Anarchism, housing, and the radical imaginary

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Statistics Canada cites financial challenges as the leading cause of homelessness in Canada. Other factors, like health issues and domestic abuse, can also affect a person’s housing situation. But more than that, for Professor Jayne Malenfant and Hannah Brais, homelessness is a symptom of a flawed social and political system.

Malenfant is an assistant professor of Education at McGill University. Brais is a PhD candidate and research coordinator at the Old Brewery Mission – Montreal’s largest organisation serving people without homes. In a paper, Malenfant and Brais explored an unconventional approach to addressing the housing crisis: anarchism. Today on the McGill Delve podcast, they join our editor-in-chief Saku Mantere to talk about it.

Our conversation begins with an overview of what anarchism is and isn’t. Saku, Jayne, and Hannah then unpack the history of anarchism as a tool for social justice and reform. Then they explore how anarchism can help us reimagine how we manage social institutions, such as housing and education.

TODAY’S GUESTS

Professor Jayne Malenfant (they/them) is from Kapuskasing, Ontario, but has been in Tio'tiá:ke/Montreal since 2016. Their areas of interest are community-led research, educational and housing justice, and anarchist/social justice education. Their current research focuses on the educational experiences of young people and adults navigating homelessness, the engagement of people with lived and living experience of housing precarity in advocacy and research, and the experiences of Two-Spirit, trans, and non-binary communities navigating housing precarity and institutional inaccess.

Hannah Brais (she/her) is a PhD candidate in geography at McGill University and a research coordinator at the Old Brewery Mission – Montreal’s largest organization serving unhoused people. Within this position, she participates in several academic-community partnerships and oversees multiple research projects focused on developing an evidence base for better homeless programming.

ABOUT THE HOST

Saku Mantere (he/him) is McGill Delve’s editor-in-chief and a Professor of Strategy and Organization at the Desautels Faculty of Management at McGill University. His research focuses on strategic organizations; on questions such as what it is that makes organizations strategic and how strategic management affects organizations. He is particularly interested in strategic change, middle management agency and strategy discourse, as well as in methodological issues in management studies, such as the practice of qualitative research and reasoning in theorizing about organizations.

LINKS

“An Anarchist Approach to Addressing Housing Precarity: Implementing Anarchist Strategies to Program Efforts for Housing Justice” by Jayne Malenfant and Hannah Brais - https://doi.org/10.1080/14036096.2023.2282654

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CREDITS

Host: Saku Mantere

Producer: Eric Dicaire

Managing Editor: Eric Dicaire

Editor-in-Chief: Saku Mantere

Music: Saku Mantere

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