Can Collaborative housing foster the housing-integration nexus? Tensions and synergies in case studies from Sweden and Switzerland

There is a need of problematizing taken for granted assumptions in the conceptualization of collaborative housing when attempting to link collaborative housing and social integration. What are the difficulties and opportunities that migrants and non-migrants face in accessing collaborative housing projects? Addressing such type of questions will help to capture exclusionary processes affecting older adults, young people and single parents, both migrants and non-migrants. The aim of the paper is to unravel tensions and synergies regarding collaborative housing in relation to the intersection of housing affordability and social integration – hereafter the housing affordability-integration nexus. This will be done through a cross-case comparison of existing collaborative housing projects in Sweden and Switzerland. The main method is case study research including a critical literature review and empirical work. The paper questions the reproduction of social structures privileging some social groups whilst affecting others. In Sweden, collaborative housing projects that have housing cooperative as tenure form are reproducing market inequalities regarding only enabling access to housing for groups who have saving capacity. The lack of financial mechanisms for enabling access to affordable collaborative housing to all has the unintended consequence of excluding migrants, older adults, young people and single parents with low-income from such projects in the Swedish context. In Switzerland, non-profit housing cooperatives of Zurich function as a central provider of a de-commodified collaborative housing alternative to the private housing market. While Zurich faces a high demand for affordable housing, the debates on collectives of like-minded urbanities and patterns of spatial discrimination make the inclusive access to collaborative housing disputable. The paper has implications regarding how creating mechanisms for enabling accessible and affordable collaborative housing could not only tackle the housing needs of people with different backgrounds, conditions and income, but also foster social integration for all.