The main aim of this book is to establish and elaborate a framework for analysing the housing field based on the concept of a housing pathway. This framework casts a different light on housing and opens up a new and potentially important research agenda. The book explores the insights to be derived from the pathways framework by reviewing existing research and drawing attention to the many important gaps in our knowledge of housing. The book is aimed primarily at researchers active in the field of housing, but the review of literature in each chapter may be of interest to students and others interested in particular topics.

The geographical focus of the book is Britain, largely because it would be impossible to include the meaning of housing in other countries within the space available. However, readers not specifically interested in British housing may nonetheless find the book useful in illustrating an interesting and illuminating approach that can be applied in any national context.

The main inspiration for the book has been dissatisfaction with the major ways of analysing the housing field. Most current approaches tend to be positivist in orientation and to ignore or downplay the perceptions and attitudes of individuals and households. Where individuals and households are considered, they are often assumed to have simple, universal and rationalistic aims. Some approaches focus on the choices that households make; others concentrate on the factors that constrain choice. There is little analysis of the interaction between choice and constraint, that is, between action and structure.

The framework developed in this book takes individuals and households as its primary foci and makes their perceptions and attitudes, and the meanings that housing has for them, the centre of analysis. Therefore, the approach adopted here is subjectivist, based as it is on the tradition of social constructionism. This approach is an important complement to the main positivist tradition of housing studies, but it is also justified by the increasing importance of ‘lifestyle choice’. Following the work of Giddens and others it is argued that housing has increasingly become a means to an end rather than an end in itself.