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With a background in human geography (Goethe University Frankfurt), urban planning (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL) and urban studies (Bauhaus-University Weimar), I am currently focussing on investigating the financialization of social rental housing in Germany. Taking Frankfurt am Main, Germany’s most globalized city, as case study, this thesis sets out to investigate the recommodification-financialization nexus through the lens of (struggles for) social reproduction. Combining the political economy of financialization with feminist care ethics and relational geographies of home, I sought to develop a situated feminist political economy of housing financialization. By connecting the abstract-distant processes of property finance to how these are materialized in the concrete-local practices of rental housing provision, and to how they reshape rent relations and tenants’ everyday experiences of home, it is my aim to gain a fuller, more grounded appreciation of the process of financialization and its implications for residents and for urban struggles against residential alienation, in defense of housing-as-home.

The Centre for Urban Research on Austerity (CURA)

Latocha, Tabea (2021): »Orte der Prekarisierung: Wohnen am ›Rand‹ der Global City. Das Beispiel Sossenheim«, in: Johanna Betz et al. (eds.), Frankfurt am Main – Eine Stadt für alle? Konfliktfelder, Orte und soziale Kämpfe, Bielefeld: transcript (in print). ISBN: 978-3-8376-5477-6

Latocha, Tabea/Albrecht, Tjark/Betz, Johanna (2021): »Gentrifizierung im Gallus. Ein polit-ökonomischer Spaziergang durch das ehemalige Arbeiter*innenviertel«, in: Johanna Betz et al. (eds.), Frankfurt am Main – Eine Stadt für alle? Konfliktfelder, Orte und soziale Kämpfe, Bielefeld: transcript (in print). ISBN: 978-3-8376-5477-6

Latocha, Tabea/Sirsch, Rebecca/Wegmann, Lena/Weiß, Hannah (2020): »Wie eine queere Stadt aussehen kann. Ein Gespräch über intersektionale und feministische Ansätze in der Recht auf Stadt Bewegung«, in: COMÙN Magazin für stadtpolitische Interventionen 4 (Dec 2020)  

Latocha, Tabea/Jansson, Hedvig/Jarosova, Zuzana (2020): »Desires Produces Reality. Utopia as critical planning tool«, in: Gresáková, Lydia/Tabacková, Zuzana/Spolka (eds.), Mapping the In-Between. Interdisciplinary methods for envisioning other futures, Kosice: Spolka, p. 86-90. ISBN13: 978-80-973580-0-6  

Schipper, Sebastian/Latocha, Tabea (2018): » How to stop displacement? The rent gap theory of gentrification and its validity taking the Gallus in Frankfurt as an example«, in: sub\urban. zeitschrift für kritische stadtforschung 6(1), p. 51-76. 

Political Economy of Housing, Financialization, Geographies of Home & Care, Gentrification, Feminist Political Economy, Feminist Methodologies, Critical Mapping

The Feminist City (Interdisciplinary BA & MSc Module Summer 2020, Bauhaus-University Weimar)

• MSc Urban Studies (Bauhaus-University Weimar)
• Postgraduate Certificate Urban Regeneration (Bartlett School of Planning, UCL)
• BA Human Geography (Goethe University Frankfurt/Main)

AAG Annual Meeting 07-11 April 2021: Latocha, Tabea »Housing as infrastructure of care«, Session: Expanding Futures of Care Geographies (accepted Paper)
RC21 Conference Sensing and Shaping the City, Antwerp, 14-17 Juli 2021: Latocha, Tabea/Betz, Johanna »Lived experiences of large-scale urban renewal in Germany’s global city Frankfurt a.M.«, Track 51: Paradox of Mega Urban Projects (accepted Paper)
Right to the City Forum (RAS) 2020 Weimar, Mai 2020: Latocha, Tabea/Wegmann, Lena »Feministische Stadt:re:produktionstools« (Workshop)
Nordic Geographers Meeting (NGM) Stockholm, Sweden, Juli 2017: Schipper, Sebastian/Latocha »How to stop displacement? The rent gap theory of gentrification and its validity taking the Gallus in Frankfurt as an example« (Paper)

Title

Liquid Homes, Concrete Struggle. Understanding the financialization of social rental housing through the lens of (struggles for) social reproduction: A feminist political economy of housing financialization in Germany’s Global City Frankfurt a. M.

Abstract

This thesis analyses the financialization of social rental housing in Germany, with the aim of connecting the abstract-distant processes of property finance to how these are materialized in the concrete-local practices of rental housing provision in cities, and to how they shape rent relations and tenants’ everyday experiences of home in their neighbourhoods. In doing so, a major objective is to show that financialization is not an automatic process, operating as a rigid structural logic on the macro-level of political-economy systems, but has rather necessitated an ongoing and active process of governance at the meso- and micro-level of social reproduction. Uptaking a feminist political economy approach, I argue that a fundamental component of this long-term shift since the 1980s has been a re-imagining of housing as liquid financial asset rather than social good and home for urban communities. Governing financial risk has been a fundamental element of this conversion of social rental housing into an asset class, with the need to cut public expenditure a major priority for the transforming welfare state. The systematic transfer of risk downward from lenders, to providers, to tenants, is a crucial means by which financialization has been maintained in the aftermath of the financial crisis (and during the ongoing pandemic recession) and come to re-structure social reproduction at the micro-level of households. Importantly, this has proliferated a new wave of collective efforts to politicize and contest the financialization of urban space and housing in particular. I thus seek to both understand the financialization-reproduction nexus and explore how moments of crisis open space for disruption of the dominant housing-finance nexus and for emphasizing the social value of housing-as-home.

Dr Mercè Cortina-Oriol and Professor Jonathan Davies