Squatters

The paper presents the constitution of the “political” in two cases of political squatting in Hungary after 1989: the Centrum squatter group’s occupations in 2004-2006, and the homeless advocacy group The City is for All’s occupations in 2013-2014. In the case of the Centrum group, the political significance of squatting was defined by a position allocated to squatters within a larger global justice movement coalition. As soon as that allocated position changed, the political perception of the Centrum group vanished. In the case of The City is for All, the constitution of the politics of the occupations was kept under control by a conscious long-term strategy, which defined squatting as a tactical element. Drawing attention to the shifting political ontology, the paper argues for a context-sensitive definition of political squatting.

An ethnographic study into the poverty of white people in post-apartheid South Africa. Two informal settlements are the focus of this research - Westfort, a mixed squatter settlment in an old Leprasorium and Sonskyn Hoekie, a care centre located on a private farm where only white people are currently living. This thesis provides a platform for 'poor whites' to tell their own stories and it also discusses their employment opportunities, cosmopolitan relationships and notions of belonging in South Africa, 20 years since the start of the new democracy. The development of informal settlments growing on privately owned plots of land is also examined in conjunction with the role of the state and non-governmental organisations in supporting 'poor whites' in these environments.

The history of squatting in Paris is animated by a conflict between the autonomous and the institutionalized wings of the squatting movement, mainly between artists, autonomous and Housing Movement activists. This conflict opposes diverse groups of squatters who get unequal resources, who differ on their conception (practical and intellectual) of squatting, on their internal organization, on their goals and attitudes towards public authorities. I argue that, despite fluctuations of cycles of mobilization overtime, the division has maintained the squatting movement alive while we could have expected its death because of a strong co-optation process at the municipal level since 2000. First, I trace the diverse trajectories of the squatting movement in Paris since the 19th century and give some explanation to the fluctuations of the cycles of mobilization. Second, I show that a conflict between groups of squatters on three main dimensions (goals, attitudes and resources) helps explaining the variation of waves of mobilization are due to the superposition of competitive uses of squatting that set contradictory relationships with authorities that alternatively repress and tolerate squatters. Third, I argue that the open conflict between the autonomous and institutionalized wings contributes to maintain both the crucial critical dimension and the vital resources in the movement. This duality paradoxically allows squatters to produce substantive impacts on housing and cultural public policies. More broadly, I argue that the more a social movement is heterogeneous, the more it is powerful in challenging authorities and keeping urban societies in movement.

The PDP (GIZ) has released the publication “Cairo’s Informal Areas Between Urban Challenges and Hidden Potentials. Facts. Voices. Visions.” Published in July 2009, the book provides a comprehensive look at development in the informal areas of Greater Cairo, Egypt. It combines academic and journalistic articles, interviews and speeches as well as photographs by photojournalist Claudia Wiens depicting the daily lives of residents.
Cairo’s Informal Areas aims to provide a better understanding of the residents of the informal settlements and stimulate further dialogue on urban development in those areas. It does this by presenting the perspectives of the various stakeholders involved in the process: residents of the informal settlements, governors, ministers, academics, consultants, and development
Cairo’s Informal Areas also encourages decision-makers, investors, planners and academics to see the advantage of coordinated implementation that takes the needs of residents into consideration instead of top-down, separate planning efforts.

Giving the poor legal title to the lands they occupy extra-legally (informally) has been widely promoted by the World Bank and by best-selling author Hernando de Soto as a means of addressing both poverty and the scarcity of affordable housing in the urban centers of the global South. Using Bogota, Colombia, as a case study, this article interrogates de Soto's claims about the causes of informality and the benefits of formal title. The article concludes that de Soto's analysis is problematic in three distinct respects. First, de Soto exaggerates the benefits of formal title and fails to consider its risks. Second, de Soto constructs informality as a uniquely Third World phenomenon, and neglects to address the growth of poverty, inequality, and informality in both the global North and the global South as a consequence of deregulation, privatization, and other neoliberal economic reforms that de Soto advocates. Third, de Soto's attribution of informality to the failure of law in the global South reinforces the narrative of Latin American inferiority, thereby justifying the imposition of disadvantageous market-oriented legal reforms on Latin American nations and discrediting Latin America legal innovations that might better alleviate poverty and address the shortage of affordable housing. Contrary to de Soto's policy prescriptions, the advantages and disadvantages of formality and informality will vary from location to location, and must be evaluated on a case by case basis. De Soto's ideas are dangerous to the extent that they persuade policy-makers that the free market will solve the problem of poverty and housing scarcity if the urban poor are simply given legal title to the lands they currently occupy informally.

