1 - Working at the VUB
For more than 50 years, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel has stood for freedom, equality and solidarity, and this is very much alive on our campuses among students and staff alike.
At the VUB, you will find a diverse collection of personalities: innovators pur sang, but above all people who are 100% their authentic selves. With some 4,000 employees, we are the largest Dutch-speaking employer, in the private sector, in Brussels; an international city with which we are only too happy to connect and where (around) our 4 campuses are located.
Add to this our principle of free research - in which self-reflection, a critical attitude and an open, creative mind around scientific and social issues are central - and you have a university that is fundamentally groundbreaking and pioneering in education and research. In short: the VUB all over again.
Moreover, the VUB is a member of EUTOPIA, an alliance of like-minded European universities, all ready to reinvent themselves.
2 - Position description
The Faculty of Social Sciences and Solvay Business School, Department Sociology, Research Group Brussels Institute for Social and Population Studies is looking for a PhD-student within the ERC-funded project EXPULSE - Urban Expulsion Regimes.
The ERC project EXPULSE investigates how urban expulsion regimes shape housing trajectories among low-income residents, urban citizenship, and socio-spatial inequalities in four European cities: Brussels, Amsterdam, Barcelona and Thessaloniki.
Against the backdrop of deepening housing crises and widening urban inequalities, EXPULSE examines how contemporary forms of expulsion – most notably housing evictions – are produced, governed, and spatially distributed. The project conceptualizes urban expulsion regimes as the dynamic interplay between state policies, housing market regulations, public discourses, and the everyday practices of street-level bureaucrats and private actors involved in eviction processes.
Using a comparative mixed-methods approach, the project combines:
Quantitative analysis of eviction court data;
Qualitative interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with institutional actors and residents at risk of eviction.
You will conduct in-depth research in Amsterdam and will actively engage with the project’s comparative framework.
More concretely your work packages, for the preparation of a doctorate, contains:
1. Studying urban expulsion regimes “from above”
Analysing state policies, legal frameworks, housing regulations, and public discourses shaping eviction governance.
2. Studying urban expulsion regimes “from below”
Examining how eviction governance is enacted in everyday practices by street-level bureaucrats and private actors (e.g. landlords, welfare offices, judicial courts, police, and bailiffs).
3. Exploring lived experiences of housing insecurity
Investigating housing trajectories, notions of home, coping strategies, and access to urban citizenship among residents at risk of eviction.
For this function, our Brussels Humanities, Sciences & Engineering Campus (Elsene) will serve as your home base.