Law in action: (how) does the right to housing work (out)?

This project seeks to answer crucial questions about the effects of fundamental rights in practice, in particular with regard to social rights (also called socio-economic rights). Are social rights meaningful in practice? What is the significance of invokability and effectiveness of fundamental rights? Is the law indeed looking for a new way to deal with fundamental rights and why is this the case? Of course, the existence of fundamental rights itself is inspired by the need to intervene in socially (or otherwise) unacceptable situations. In particular, the question has to be raised whether fundamental rights have the often assumed capacity to change the situation in practice. Although an analysis of the effects on the ground of fundamental rights draws on an important social debate, the research questions are grounded in a fundamental academic discussion.First of all, an explicit link will be made with notions of poverty and social exclusion. Indeed, the research question gains particular relevance in situations of poverty. Poverty and social exclusion have been defined as the denial or non-realisation of social rights. We will focus on the latter dimension, i.e. the non-realisation of social rights.Secondly, we will focus on one particularly relevant social right, the right to an adequate standard of housing (in short, the right to housing). The right to housing has been recognized as a social right internationally, regionally and domestically. Article 23 of the Belgian Constitution guarantees the right to housing since its 1993 amendment. The right to housing is used as a "case" to study the effectiveness of social rights, but the conclusions reached through this research are expected to be amenable to generalization to other social rights. The key question is whether we can expect successful results from legislation, rather than from individual dispute resolution in realising fundamental rights.

Keywords:RIGHT TO HOUSING, INVOKABILITY, SOCIOLOGY OF LAW, HUMAN RIGHTS LAW

Disciplines:Applied sociology, Policy and administration, Social psychology, Social stratification, Social theory and sociological methods, Sociology of life course, family and health, Other sociology and anthropology, Law