Citizenship Studies
Volume 23, Issue 6, 2019, Pages 521-539

Introduction: citizenship as inhabitance? Migrant housing squats versus institutional accommodation (Editorial)

Dadusc D.* , Grazioli M. , Martínez M.A.
  • a School of Applied Social Science, University of Brighton, Brighton, United Kingdom
  • b Social Sciences Department, Gran Sasso Science Institute, L’Aquila, Italy
  • c Institute for Housing and Urban Research, Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden

Abstract

This special issue focuses on migrants’ self-organised strategies in relation to housing in Europe, namely the collective squatting of vacant buildings and land. In particular, the contributions to this special issue differentiate between shelter provided in state-run or humanitarian camps and squatted homes. Migrants squats are an essential part of the ‘corridors of solidarity’ that are being created throughout Europe, where grassroots social movements engaged in anti-racist, anarchist and anti-authoritarian politics coalesce with migrants in devising non-institutional responses to the violence of border regimes. In these spaces contentious politics and everyday social reproduction uproot racist and xenophobic regimes. The struggles emerging in these spaces disrupt host-guest relations, which often perpetuate state-imposed hierarchies and humanitarian disciplining technologies. Moreover, the solidarities and collaborations between undocumented and documented activists challenge hitherto prevailing notions of citizenship and social movements, as well as current articulations of the common. These radical spaces enable possibilities for inhabitance beyond, against and within citizenship, which do not only reverse forms of exclusion and repression, but produce ungovernable resources, alliances and subjectivities that prefigure more livable spaces for all. Therefore, these struggles are interpreted here as forms of commoning, as they constitute autonomous socio-political infrastructures and networks of solidarity beyond and against the state and humanitarian provision. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.

Author Keywords

citizenship Home-making Squatting border struggles Inhabitance commoning

Index Keywords

[No Keywords available]

Link
https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85068091344&doi=10.1080%2f13621025.2019.1634311&partnerID=40&md5=1a4736893dc7dbd613a2c39962d31d6c

DOI: 10.1080/13621025.2019.1634311
ISSN: 13621025
Cited by: 2
Original Language: English