Özet
19. yüzyılın ikinci yarısında İstanbul’un çeşitli bölgelerinde kaybedilen Balkan toprakları ve Anadolu’dan gelen aileler tarafından yoksul yerleşimleri inşa edilmeye başlanır. Teşvikiye, Nişantaşı, Şişli, Fulya, Ihlamur, Dikilitaş, Balmumcu gibi farklı semtlerden parçaların içinde yer aldığı Balmumcu Çiftliği arazisi bu yerleşimlerin en önemli örneklerinden birini oluşturmaktadır. 1888 yılında Osmanlı devlet görevlileri tarafından yürütülen bir araştırma sonucunda bölgede yaşayan ailelerle ilgili çeşitli bilgileri içeren bir defter hazırlanmıştır. Bu makalede yer alan bilgilere defterin okunması sonucu ulaşılmış, veriler Osmanlı İmparatorluğu’nda kapitalist ilişkilerin gelişiminin mekânsal yansımaları bağlamında analiz edilmiştir.

Anahtar Kelimeler: Yoksulluk, Balmumcu Çiftliği, Kent Sosyolojisi, Sosyal Tarih

Abstract
In the second half of 19th century, poor neighborhoods were built on various parts of İstanbul by the families who came from the lost Balkan lands of the Ottoman Empire and Anatolia. The Balmumcu Farm’s terrain which includes many parts of contemporary districts like Teşvikiye, Nişantaşı, Şişli, Fulya, Ihlamur, Dikilitaş, and Balmumcu, consists one of the most important samples of these neighborhoods. After a research done by the Ottoman officials in 1888, a registration book including some information about the families living in the farm was prepared. The data published in this article are from the registration book and they are analyzed in the context of spatial reflections of the development of capitalistic relations in the Ottoman Empire.

Keywords: Poverty, Balmumcu Farm, Urban Sociology, Social History

This is a co-edited book with Pierpaolo Mudu. We worked on behalf of 'Squatting Europe Kollective (Sqek)'. The book is published with Routledge: Space, Place, Politics Series [ISBN # 9781315673301]

Abstract:
The book, Migrations, Squatting and Radical Autonomy offers a unique contribution, exploring how the intersections among migrants and radical squatter’s movements have evolved over past decades. The main argument of the book is to explicitly represent migrants outside the usual victimization, to challenge the assimilationist descriptions and to describe the complexity and importance of squatting practices. The complexity and importance of squatting practices are analyzed from a bottom-up perspective, to demonstrate how the spaces of squatting can be transformed by migrants. With contributions from scholars, scholar-activists, and activists, this book provides unique insights into how squatting has offered an alternative to dominant anti-immigrant policies, and the implications of squatting on the social acceptance of migrants. The book illustrates the different mechanisms of protest followed in solidarity by migrant squatters and Social Center activists, when discrimination comes from above or below, and explores how can different spatialities be conceived and realized by radical practices.
Contributions adopt a variety of perspectives, from critical human geography, social movement studies, political sociology, urban anthropology, autonomous Marxism, feminism, open localism, anarchism and post-structuralism, to analyze and contextualize migrants and squatters’ exclusion and social justice issues. This book is a timely and original contribution through its exploration of migrations, squatting and radical autonomy.

PRAXIS - The Official Peer-Reviewed Journal of the Alumni for International Human Rights Law.  This is the official version of the inaugural issue of PRAXIS.  This official version supersedes and/or modifies accordingly any and all versions, descriptor, announcement, communication and/or related matter appearing here and/or elsewhere.

