Abstract
Bowstead, Hodkinson, and Turner provide an examination of under-recognised processes of forced internal displacement, violating people’s rights to safety and housing. Internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the Global North are rarely acknowledged, except as the result of high-profile events such as flooding or wildfires. However, forced displacement is also caused by state policies of welfare, housing subsidy, and service provision (or lack of provision), meaning that the state often has little desire to record such displacement or its effects. There may, however, be fragmented records within administrative datasets that can be uncovered. The chapter provides case studies from the UK on such methodologies applied to displacement caused by housing benefit cuts (the ‘Bedroom Tax’), and displacement of women and children due to domestic violence.
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Notes
- 1.
Housing benefit is a means-tested social security payment for low-income households to meet housing costs for rented accommodation provided by social and private landlords.
- 2.
Initially developed under the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), subsequent reorganisation brought it under the Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG).
- 3.
The licence restricts use of the data to a named researcher and strict conditions of data storage and access.
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Bowstead, J.C., Hodkinson, S., Turner, A. (2020). Uncovering Internally Displaced People in the Global North Through Administrative Data: Case Studies of Residential Displacement in the UK. In: Adey, P., et al. The Handbook of Displacement. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-47178-1_30
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