CFP: Housing Across Borders: Mexican and U.S. Housing in Perspective

Emilio de Antunano Discussion
Type: 
Call for Papers
Date: 
February 9, 2017
Subject Fields: 
Urban Design and Planning, Urban History / Studies, Mexican History / Studies, Latin American and Caribbean History / Studies, American History / Studies

Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego

Call for Papers: Housing Across Borders: Mexican and U.S. Housing in Perspective

Recent crises in the U.S. and Mexican housing sectors have laid bare the interconnected economic, political and cultural significance of housing. The 2007 crash of the U.S. housing market resulted from an increased entanglement of the home with complex financial products. In Mexico, the 1992 reform of the state housing fund for workers into a mortgage finance institution fueled the rapid expansion of a market in so-called “social interest” housing. But it also strained municipal infrastructures, placed borrowers at risk of being underwater, and led to a home abandonment crisis. Though they differ in detail, both crises are indicative of a narrow policy focus on housing as a financialized commodity, and both have had far-reaching effects in the global economy, local communities and the lives of homeowners.

Mexican and U.S. housing markets are traditionally understood to operate as discrete units, but as these recent crises highlight, housing markets are intertwined with people and processes beyond local geographies. We hold that the U.S. and Mexican housing sectors in particular are connected by the movement of people, money, policies and ideas. Taking into consideration their shared histories, we propose thinking about the U.S. and Mexico together to extract lessons from looking at the experiences of both countries against each other and as a provocation that can lead us to testing our ideas about what housing and city mean. How have housing models originating in the U.S. shaped assumptions about and policy implementation in Mexico? How are the two markets linked through the movement of people and investments? Most of all, we ask the question of what can be learned by considering the connectedness of these housing markets and through the experiences of planners, politicians and residents in each country?

This conference explores these connections by putting practitioners and interdisciplinary scholars of the U.S. and Mexico into conversation. To this end, the conference will be composed of: two traditional panels in which scholars share their work in presentation form; two roundtable discussions dealing with the panel themes; and one roundtable discussion among planners, developers and practitioners from the San Diego-Tijuana region. Papers need not deal directly with a comparison between Mexico and the U.S. The potential for connections and comparisons will be drawn out in roundtables and in informal discussions during the conference.

Submission Guidelines:

1. Name, institutional affiliation, and contact information 2. Panel you wish to submit to
3. Paper title
4. Abstract (maximum 350 words)

Submission Deadline: Feb. 9, 2017 (final selections will be confirmed by the end of February)

Please email Georgia Hartman ghartman@uci.edu and Emilio de Antuñano emilio1@uchicago.edu with inquiries and submissions.

 

Contact Info: 

Emilio de Antuñano, Research Fellow, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego

Georgia Hartman, Research Fellow, Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California, San Diego

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