Tracing the Recession & the Welfare State: The Changing Nature of Work, Gentrification, and the Rise of Global Corporate Landlords

The end of 2017 marked a full decade since the start of the Great Recession, which sent millions of homeowners into mortgage foreclosure, widened the racial and gender wealth gaps, and reversed the social movement gains of the 1960s and 1970s (Castro Baker, West, & Famakinwa, 2018). Yet, while the scale of asset depletion and loss of homeownership associated with the financial crisis are well known (Grinstein-Weiss, Key, & Carrillo, 2015), the ways in which the Recession altered the welfare state and generated new forms of enduring inequality remain understudied. This roundtable begins filling this gap by focusing on how the Recession's fall-out is ushering in a new period of social welfare marked by an increase of financialization in the market economy and managerialism in social services (Abramovitz & Zelnick, 2015). Speakers will focus on how these themes manifest in (1) the changing nature of work for families living at or near the poverty line, (2) the acceleration of the gig economy, (3) the rise of corporate landlords and eviction, and (4) emerging boundaries of gentrification and segregation that produce new forms of spatial inequality. Particular attention is paid to how these themes (work; housing; eviction; gentrification) shift alongside changes in the privatization of social work since the Recession. The goal is to identify policy and research entry points for social welfare scholars seeking to disrupt or ameliorate the longitudinal impact of the Recession on communities of color and those at risk in an increasingly precarious economy.