Rethinking Residential Mobility in a Context of Precariousness: Disadvantage and Downward Trajectories in Madrid and Barcelona

The study of residential mobility has been dominated by approaches based on the choices of individuals and households and on the assumption between housing change and upward social mobility, as a result of an adjustment between household and dwelling. This is related to a consideration of mobility as a constitutive factor of power and privilege, associated with a growing mobility of capital and people, subjected to growing demands for flexibility, which turns mobility into one of the constitutive values of the “new spirit of capitalism”. However, some studies suggest high mobility levels among groups with disadvantaged social positions. This leads to the need to revise the statement of the positive assessment of mobility, in which rooting or territorial anchoring becomes a sign of isolation and deprivation. Applying a theoretical framework enabling structural elements to be addressed in the understanding of residential practices, in this chapter we analyze residential mobility of disadvantaged or worst-off social groups, using the available variables (sex, age, place of origin and educational level) in the register of residential movements in Madrid and Barcelona. The initial hypotheses are: (a) it is not those who can move who move the most, but those who have to in a socio-historical context marked by increasing difficulty in access to housing and residential insecurity, in which residential mobility is associated, in the groups with worst social positions, with processes of precariousness; and (b) these groups are becoming forced to abandon central spaces (in physical and symbolic terms) of the city, especially in the context of growing housing prices and processes of urban transformation. Our findings underscore the pivotal role of social position in shaping residential mobility, revealing substantial disparities even among individuals of similar age groups. Indeed, the triple factors of age, life cycle and household, despite consistently being highlighted as the key thesis in residential mobility literature, are not sufficient by themselves to fully understand these practices. Moreover,  the empirical analysis carried out suggests that residential mobility practices are motivated just as much, if not more, by disadvantaged or precarious social positions than by situations of privilege, choice and freedom of movement. Furthermore, changes of residence among the least privileged classes are most closely linked to movements towards areas of the city which are worse positioned in the city’s socio-spatial hierarchy, thus reflecting not a process of improvement, but quite the opposite. These findings call for a critical reevaluation of public policy design, emphasizing the need to address the deep-seated socio-spatial inequalities prevalent in the urban environments under study.