The practice of commodification in a highly regulated rental market: Four forms of displacement pressure in Vienna

How landlords go about pressuring tenants to leave to achieve more intense commodification remains understudied, particularly in highly regulated housing contexts. We address this gap through an analysis of Vienna, Austria, where the regulatory framework provides comprehensive tenant protection. We draw on interviews with tenants who experienced displacement pressure, as well as on interviews with tenant union representatives. Conceptually, we build on and extend Marcuse’s concept of displacement pressure and distinguish four forms: economic, physical, contractual and social. Adopting a relational perspective, we situate the four forms vis-à-vis the Austrian Tenancy Act to disentangle how, even in a system with well-developed tenant protections, displacement pressure materialises in a variety of ways. Furthermore, we account for tenant reactions to displacement pressure, going beyond an understanding of displacement as uni-directional process from above. The article furthers current understandings of the practice of commodification and provides an extended heuristic for analysing tenant–landlord conflicts.