Italy is the only country in Europe that has institutionalized a completely parallel and segregating housing system - the camp system for Roma people. These camps were created purely based on an elusive nomadic character innate to the population. Over the decades, with further migratory flows of Roma people reaching the country, conditions have only worsened, developing a system so much tethered to the Italian society that the country has even been renamed ‘Campland’. Over time, this same exclusion has been problematized, resulting in the criminalisation of Roma people, at the same time bringing to light the exceptionality of their living conditions. The first part of this study is devoted to understanding the process of discursive legitimization of said exclusion. The approach, inspired by a Foucaldian understanding, involved also grasping the dialectical relationship between discourse and social structures (Fairclough, 1992) - in this sense, it entailed situating it outside its boundaries of exceptionality and inside the broader context of wider housing exclusion affecting Italy. The aim of this thesis was thus to reconstruct both the specific condition of Roma exclusion, and the structural inequalities innate to the Italian housing regime which enabled its development. The concept of social exclusion (Levitas et al, 2007) is implemented in the study first as a way to understand the overall condition faced by Roma people, and as a way to bring forward reflections on the role of housing as one of its fundamental dimensions. The study illustrates how the implementation of the camps and its relative discourse were enabled by the constant retreat of the State from the provision of housing, and how the current institutional incapacity to solve the Roma Question is directly connected to the inability to answer the housing needs of wider segments of the population. The only proposed institutional responses, in both cases, are only ‘filler’ solutions embedded in ideas of temporality, thus failing to address the underlying problem: the structural shortage of public housing.

After the 2008 Global Financial Crash, Ireland’s neoliberal housing policy turned again to housing financialisation as focus lay upon the attraction of corporate investors in order to revive the housing market. The result was a swift return to housing price rises but this came with ever growing homelessness and housing precarity as REITs and other corporate investors' influence on the housing market grew. Affordability has become a common framing as one of the key issues which Ireland’s housing system is currently facing, by the state and researchers alike. However, much of this research frames housing issues and policies as being objectively defined. Social constructionism holds that housing issues and policy are heavily subjective, where material conditions are subjectively negotiated among competing narratives steeped in ideology and vested interests in an attempt to create a dominant narrative. This research, building upon a social constructionism approach, has analysed the negotiated process within the affordability discourse of Ireland. The key findings are that the state’s affordability narrative remains heavily linked to a commodified, private sector led housing provision which holds to its traditional liberal welfare regime. This narrative is reflected in the private sector’s narrative, which frames the state as a facilitator of the efficient private sector, which within a housing system free of state barriers, can create affordability. However, as more and more face into greater housing precarity as unaffordability grows, a counter narrative framing state built public housing, supported by the non-profit sector as key to reducing the reliance on a greedy private sector and in so doing, achieving affordability. As this movement grows, spearheaded by the increasing threat of Sinn Féin to parliamentary power and the growth of the trade union led Raise the Roof campaign movement, this counter narrative has grown in power. Although limited, there has been a shift in the state’s narrative which reflects that of the counter narrative where the state frames the need for a greater direct state role in affordable housing provision and state intervention as a control mechanism on the negative effects of the profit motive of the private sector. Although this can not be said to be a shift in welfare regime, it highlights the negotiated process of narratives within affordability discourse.

This thesis presents research into the housing pathways of newcomers in Ireland who receive status to remain in the country and come through the Irish direct provision reception system. In the global context of financialisation of housing and local context of state reliance on the private market to provide housing to all sections of society, cities in Ireland are experiencing severe housing crises like many other cities across the globe, characterised by shortage, increasing rents and persistent homelessness rates. Meanwhile, in response to increased migration and heightened border anxieties, Ireland has sought to deter forced migrants, in this case with dispersed and unattractive direct provision reception centres. What happens then to newcomers with status to remain in Ireland, an already particularly vulnerable group in the housing system, when they have to enter this system in crisis after year-long stays in dispersed reception centres? This thesis addresses this question, looking at the specific effects of the Irish housing regime, with its unique local and recognisable global characteristics, and Irish reception policy, with its particular direct provision system, on newcomers’ search for housing. For context, the historical development and current features of the Irish housing regime, as well as migration and reception policy are traced and outlined. The thesis then tracks previous literature from international and Irish settings that deals with the issue of housing for newcomers in the Global North, including the historical development of the field and its current trends. The research design makes use of a cross-sectional, mixed-method approach to achieve its objectives. Using a constructionist housing pathways framework of analysis, accompanied by important concepts from thinkers such as Lefebvre, Agamben and Bengtsson & Borevi, the research draws on a mixture of surveys and follow-up interviews to examine the constraints, structures, strategies and outcomes of households when they have been granted status to remain in Ireland and must leave reception centres and find their own housing. The research identifies identity and power as two crucial factors in the navigation of housing pathways for newcomers and shows the detrimental effect of the retreat of the state from housing provision and reliance on marketised social housing provision on the right to housing for this group. Finally, the thesis recommends potential future studies and the policy implications of the research, in light of the difficulties of finding housing through the HAP scheme reported in this research, urge caution for proposed further reliance on marketised social housing provision for newcomers.