Interpreting moments of housing precarity along migrants’ biographies: the case of Romanians residing in post-Brexit Britain

Precarity, a now established concept and an increasingly prevalent life condition, has been usefully employed to scrutinise mostly the non-housing challenges faced by migrants, particularly of the vulnerable. Acknowledging that migrants are a heterogeneous group and that precarity both shapes and is shaped by housing experiences, this paper takes the case of the privileged intra-EU free-movement context to offer a dynamic perspective on the fluctuating nature of housing precarity. Given that individuals engage with housing in complex, multifaceted, and often transnational ways, this paper adopts a biographical approach within photoelicitation interviews to explore how Romanian migrants’ housing experiences in the UK evolve over time. The analysis reveals how migrants encounter, resist, navigate and confront ‘moments’ of inadequate housing and precarious homes. The conceptual addition of ‘moments’ to the already rich vocabulary of precarity highlights migrants’ relational agency in managing periods of brief or prolonged, heavier or hazier vulnerability as they strive to make life liveable and nurture their self through exposure to others. As people can fall in and out of precarity at short notice, the paper calls for a more agile policy landscape that delivers residents’ agency, choice and support at the right time.