In a country like Greece with an absent welfare state, and limited and precarious income opportunities, the provision of housing is considered mainly as a family commitment. The family is highlighted as the main shock absorber during socio-economic turbulence, and the members who succeeded in their housing strategies during previous, more affluent periods, are now able to offer housing solutions to their family members.
The acceptance of housing support presupposes however the acceptance of control. Thus, family support may assume that the receivers of the support should ‘obey’ the rules and imaginaries that the family attributes to them. These imaginaries often include a prescribed heteronormative lifepath that the beneficiaries should satisfy.
Dagkouli-Kyriakoglou M., (2023), When you are granted a home, but you stay in the “closet”. Familism impact on LGBTQ+ housing pathway, in Maloutas T., Spyrellis S. (eds) Athens Social Atlas. Digital compendium of texts and visual material