The next Works in Progress Seminar Series (WIPSS) by the Faculty of Arts, University of Malta will be on – Shifting entryways to homeownership: Locating the market in Malta’s residential housing system.
This is by Dr Dylan Cassar, Department of Sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Malta
He explained that “the liberalisation of banking in Malta has unleashed a process of financialisation by which households increasingly rely on debt to finance their entry to homeownership.
Scholarship inspired by the ‘Welfare Regimes’ and the ‘Varieties of Capitalism’ approaches would suggest that financialisation presents a serious threat to, if not complete uprooting of, established institutional arrangements in the local residential housing system.”
Dr Cassar suggested that, “instead, established institutional arrangements mediate the process by which financialisation shapes the entry to homeownership. Relying on a breadth of statistical evidence based on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey and on documents, I argue that key institutions in Malta increasingly draw on the infrastructural power of financial markets to sustain and extend the entry to homeownership. In that respect, not only do they cement their own position in the local residential housing system, but inevitably they end up solidifying finance’s place in Maltese society.”
Convenors are Prof Michael Briguglio and Francois Zammit. The WIPSS seminar [1] is on Thursday, the 19th of October, between 6pm-8pm, at the Faculty of Arts Library, 2nd floor, Old Humanities Building, University of Malta