between the apartments’ standardized layouts and the residents’ spatial practices. The study argues that these interiors have become paradoxical spaces with the potential to be transformed by women struggling to fit them to their daily routines, and social and physical needs, by applying certain spatial tactics. These tactics were charted through in-depth interviews with women, observations inside their apartments, schematic drawings, and photography. Our analysis demonstrates how women’s everyday practices and spatial tactics challenge and reconfigure the assumed uses of the interiors in these social housing units.