Reflection & Data:
Throughout the last few weeks, I have reviewed numerous academic articles to develop a better understanding of the history of informal housing in the United States, as well as explore different typologies of squatting. Although research on this phenomenon in ‘developed’ countries proves quite limited, I have found several scholars who, I believe, provide sufficient material for me to develop a unique theoretical and conceptual framework. Below, I synthesize my principle findings and, instead of annotating sources separately, place them in direct dialogue.
According to urban planning scholars Noah Durst and Jake Wegmann (2017), research on informal housing, such as squatting, focuses overwhelmingly on ‘less developed’ countries, where researchers predict that over 40% of the total urban population lives in “extralegal conditions” (282). Despite such massive prevalence, studies rarely seek to examine informal housing in the “global North,” particularly in the US, where domestic discussions of this issue remain woefully absent. While the majority of the estimated 600 million to 1 billion people residing informally around the world undeniably concentrate in the “global South,” such practices have long existed in other regions, although admittedly on a smaller scale (Vasudevan 2015). In the US particularly, informal housing has surged since the 1970s, differing in form depending upon location, yet often interwoven with legal housing and landownership, as well as hidden from public view (Durst & Wegmann 2017).
This investigation specifically assesses squatting, which sociologist Hans Pruijt (2012) defines as “living in – or otherwise using – a dwelling without the consent of the owner” (19). The purposes of this practice as identified by scholars vary considerably, ranging from a tactic to redistribute economic resources and address housing insecurity to a manifestation of Do-It-Yourself (DIY) projects and middle-class countercultural expression. Some researchers even classify such occupation as a left-libertarian movement or, in contrast, a Leninist form of political activism. However, Pruijt (2012) deems none of these assessments entirely accurate, given that squatting projects differ markedly between countries and within cities. Accordingly, Pruijt suggests a more comparative analysis that assumes a foundational diversity of this occupation and thus contests its analytical bifurcation as a measure to satisfy either housing needs or countercultural expression.
Pruijt (2012) proposes multiple forms of squatting, the two principal of which appear particularly relevant for my investigation. Constituting the most prevalent type, “deprivation-based squatting” involves “poor, working-class people” responding to severe housing insecurity (23). These squatters possess virtually no lodging options other than a homeless shelter and, accordingly, elect to occupy abandoned buildings, foreclosed homes, vacant lots, or other spaces. Non-profit organizations often support these movements, helping squatters mobilize legal demands to formalize housing, as well as publicize issues pertaining to gentrification and rent control. However, Pruijt (2012) also suggests that these same activist groups often co-opt squatter movements, coordinating with local authorities to rent out temporary public sector accommodation in exchange for the dissolution of organized, extralegal occupation – thus arguably provoking more insecurity (24-5).
Squatting can also constitute an “alternative housing strategy,” which, while less restrictive than deprivation-based occupation, frequently complements and emerges from this prior type. Within this category, middle- and lower-class people, although not at immediate risk of homelessness, seek an alternative to increasingly unaffordable (sub)renting. Organizing autonomously, often without institutional support, these squatters frequently form peer-based networks – “squatter scenes” – to coordinate mutual assistance, building maintenance, utility expenses, energy supplies, and emergency plans (i.e. developing ‘telephone trees’ in case of eviction threats). Contributing to general movement building, participants might also organize campaigns to occupy other properties, resist anti-squatting legislation, and support other local protest movements (Pruijt 2012:25-8).
Pruijt (2012) considers these two categories of squatting not mutually exclusive, but rather as inextricably intersectional, coalescing in what human geographer Alexander Vasudevan (2015) terms as “makeshift urbanism.” Viewing occupation through this lens destabilizes the “totalizing vision” of informal housing as an example of “urban implosion” and instead reimagines possibilities of resistance, liberation, and empowerment (Pieterse 2008:2 in Vasudevan 2015:338-9). Makeshift urbanism accordingly reconceptualizes squatting as a site whereby radical insurgency complements and even facilitates attempts to secure housing. Given the “complex material geographies through which cities are differentially composed,” this framework recognizes squatting as a diverse project of everchanging “incremental assemblage” (348). For example, in the process of completing maintenance repairs, squatters often challenge normative assumptions about ‘home’ by altering basic spatialities. Removing walls to increase shared areas, for instance, occupiers engage in “architectural experiments” that reimagine “new micropolitics of connection and solidarity” (Vasudevan 2015:349).
Makeshift urbanism’s assumption that tactics of occupation depend upon available material geographies even allows us to deconstruct the binary between squatting as either an autonomous or institutionalized movement. Pruijt and Conny Roggeband (2014) propose that the possibility for and success of mobilization occurs “in response to manifest opportunities” (147). While autonomous initiatives can trigger “institutional disruption,” avoid the “constraints of representative politics,” and mobilize without massive resources, institutionalization often facilitates public support, ensures sustainability, and limits repression. Combining the assets of both these models without jeopardizing squatting projects, Pruijt and Roggeband (2014) propose a “dual movement structure,” which consists of self-contained social movements that, while addressing similar issues, are differentially institutionalized (145-6). While the efficacy of such collaborative networks remains unclear, the flexibility of this approach will prove useful in comparing occupation amongst US cities.
In summary, the aforementioned studies provide an apt theoretical framework for analyzing squatting movements not solely as strategies to secure more stable housing but also as subaltern sites of radical insurgency. Supplementing this research, I hereafter plan to read James C. Scott’s Domination and the Arts of Resistance (1992), drawing upon his understanding of infra-politics to better articulate the relationship between occupiers and state institutions. In addition, I hope to review literature concerning how squatting might not only actively contest but also inadvertently reproduce neoliberal subjectivities of a “right to the city” (i.e. Uitemark et al. 2012) and propertied citizenship (Sparks 2017). I furthermore intend to examine homesteading in New York City, an example around which Pruijt and Roggeban (2014), as well as Vasudevan (2015), partially structure their analysis.
Bibliography
Durst, Noah J. & Jake Wegmann. 2017. “Informal Housing in the United States.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 41(2):282-97. Retrieved February 28, 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2427.12444).
Pruijt, Hans. 2012. “The Logic of Urban Squatting.” International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 37(1):19-45. Retrieved February 28, 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2012.01116.x).
Pruijt, Hans & Conny Roggeband. 2014. “Autonomous and/or institutionalized social movements? Conceptual clarification and illustrative cases.” International Journal of Comparative Sociology 55(2):144-65. Retrieved February 28, 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0020715214537847).
Vasudevan, Alexander. 2015. “The makeshift city: Towards a global geography of squatting.” Progress in Human Geography 39(3):338-59. Retrieved February 28, 2019 (https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132514531471).
Lopez’s Comments:
Brandon, you are making excellent progress on your project. It looks like you’re well off in terms of writing your paper. I think that the theoretical ideas you been looking at would work really well with the project that you proposed. Most of all, I like that you bring in pieces that complicate the nuances found in squatting movements. The thing I like to make note of. From my own experience in doing work in Mexico, squatting is not always the action of sitting on someone else’s land. At times the poor get caught up in bureaucratic processes that keep them from holding title of the land even though they may own it in principle. While this is the case in many places in the global South, it may also be something you might want to look into it more developed places like New York, Detroit, and Seattle.