Issue link: https://maltatoday.uberflip.com/i/1151507
15 maltatoday | SUNDAY • 4 AUGUST 2019 ANALYSIS can have detrimental effects on daily lives as say, claim- ants of housing benefits may not fit in the neat priority list of service providers. Instead, policymakers and researchers should take household plas- ticity as a starting point, and think of alternative domestic compositions such as post- divorce and inter-generational households, solo living, shared households with unrelated others, same-sex and inter- racial households, and cohab- iting and living-apart together relationships." She adds that government policies taking off from patri- archal notions have a negative impact on our collective con- sciousness and practice. Crucially she argues that so- cial justice should not be about self-realisation, but simply the norm of participatory equality. "The shift in understanding housing through a queer lens is to move away from a tradi- tional understanding of the family and the household. The alternative domestic arrange- ments such as the blended family or single-parent house- holds are the new norm. This suggests that households are always changing. "However, the idea that cit- ies and households are static is problematic. In fact, house- hold fluidity, as understood by social scientists, is largely dis- cordant with the approaches of urban developers and poli- cymakers, including service- providing agencies. Under- standing the household and home as a process plays an im- portant role in analysing and designing policies that meet the needs of the locals." Scicluna contends that the queering of policy that she proposes is no easy task, even in a small community like Malta, due to the unprec- edented ever-changing reali- ties that stem from rapid ur- banisation, economic growth, an ageing population and low fertility rates. "Malta has no national hous- ing policy and the Hous- ing Authority operates on a scheme-based service provi- sion. A culturally-sensitive ur- ban system would understand the complex web of relations made of various social net- works – such a system would be important especially be- cause housing is ostensibly home-making, a micro-setting for community life, where im- portant values are cultivated." When this masculinist, powerful hand provides such normative housing schemes, the very basic foundation of home-making is undermined, Scicluna argues, in the form of both literal poverty and the poverty of values. "Therefore, queering in- frastructural policy and the urban landscape is much needed if we are to design policy that is culturally-sensitive and inclusive. Again, the core ought to be in thinking of soci- ety and the house- hold as being in flux, and take this as a serious unit of analysis at a political level. This should also take architectural form where the traditional house- hold layout may not be the ideal home space any longer." This queering approach has the potential to address the range of exclusionary criteria attached to factors related to socio-economic status, eth- nicity, gender, sexuality, dis- ability and also issues related to ageing such as loneliness, isolation and 'erasure' within urban development. "The key is in including the social dimension at planning stage which is often a lower priority in urban development. Design choice, no matter how small-scale it is, can greatly influence individuals' in- teractions with one an- other and facilitate a positive sense of well-being. International research is d e m o n - strating t h a t there are significant economic benefits when developers con- sider the social dimension in the planning phase, alongside the economic, environmental and governance dimensions. This approach is a cost-sav- ing measure as it releases the burden from other services by ensuring optimal quality and best value of resources." "While the government can introduce schemes that are, at first glance, benevolently egalitarian and inclusive, this is more often than not a smokescreen for the muscular hand behind those schemes" In the male profile of power, social injustice can be legitimised through masculinist values of growth and success, where poverty is 'feminised' by notions of the single female-led households at risk of poverty, which are the result of the difficulties of finding child- friendly policies or f lexible hours in the workplace