From the late 1970s and early 1980s, the city center of Oslo was for several years in a row affected by riots on the night to May 1st (The International Workers' Day). As a result of a larger number of fines and arrests after the uprising in 1981, the group "Ungdomsgruppa mot bøteterror" (Youths Against Fines Terror) , later "Ung Mobilisering" (Young Mobilization), (UngMob), emerged. In the fall of the same year, on October 9, they took the lead when about 200 youths squatted the abandoned apartment building in Skippergata 6/6b in Oslo. On the same evening, the house was declared as Oslos first Autonomous Youth House. The thesis examines the ideological and social origins and developments of UngMob and what would become known as "Blitz" at the beginning of the 1980s in Oslo. The group made a strong impression on Oslo's public space during the decade, and in many ways, represented a new type of urban youth culture. This thesis will contribute to place the group as an important timed tendency among youth in the the counter and subcultural landscape of the capital in the 1980s, a decade marked by cultural, political and social changes, particularly apparent in the cities. This places Blitz as an important event in the city's modern history, with influences far beyond its own existence, in the fight for the right to the city. The history of Blitz is composed of many facets, and can be told in many different ways, which this thesis cannot grasp and describe in detail. Still, the thesis can tell a great deal about a differentiated group, and about conflicts both inside and outside the house, where I seek a greater understanding of the origins and the start-up phase of the movement.

Edited version of published paper presented at 'Is Black and Red Dead?' Conference, Centre for the Study of Social and Global and Justice (CSSGJ) University of Nottingham, 7-8 September, 2009

https://socialhistoryportal.org/news/articles/110943

A partir d'une enquête empirique sur l'émergence du mouvement squat à Genève, l'article propose une réflexion plus générale pour une pragmatique de l'ordre urbain. Dans un premier temps, il explore les apports de la sociologie pragmatique à la sociologie urbaine, en particulier dans l'articulation d'un double pluralisme (des principes organisant l'agencement des personnes et des choses et des différentes formes d'engagement qui donnent la matière à un ordre pluriel). Dans un deuxième, il propose une analyse systématique de la  constitution du mouvement squat, à la fois dans ses combats publics et dans son inscription en tension dans l'ordre quotidien de la ville.

El derecho a la ciudad se ha convertido en un marco de significado tan amplio que ha perdido parte de su sentido y de su fuerza transformadora. Con tal de aproximarnos a una experiencia que pueda conectar con el concepto primigenio de Lefebvre y reivindicar su vigencia, tomaremos como referencia los Centros Sociales Okupados (CSO). Estos son la prueba de la importancia de espacializar el derecho a la ciudad, con infraestructuras que mantengan las tradiciones combativas y continúen las diversas luchas. En concreto, y para comprender mejor el alcance de este planteamiento teórico, el artículo estudia dos Centros Sociales Okupados en la ciudad de Barcelona, La Vaina y Can Masdeu. El texto cierra con unas conclusiones en el que se sintetizan los principales resultados: que la disputa por lo urbano pasa por apelar a las dimensiones concretas de los derechos y que los Centros Sociales Okupados, como espacios de y para el encuentro, juegan ese rol.

Des politiques de résorption des bidonvilles sont mises en œuvre depuis le début des années 1960 à Madrid. Depuis 1999 notamment, des milliers de familles ont été relogées dans du logement public dans le parc diffus. Pourtant, plus de 10 000 personnes résidaient encore en bidonvilles en 2015. Cette persistance, loin d’être le résultat d’une faillite de politique publique, provient de la combinaison de plusieurs stratégies d’acteurs à plusieurs niveaux de gouvernements mettant en place diverses procédures. Parmi ces procédures, l’expulsion constitue le pilier autour duquel s’organise le relogement des familles et la gestion de l’ordre public. Mais l’expulsion peut prendre plusieurs visages, bien au-delà des interventions policières, on observe des évictions plus discrètes dans la mise en œuvre d’instruments sélectifs de relogement. De plus, l’expulsion se fait aussi par inaction publique : des pans entiers de territoires sont mis à distance de l’agenda gouvernemental pour constituer des réserves d’informalité capables de réguler les effets des évacuations menées par ailleurs. Par une analyse des relations entre les acteurs, de leurs stratégies et des instruments mobilisés, l’article identifie les processus produisant de l’expulsion et leurs effets sur les populations et les territoires. Les politiques de résorption produisent de l’expulsion tout autant que les procédures d’expulsion, aussi diverses soient-elles, semblent constituer la base de toute politique de relogement. Cette analyse des trois faces du gouvernement des bidonvilles permet d’expliquer leur persistance.

