University of California Press Manufactured Insecurity: Mobile Home Parks and Americans’ Tenuous Right to Place

Manufactured Insecurity is the first book of its kind to provide an in-depth investigation of the social, legal, geospatial, and market forces that intersect to create housing insecurity for an entire class of low-income residents. Drawing on rich ethnographic data collected before, during, and after mobile home park closures and community-wide evictions in Florida and Texas—the two states with the largest mobile home populations— Manufactured Insecurity forces social scientists and policymakers to respond to a fundamental question: how do the poor access and retain secure housing in the face of widespread poverty, deepening inequality, and scarce legal protection? With important contributions to urban sociology, housing studies, planning, and public policy, the book provides a broader understanding of inequality and social welfare in the United States today. Review " Manufactured Insecurity is a much needed, powerful, and authoritative addition to the bourgeoning literature on the relational nature of poverty and sociology of eviction."-- "American Journal of Sociology" From the Inside Flap "This beautifully written blend of theoretical imagination and ethnographic discovery, destined for classic status among studies of urban marginality, shines light on the social, legal, and political construction of housing insecurity via a devastating analysis of evictions from mobile home parks in Texas and Florida. A stunning exemplar of analytic intensity and politically committed scholarship that will inspire its readers and live in their minds long thereafter."—Tom Slater, Reader in Urban Geography, University of Edinburgh "Through a beautifully executed ethnography, Esther Sullivan deftly details how for many living in manufactured mobile homes the façade of the American Dream often turns into displacement and disillusionment. Not only is this work a meaningful contribution to housing studies, it also advances our understandings of social inequality reproduction. For those interested in America’s private-market affordable housing challenges and how they perpetuate vulnerability mainly, but not exclusively, among disadvantaged whites, this is a must-read."—Derek S. Hyra, author of Race, Class, and Politics in the Cappuccino City "Esther Sullivan has produced a comprehensive and nuanced analysis of manufactured housing in the United States. This is an outstanding and unique ethnographic study of park closings that deserves wide readership among policymakers, advocates, and scholars."—Edward Goetz, Humphrey School of Public Affairs, University of Minnesota, author of The One-Way Street of Integration: Fair Housing and the Pursuit of Racial Justice in American Cities "Manufactured Insecurity is a gripping account of the struggles of families losing their marginalized and stigmatized yet cherished mobile homes. Through her insightful analyses Esther Sullivan shows this tragedy is no accident but the result of deliberate neoliberal planning and policy choices in America in the late twentieth century. Manufactured Insecurity is sure to join the pantheon of great books that have forced Americans to take notice of the most vulnerable among us."—Lance Freeman, Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia University, and author of A Haven and A Hell: The Ghetto in Black America From the Back Cover "This beautifully written blend of theoretical imagination and ethnographic discovery, destined for classic status among studies of urban marginality, shines light on the social, legal, and political construction of housing insecurity via a devastating analysis of evictions from mobile home parks in Texas and Florida. A stunning exemplar of analytic intensity and politically committed scholarship that will inspire its readers and live in their minds long thereafter."--Tom Slater, Reader in Urban Geography, University of Edinburgh "Through a beautifully executed ethnography, Esther Sullivan deftly details how for