Evictions: A Global Capitalist Phenomenon

Despite its reach and impact, little scholarly attention has been granted to what is becoming a silent social tsunami of our times: evictions. Tens of millions of rental households across the globe, who are too poor to own their own dwellings, are continually exposed to the violence of contemporary capitalism marked by, among other things, a dangerous mix of impoverishment, austerity, debtfarism and speculation. These factors combined have greatly shaped the everyday lives of low†income people, whose places of survival have become increasingly transformed into places of accumulation. This article uses Matthew Desmond's Pulitzer Prize†winning book, Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City, as a platform for debate. It locates evictions within the broader political economy of capitalist development to elaborate on framings, trends and issues surrounding this dominant mode of displacement — beyond the borders of the United States.