A human right to housing represents the law's most direct and overt protection of housing and home. Unlike other human rights, through which the home incidentally receives protection and attention, the right to housing raises housing itself to the position of primary importance. However, the meaning, content, scope and even existence of a right to housing raise vexed questions. Drawing on insights from disciplines including law, anthropology, political theory, philosophy and geography, this book is both a contribution to the state of knowledge on the right to housing, and an entry into the broader human rights debate. It addresses profound questions on the role of human rights in belonging and citizenship, the formation of identity, the perpetuation of forms of social organisation and, ultimately, of the relationship between the individual and the state. The book addresses the legal, theoretical and conceptual issues, providing a deep analysis of the right to housing within and beyond human rights law. Structured in three parts, the book outlines the right to housing in international law and in key national legal systems; examines the most important concepts of housing: space, privacy and identity and, finally, looks at the potential of the right to alleviate human misery, marginalisation and deprivation.The book represents a major contribution to the scholarship on an under-studied and ill-defined right. In terms of content, it provides a much needed exploration of the right to housing. In approach it offers a new framework for argument within which the right to housing, as well as other under-theorised and contested rights, can be reconsidered, reconnecting human rights with the social conditions of their violation, and hence with the reasons for their existence.Shortlisted for The Peter Birks Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship 2013.

Introduction. The Right to Housing: Law, Concepts, Possibilities I Assumptions, Definitions, Scope PART I LAWIntroduction 1 The Right to Housing in the International Bill of Rights I Introduction II Universal Declaration of Human Rights III International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights IV International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights 2 The Right to Housing in Subject-Specific International Conventions I Introduction II Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women III Convention on the Rights of the Child IV Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination V Convention Against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman and Degrading Treatment or Punishment VI Conclusion 3 The Right to Housing in Regional Covenants I Introduction II The Right to Housing in Europe III African Regional Housing Rights IV Inter-American Human Rights System V Arab Charter on Human Rights VI Conclusions on the Regional Protection of the Right to Housing 4 The Right to Housing as a Constitutional Right: South African and Indian Experiences I Introduction II A Justiciable Right to Housing: the South African Approach III The Right to Housing as a Right to Life: the Indian Approach 5 The De-radicalised Right to Housing: An Assessment of Interpretive Failings I Introduction II Gaps and Weaknesses in the Legal Interpretation of the Right to Housing III Conclusion PART II CONCEPTSIntroduction 6 Privacy I Introduction II Public/Private and the Operation of Law in the Creation of Homelessness III Visible Homelessness of Street and Pavement Dwellers and Deprivation of the Private IV Women's Essential Homelessness and Enforced Privacy V Erasing the Public/Private Distinction and the Hidden Homelessness of Domestic Workers VI Conclusion: Homelessness, Rightlessness and the Right to Housing as Social Belonging 7 Identity I Introduction II Promoting Identity: Constituting Personhood and Community through Housing III Constraining and Erasing Identities: Housing as Social Control IV Conclusion 8 Space I Introduction: the Spatiality of Rights II Housing as Social Control/Housing as Social Transformation III Mumbai: Housing, Rights, Citizenship, Space IV Vision Mumbai and the Planning of Social Transformation V Conclusion: the Boundaries of Spatial Analysis and the Possibilities of the Right to HousingPART III POSSIBILITIES9 Possibilities, Politics, Law I The Right to Housing: Illustrating Ambivalence in Human Rights for Social Transformation II Institutional Mythologies and the Hidden Politics of Human Rights III The Ownership of Rights IV Conclusion: Human Rights Utopia and Fundamental Human Equality