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This paper draws on ethnographic biographies to reveal the multiple experiences of displacement among three residents on the Lancaster West Estate in London. It is a longitudinal study of before, during, and after the Grenfell Tower fire on 14 June 2017. Drawing on in-depth, individual ethnographic biographies, I respond to gentrification scholars' calls for more qualitative methodological approaches to studying the experiences of the displaced. The temporal lens used adds value in showing that residents were being displaced before the fire and that they have continued to experience displacement even when rehomed. The Grenfell literature tends to focus largely on the causes of the fire but here I consider the lived subjective experiences of displacement, slow violence, unhoming and rehoming, among residents on the Estate. Upholding and preserving these voices is crucial for the Grenfell Inquiry and in resisting state-led gentrification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of Airbnb on the everyday lived experiences of residents in London. We focus on three spatial scales – the city, neighbourhood, and an individual building. Short-term rental platforms such as Airbnb have transformed socio-cultural urban landscapes by turning homes into informal hotels. We argue that many of the consequences of Airbnb echo and support those of gentrification; this includes indirect displacement, buy-to-let investment, and transient communities. Using mixed-methods, including geodata, online surveys, focus groups, resident diaries, and auto/ethnography, we explore the impact of Airbnb across London, in Kensington, and inside a specific building on Kensington High Street. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper draws on ethnographic research on the experience of Slovak au pairs living and working in the London area. It attempts to connect three areas: theories related to visibility and social recognition, debates on cities as public places enabling political action, and paid domestic work. Focusing on a specific group of migrant domestic workers, I analyze how various aspects of being visible or invisible relate to the empowerment, disempowerment, and resistance of paid domestic workers. I demonstrate that host families invisibilize au pairs and their work in order to both diminish their role in children's lives and secure the myth of the exclusivity of the nuclear family. Au pairs counter this process of invisibilization by making themselves visible in their rooms and in the city. I interpret au pairs' usage of visibility and invisibility as enabling au pairs subtle gestures of resistance without openly challenging the inequalities of the au pair scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article considers the different dimensions of an individual's attempt to survive gentrification. The focus is on Beverley Robinson, a displacee from the Aylesbury Estate in London, who has experienced the slow violence of gentrification and displacement over an extended period of time. We argue that her 'survivability' has been, and indeed continues to be, key in her resistance to gentrification. Few academic studies of gentrification have focused in depth on an individual's everyday fight for survival in the face of gentrification; this article zooms in on the experience of one displacee. The individual displaced by gentrification, Beverley Robinson, interrogates her own experience, and in so doing she shares her autobiography with us; and this is interlocked, dovetailed, with an ethnographic biography undertaken by Loretta Lees, a scholar-activist who has worked with and fought with her. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]