Safety, social integration and connectedness in social housing: a gendered and intersectional study in Quebec, Canada

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

This article examines how tenant experiences of insecurity, social integration, and connectedness shape life in social housing, and how these dynamics vary by gender. Drawing on sixty qualitative interviews conducted across Quebec, Canada, the study adopts an intersectional framework to explore how gender, and institutional arrangements interact to produce differentiated experiences. Findings show that women’s insecurity is both material and embodied, rooted in everyday exposure to violence, harassment, and institutional neglect. For many women, caregiving responsibilities and past trauma intensified fear and vigilance, transforming homes meant as refuges into spaces of constraint. Men, by contrast, often responded to insecurity through action and control, positioning themselves as protectors or regulators. Beyond individual experience, vulnerability was reproduced through allocation systems, bureaucratic procedures, and neighbourhood hierarchies that limited tenants’ capacity to refuse unsafe units. At the same time, social integration and connectedness operated ambivalently and in distinct ways: while solidarity networks provided emotional and practical support (connectedness), participation in community life and local governance (social integration) could also reproduce exclusion. Overall, the study shows that gendered experiences in social housing are institutionally shaped and calls for gender-responsive governance.