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 focused on understanding how municipalities reproduce racial segregation in an era governed by fair housing law. My book project, Grounds for Eviction: Race, Mobility, and Policing in the Antelope Valley uses qualitative and quantitative methods to illustrate how a Los Angeles suburb uses the criminalization and policing of the Section 8 Housing Choice Voucher program as a means to evict Black residents. My work has received awards from the American Sociological Association and Society for the Study of Social Problems. More broadly, I am interested in understanding 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 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.
Publications
Peer-reviewed papers:
- Kurwa, Rahim. "Building the Digitally Gated Community: The Case of Nextdoor." Surveillance & Society 17, no. 1/2 (2019): 111-117.
- Kurwa, Rahim. "Deconcentration without integration: Examining the social outcomes of housing choice voucher movement in Los Angeles County." City & Community 14, no. 4 (2015): 364-391.
Papers under review:
- “The New ‘Man in the House’ Rules: How the Regulation of Housing Vouchers turns Personal Bonds into Eviction Liabilities”
- “Carceral Migration as Theory and Method: The Sociologies of Race, Space, and Legal Punishment” (with Susila Gurusami)
- “Policing to Segregate: Sketching the Contours of an Eviction Regime in Suburban Los Angeles”
Public writing:
- 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
Quoted in:
- 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.