Slum clearance and relocation policies have been implemented since the early 1960s in Madrid. Since 1999 in particular, thousands of families have been relocated in public housing. Yet, more than 10,000 people were still living in slums in 2015. This persistence, far from being the result of a public policy failure, stems from the combination of several government stakeholders who set strategies at different scales and put in place various procedures. Among these procedures, expulsion is the pillar around which rehousing of families and the management of public order are organized. But expulsion can take many faces. Well beyond police interventions or waves of expulsion for economic purposes, there are more discreet evictions in the implementation of selective relocation instruments. Moreover, the expulsion is also done by public inaction: whole sections of territories are put away from the governmental agenda to form reserves of informality able to regulate the effects of evacuations carried out elsewhere. Through an analysis of the relationships between the actors, their strategies and the mobilized instruments, the article identifies the processes producing expulsion and their effects on populations and territories. Relacocatio policies (and more broaldy welfare policies) produce expulsion as much as expulsion procedures, however diverse, seem to be the basis of any relocation policy. This analysis of the three sides of slum government explains their persistence.

This chapter examines the housing struggles of squatters who settled in a public park and heritage site in Salvador da Bahia, Brazil, in order to be evicted by the state and resettled to state-built social housing. By analyzing the moral stakes in their quest for property and social mobility in relation to both the values attached to homeownership in Brazil and social housing policies that strongly shaped their strategy of gaining
‘possession through dispossession’, the chapter provides a nuanced understanding of squatters’ contested property claims in contemporary Brazil and sheds new light on otherwise well-known issues of dispossession.

To date, there has been no comprehensive analysis of the disperse research on the squatters’ movement in Europe. In Squatters in the Capitalist City, Miguel A. Martínez López presents a critical review of the current research on squatting and of the historical development of the movements in European cities according to their major social, political and spatial dimensions.　

Comparing cities, contexts, and the achievements of the squatters’ movements, this book presents the view that squatting is not simply a set of isolated, illegal and marginal practices, but is a long-lasting urban and transnational movement with significant and broad implications. While intersecting with different housing struggles, squatters face various aspects of urban politics and enhance the content of the movements claiming for a ‘right to the city.’ Squatters in the Capitalist City seeks to understand both the socio-spatial and political conditions favourable to the emergence and development of squatting, and the nature of the interactions between squatters, authorities and property owners by discussing the trajectory, features and limitations of squatting as a potential radicalisation of urban democracy.

This paper proposes an analysis of internal migrants as a social category whose qualities and historic tendencies could make it a new middle class. These qualities include their entrepreneurial potential and increasing role as producers and consumers of goods and services, a group that is interested in stability and steady economic growth.
In Bishkek, where more than one third of the population of Kyrgyzstan resides, these internal migrants have changed the urban environment by joining the urban workforce that provides goods and services, as well as becoming consumers and voters. They continue being the most visible and effective actors in changing economic, social and, eventually, political practices in the Kyrgyz capital. This policy paper draws mainly on the cooperation between the development consultancy DialectICON, public foundation Erayim, and the Bishkek mayor’s office. This was possible during research and training projects called "Opportunities for Legalising Small Businesses of Self-Help Housing Districts of Bishkek" (April-June 2008).

Squatters’ movement evolved unevenly across European cities over the last four decades, although there are recent attempts to understand their patterns and commonalities as well as their relations with other social movements. A very much discussed topic within these studies is the autonomous political identity of many of the squatters’ movements, but less attention has been paid to frame their demands, practices and achievements according to Lefebvre’s notion of ‘the right to the city’. I argue that there are both strengths and weaknesses in that association. On the one hand, squatters’ claims countered the exclusion of many social groups from the urban core and provided them with non-commercial and self-managed services, dwellings, social encounters, and opportunities for political mobilisation. This centrally engages with Lefebvre’s main concerns on struggles to inhabit, appropriate, and recreate the city. However, the occupation of buildings was ignored in Lefebvre’s agenda. Additionally, squatters have seldom adhered to urban coalitions united under the umbrella of ‘the right to the city’. Instead, most squatters aimed at challenging either the capitalist state broadly or specific speculative dynamics.

