“My Momma, She Strong”. Stories of Female ‘Managers of Evictions’ in the US and Poland

This article is an extended review of two recent books: Matthew Desmond’s “Evicted. Poverty and Profit in the American City” and Beata Siemieniako’s “Reprywatyzując Polskę. Historia wielkiego przekrętu” [Reprivatizing Poland. History of a Great Scam]. The books are especially useful to reflect on some of the gender issues of eviction. The two divergent contexts of the US and Poland show dissimilar cities, different social relations and legal frameworks, but all stories are embedded in analogous neoliberal socio-economic conditions that make the weakest suffer most to the benefit of unscrupulous landlords or entrepreneurs. It seems that the implicit gender dimension shown in these stories is not only a matter of women (especially mothers) being more vulnerable, but also that women bear an unequal burden, manage the situations, and take responsibility for their families. Women fight legal battles, call charities, borrow money, store belongings, search for accommodation. It seems that it is an untold story in many European contexts, and that there is a need of giving face and voice to the European ‘managers of evictions’ and a need for gender-sensitive ethnographies on housing exclusion.