Some open issues of integration and ghettoisation within the framework of social housing: the examples of Serbia and Denmark

Abstract

Residualisation of the social housing sector has been linked to the crises of the Welfare state, but it also represents a contemporary trend of the European housing policies’ development. While seeking a ‘shelter’ for resilient way of living, what is nowadays actualised with the waves of migrant crises as well as by continuous striving to integrate the deprived groups of population into the society, this research is concentrated on a parallel analysis of the social housing systems in Serbia and in Denmark. Serbia, with its post-socialist legacy, has dominantly “residual” system of social housing and it has not yet developed adequate instruments for preventing social and spatial segregation of vulnerable social categories through the programs of housing support. The lack of a systematic approach to this housing and often neglecting of social issues has influenced occurrence of housing deprivation in relatively new districts with social housing developments and further impetus for social differences instead of their mitigation. Denmark, on the other hand, which traditionally boasts with a highly developed model for the social housing provision, ever since year 2004 aims to resolve the issue of “parallel societies” through implementation of policies towards integration and urban regeneration of the “enclaves of non-Danish values” or “ghettos”, by prescribing extreme measures of housing policy. Finally, having in view different circumstances for the territorial stigmatisation in Serbia and Denmark, this paper outlines some recommendations for improvement of the current approaches to the social housing planning in Serbia, as well as it summarises the findings that may prevent the incidence of residualisation of the social housing in Denmark within the context of a discourse on modern “severe ghettos”.