If you are planning to carry out qualitative housing research, you may wish to consider a housing pathways methodology. This is an approach I have used to frame my research into homelessness and gentrification.
Although the idea of a 'pathway' in housing has been used in a number of studies, the main protagonist of the housing pathways methodology and the person who grounded it within particular philosophical and theoretical assumptions is Clapham (2005). Basing it on a weak form of social constructionism and establishing the importance of temporality and spatiality, he defined it as “the patterns of interaction (practices) concerning house and home, over time and space”. He described a household’s housing pathway as: [T]he continually changing set of relationships and interactions, which it experiences over time in its consumption of housing. These may take place in a number of locales such as the house, the neighbourhood or the office of an estate agent or landlord (Clapham, 2005 p. 27).
In addition, for Clapham, housing is not consumed in isolation, but is intrinsically tied in with other aspects of life such as employment, family issues and other life circumstances. A key aspect of the housing pathways methodology is the rejection of the ontological and epistemological positions of objectivism or subjectivism to satisfactorily explain social phenomena, objectivism being the notion that there exists a reality outside of the individual, and subjectivism (or constructionism and interpretivism) the belief that the social world is external to the individual's mind, and actually just consists of labels, concepts and names, which are used to structure reality.
The housing pathways methodology, however, assumes that knowledge is gained by considering the objective and subjective dimensions of housing as a duality. It is thus necessary to consider the relationship between the (structural positioning) discourses, social structures, and institutions that support and/or constrain households and shape pathways and the subjective understandings of household’s experiences. It is this social constructivist view of the nature of reality that mean that the housing pathways approach takes account of the way that society constructs norms and expectations about changes in location or tenure. This Clapham refers to as ‘motorways’ (Clapham, 2005, p. 68) to emphasise the way in which in certain context particular taken-for-granted trajectories through the housing field will dominate.
Although the idea of a 'pathway' in housing has been used in a number of studies, the main protagonist of the housing pathways methodology and the person who grounded it within particular philosophical and theoretical assumptions is Clapham (2005). Basing it on a weak form of social constructionism and establishing the importance of temporality and spatiality, he defined it as “the patterns of interaction (practices) concerning house and home, over time and space”. He described a household’s housing pathway as: [T]he continually changing set of relationships and interactions, which it experiences over time in its consumption of housing. These may take place in a number of locales such as the house, the neighbourhood or the office of an estate agent or landlord (Clapham, 2005 p. 27).
In addition, for Clapham, housing is not consumed in isolation, but is intrinsically tied in with other aspects of life such as employment, family issues and other life circumstances. A key aspect of the housing pathways methodology is the rejection of the ontological and epistemological positions of objectivism or subjectivism to satisfactorily explain social phenomena, objectivism being the notion that there exists a reality outside of the individual, and subjectivism (or constructionism and interpretivism) the belief that the social world is external to the individual's mind, and actually just consists of labels, concepts and names, which are used to structure reality.
The housing pathways methodology, however, assumes that knowledge is gained by considering the objective and subjective dimensions of housing as a duality. It is thus necessary to consider the relationship between the (structural positioning) discourses, social structures, and institutions that support and/or constrain households and shape pathways and the subjective understandings of household’s experiences. It is this social constructivist view of the nature of reality that mean that the housing pathways approach takes account of the way that society constructs norms and expectations about changes in location or tenure. This Clapham refers to as ‘motorways’ (Clapham, 2005, p. 68) to emphasise the way in which in certain context particular taken-for-granted trajectories through the housing field will dominate.
A number of common themes which incorporate these ideas can be identified from studies that have followed the housing pathways methodology. Firstly, there is a rejection of the assumption that households will follow an upward trajectory in their housing moves, progressing from renting to owner-occupation and larger houses, with moves triggered by changing needs linked to the lifecycle such as marriage, the birth of children, dependents leaving the home, and a change of job (Clark, Deurloo, & Dieleman, 2003; Kendig, 1984; McLeod and Ellis, 1982; Rossi and Shlay, 1982). Instead, reflecting the subjective and unique experiences of housing pathways, households have the potential to experience multiple routes, with a range of interrelated factors and pressures impacting on decision-making. This is particularly relevant given such current trends as the growth of single person and lone-parent households and a decline in the incidences of marriage, but also due to factors such as lifestyle choice (Clapham, 2005).
In order to understand this more complex nature of housing trajectories, housing pathways researchers have tended to seek to understand the ways in which people relate to the places in which they live, and thus undertaken biographical research (see for example Ford, Rugg and Burrows, 2002; Mackie, 2012; Moore, 2014; Netto, 2011; Skobba, 2016). This was the method advocated by Clapham (2005, p.240) in order to “understand the meaning of individuals and households and conspicuous aspects of behaviour”. This has involved the collection of personal housing histories through qualitative approaches. The purpose of this is that it can elucidate the ways in which a household’s circumstances, needs and experiences may alter over time, thus ensuring temporality is central the analysis of housing trajectories. Also, the recognition that the consumption of housing is not isolated from other aspects of life means that this qualitative research has focused on ensuring that account is given to not only individual household motivations but also broader social structures that constrain housing mobility, such as financial institutions, variations in market conditions, family pressure, money, and the decisions of landlords. Following on from this, a common theme from the results of such research is then to present broader typologies of different household pathways, based on Weber’s ideal types (Clapham, 2005). The aim of identifying more generalised patterns of pathway allows the drawing out of the constituent meanings of certain routes through housing and to make comparisons between the subjects under study.