Home Ownership beyond Asset and Security

This book is the conclusion of a body of research that started with a workshop held at the University of York in October 2000, and which resulted in the book "Globalisation and Home Ownership". It presents experiences in eight member states of the European Union (Doling and Ford, 2003). The collated information lifted thinking beyond 'politics', linking developments on home ownership with developments in the financial and labor markets in the context of globalization. It led to the insight that to understand developments in different countries it is indispensable to work with an international research team that has awareness of historical roots and cultural idiosyncrasies.This was the basis for the proposal called OSIS - Origins of security and insecurity (OSIS): the interplay of housing systems with jobs, household structures, finance and social security - which was awarded funding as a Specific Targeted Research Project under the 6th Framework Programme. This offered teams in Belgium, Finland, Germany, Hungary, the Netherlands, Portugal, Sweden, and the United Kingdom the opportunity to deepen their studies by following two avenues of research.
The first was a quantitative research approach which resulted in the book "The Social Limits to Growth: Security and Insecurity Aspects of Home Ownership" (Horsewood and Neuteboom, 2006). The second was a qualitative research approach which focused on households' perceptions within their own country framework. The main aim of the research was to clarify the extent to which home ownership provides households with security or insecurity. The fruits of this study are presented in the remainder of this book.