This paper discusses the changing urban policy framework in Turkey through a detailed analysis of a unique coupling of neoliberalism and Islamism. In this, rather than political projects with clear ultimate ends, both neoliberalism and Islamism are approached as distinct political rationalities aiming to reconfigure all aspects of social life. Turkey’s Justice and Development Party has successfully established networks of economic and political interdependence (or has tapped into existing networks) by appeasing both the emergent Islamic capitalist class through lucrative contracts and business-friendly reforms, and the urban poor through gracious gestures ingrained in traditional Islamic community values and morality. The working of this co-articulation is examined in the case of an urban renewal project in a peripheral
neighbourhood in Istanbul.

La okupación, acto marginalizado y enmarcado durante muchos años a y hacia una comunidad concreta y señalada, en los últimos años ha visto aumentado sus efectivos; lo cual significa que capas más amplias de la po-blación la apropian y la entienden como válido para actuar, reivindicar y crear. La PAH o los movimientos derivados del alterglobalismo o del 15M son ejemplos de ello y muestran la actualidad y versatilidad del movi-miento de okupación. El artículo transita los diferentes periodos y momentos del movimiento de okupación en Barcelona, una de las ciudades donde mayor es su presencia y su fortaleza.


Squatting, an act marginalized and framed for many years to and towards a specific and designated community , in recent years has increased its strength; which means that broader layers of the population appropriate it and understand it as valid to act, claim and create. PAH or movements derived from alterglobalism or 15M movement are examples of this and show the topicality and versatility of the squatting movement. The article goes through the different periods and moments of the squatting movement in Barcelona, one of the cities where its presence and strength are greatest.

Squatters and squatting are very different in the Global North and Global South: for that reason, some scholars argue these situations are not comparable. Here, we try to go beyond this view and argue that toleration can be considered as a starting point for comparing informal housing management in different parts of the worlds. Indeed, governmental toleration, allowing something to continue despite illegality, is widely recognized as central to most forms of informal housing. Despite this importance, toleration has rarely received sustained critical attention.  Where it has, it is almost always in the context of single city case studies and is often presented as government failure.  This chapter attempt to go beyond the specifics to develop our broader understanding of the diversity of ways in which illegal housing is tolerated by adopting a political economy perspective, i.e. assuming that public actors who intervene (or not) in the governance of informal housing seek to defend political or economic interests.  It begins this endeavour by developing a typology of the different kinds of toleration which can be found in different parts of the world, as a step towards a broader comparative political economy of toleration of informal housing.  We do so by building on case studies of two cities, Paris and Hong Kong, as an initial effort to identify a variety of different patterns represented in these rather different contexts.

Si les expulsions sont loin de constituer un phénomène récent, tout porte à croire qu’elles prennent aujourd’hui une ampleur inédite, dans les pays du Sud comme du Nord, notamment suite à la succession de diverses crises. Des mobilisations citoyennes se multiplient pour s’opposer à la violence de processus d’expulsion et contribuent à les rendre visibles. Néanmoins, l’expulsion est un processus protéiforme et multiple qui renvoie à des réalités très diverses, dans le domaine du logement, des migrations, de l’économie, du marché du travail ou d’autres sphères desquelles des groupes sociaux sont repoussés « en dehors ». Cet article constitue un texte de cadrage théorique d’une série de contributions qui mettent en évidence cette diversité de processus dans plusieurs pays et divers domaines, mais à partir desquels on peut identifier trois grands invariants. (1) L’expulsion consiste toujours à mettre des individus au ban, d’un espace national, d’un logement, ou d’un habitat approprié. Cette action peut relever de l’application d’une décision, ou résulter de situations de mise en attente ; (2) il s’agit toujours d’un déplacement forcé, contraint ; (3) enfin, le déplacement est toujours conjointement spatial (vers un autre pays, dans le quartier ou le bidonville voisin, dans un autre immeuble, dans la rue...) et social.

