Rahim Kurwa
I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of Criminology, Law, and Justice and Department of Sociology (by courtesy) at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC). My work is broadly focused on the policing of housing, and I've published scholarship on this topic in Du Bois Review, Housing Policy Debate, City and Community, and Feminist Formations. My book project traces the past century of Black history in Los Angeles' northernmost outpost, known as the Antelope Valley, showing how pre-1968 methods of racial segregation in this region have been replaced today by policing. My other interests include the family implications of the policing of housing assistance, the interrelatedness of policing and segregation, and the history of policing in public housing and its successor programs. I currently serve as the chair of the Poverty, Class and Inequality Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. I received my PhD in Sociology from the University of California at Los Angeles in 2018.
Contact me at rak [at] uic.edu.
Access my curriculum vitae here.
Students, get information about requesting a letter of recommendation here.
Academic Writing
Kurwa, Rahim. In Progress. "Policing, Property, and the Production of Racial Segregation." Available on SocArXiv: https://osf.io/preprints/socarxiv/wur89.
Kurwa, Rahim. 2023. "Book Review: An Equal Place Lawyers in the Struggle for Los Angeles." Law and Society Review. 57(3): 416-418.
Kurwa, Rahim, and Susila Gurusami. 2022. "Carceral Migrations: Reframing Race, Space, and Punishment." Social Service Review 96, no. 2: 353-388.
Gurusami, Susila and Rahim Kurwa. 2021. "From Broken Windows to Broken Homes: Homebreaking as Racialized and Gendered Poverty Governance." Feminist Formations 33, no. 1: 1-32.
Kurwa, Rahim. 2021. "Book Review: The Upper Limit: How Low-Wage Work Defines Punishment and Welfare." Contemporary Sociology: A Journal of Reviews 50, no. 1: 33-35
Kurwa, Rahim. 2020. "Opposing and Policing Racial Integration: Evidence from the Housing Choice Voucher Program." Du Bois Review.
Kurwa, Rahim. 2020. “The New ‘Man in the House’ Rules: How the Regulation of Housing Vouchers turns Personal Bonds into Eviction Liabilities” Housing Policy Debate.
Kurwa, Rahim. 2019. "Building the Digitally Gated Community: The Case of Nextdoor." Surveillance & Society 17, no. 1/2: 111-117.
Kurwa, Rahim. 2015. "Deconcentration without integration: Examining the social outcomes of housing choice voucher movement in Los Angeles County." City & Community 14, no. 4 (2015): 364-391.
Public Writing
Policing Tenants in Rental Assistance Programs. Gender Policy Report. University of Minnesota.
We can’t let policing become a new form of citizenship. Chicago Tribune.
Segregatory Consequences of the Carceral State. Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Conference Open-Access Volume.
Policing’s Role in Racial Segregation: 50 Years After the Fair Housing Act. Los Angeles Social Science Forum
Nextdoor in Context. Blink
Digital Humanities Work
Sun Village Digital History Exhibit (in draft)
News Coverage
Study Examines “Man in the House” Rules in the Voucher Program. National Low Income Housing Coalition
Opinion: How white people used police to make L.A. one of the most segregated cities in America. Matthew Fleischer, Los Angeles Times
Think racial segregation is over? Here’s how the police still enforce it. Nikita Lalwani and Mitchell Johnston, Washington Post
California residents demand answers after deaths in the Antelope Valley. KCRW.
On Nextdoor, the Homeless Are the Enemy. Rick Paulas, OneZero.
Same city, different opportunities: Study maps life outcomes for children from Chicago neighborhoods. Cecilia Reyes and Joe Mahr, Chicago Tribune.
Research Cited in Policy Briefs
Social Housing For All: A Vision for Thriving Communities, Renter Power, and Racial Justice
Facing History, Uprooting Inequality: A Path to Housing Justice in California. PolicyLink.
Recorded Events
How Policing Became Property and How People are Fighting Back - UIC Institute for the Humanities:
Thinking about Subsidized Housing in a Welfare Rights Framework - University of Wisconsin Madison Institute for Research on Poverty.
Radical Reimagining: The Carceral State and Abolitionist Responses - Northwestern Journal of Law and Social Policy 2021 Symposium