Classifying the ‘Deserving’ Tenant: The Politics of Conditionality in Flemish Social Housing

This article contributes to the literature on welfare deservingness in social housing by foregrounding classification as a central mechanism of governance structuring access to social housing in Flanders. Through a discourse analysis of parliamentary debates, policy documents, and public communications, we examine classificatory practices embedded in Flanders’ 2023 social housing reform. We show how access is reorganised through measures centred on local ties, language proficiency, and labour market activation, alongside the heightened prominence of anti-fraud enforcement. Together, these measures mobilise particular communitarian ideals of citizenship and belonging, constructing deservingness as an organising logic that reframes social housing as a conditional reward for cultural integration, economic conformity, and local rootedness. We develop the concept of communitarian neoliberalism to capture how neoliberal logics of self-sufficiency are combined with the active reassertion of state authority over the moral boundaries of welfare citizenship, revealing housing policy reform as a site of boundary-drawing and identity-building.