Although expulsions are far from being a recent phenomenon, there are many reasons to believe that they are taking on an unprecedented scale today, in the countries of the South as in the North, particularly following the succession of various crises. Citizen mobilizations are multiplying to oppose the violence of expulsion process and contribute to make them visible. Nevertheless, expulsion is a multifaceted process that refers to very different realities in the areas of housing, migration, the economy, the labor market or other spheres from which social groups are pushed back "outside ". This article is a theoretical framework for a series of contributions that highlight this diversity of processes in many countries and fields, but from which three invariants can be identified. (1) Eviction is always about putting people out of the way, into a national space, into housing, or into a suitable habitat. This action may be the result of the application of a decision, or result from inaction; (2) it is always a forced displacement; (3) finally, the displacement is always jointly spatial (towards another country, in the neighborhood or the neighboring slum, in another building, in the street ...) and social.

Este artículo se propone analizar las implicancias y los alcances de un caso de apropiación y resignificación espacial mediante prácticas circenses en la ciudad de Rosario (Argentina). A partir del seguimiento del desarrollo y las resonancias de esa experiencia artístico-habitacional, intentaremos trazar una cartografía rastreable a través de cuatro escalas de observación. En primer lugar, situaremos las dinámicas socioculturales que convergieron en la ocupación de la ribera central de Rosario por parte de artistas circenses en la década de 1990. En segundo lugar, estudiaremos las ramificaciones locales de esa experiencia, bifurcadas entre la proliferación de espacios autogestivos y la integración gubernamental. En tercer lugar, escrutaremos las potenciales articulaciones de ese proceso con otras ciudades argentinas,
tomando un caso de la ciudad de Buenos Aires. En cuarto lugar, seguiremos algunos de los itinerarios transnacionales de las artes circenses surgidas en la ribera rosarina. Los principales insumos utilizados para la pesquisa son entrevistas cualitativas en profundidad realizadas a los participantes de las experiencias, cotejadas con documentos escritos.

This booklet is the result of a one-week intensive workshop held in April 2015 in the Cambridge Occupation in Central São Paulo. It was organized in close collaboration with MSTC, the Movimento Sem Teto do Centro, and aimed to contribute to a counter-mapping of the insurgent practices of squatter movements in downtown São Paulo. Each participant developed an A2 poster that sought to shed light on specific aspects of the otherwise largely hidden urban realm of occupations. The posters served as the basis for a public debate at the closing of the workshop, bringing together representatives of São Paulo’s social housing company, renown Brazilian scholars, students in related fields of urban studies, human rights organizations, movement coordinators and occupation inhabitants. The process was filmed and developed into a brief documentary by youth-members of socio-cultural organization Novolhar.

Revised broad introduction to 1968-1982 Southside "Los Sures" Williamsburg. Examines the real and alleged violence around a seemingly quotidian setting in Williamsburg Brooklyn, and how it, along with the conflict between Johnson's War on Poverty and ascendant 'austerity politics' in New York, made North Brooklyn's gentrification possible.

This article assesses squatted social centres in London as a means to understand the cycles, contexts and institutionalisation processes of the local squatters movement. This diffuse social movement had its heyday in the late 1970s and early 1980s when there were 30,000 squatters and still exists today despite squatting in residential buildings being criminalised in 2012. Analysis is based on a database of 245 social centres, which are examined in terms of duration, time period, type of building and location. Important centres are briefly profiled and important factors affecting the squatters movement are examined, in particular institutionalisation, gentrification and criminalisation.

Squatters' organizations are a notable driving force of civil society movements in Nepal. Their alliance, working on urban squatter issues, has been trying to change their strategy from one of confrontation with government authorities to one of collaboration with multiple stakeholders, including non-squatter neighbours. This paper reviews a decade of squatters' movement in Nepal. It highlights the changes in relationship between squatters and non-squatters and recent moves for public—private—community partnership. The paper argues the importance of getting more attention from non-squatter citizens for policy changes to ensure housing rights.