The conference seeks to bring together researchers from across the Global North and South to build an international research network on squatting in its broadest sense. We will cover a wide range of occupation practices, including squats, informal settlements, self-managed social centers, ZADs, and other forms of lend or housing occupation. We will host two interactive panels in which squatters and activists discuss their practices and explore avenues for future collaboration with scholars.

Argument

Squatting can be defined as occupying a place without the approval of its legal owner. It encompasses practices that can be termed in various ways and that are found in both urban and rural contexts: occupation of buildings (whether or not intended for residential use), of land or agricultural plots, slums, makeshift camps, informal settlements, occupied or self-managed social centres, ZADs (zones à défendre, i.e. zones to defend) and squats occupied by artists or activists. Informal settlements have been maintained in many geographical contexts since at least the Middle Ages (Alsayyad, Roy, 2006). It was after the Second World War that the term ‘squat’ became widespread and the practice took the form of a social movement (Squatting Everywhere Kollective, 2018). Militant squatting unfolds in other social and geographical contexts, including the Global South (Cleber Rudy, 2013). Since then, in both the Global North and South, militant squats have coexisted with informal settlements and slums. These various forms of squatting have given rise to the development of distinct bodies of literatures that engage in too little dialogue, with gaps between works on the North or the South, on activist or non-activist squats, on the occupation of buildings or plots of land and public space (Aguilera, Smart, 2017; Smart, Aguilera, 2020; Scheba, Millington, 2023). The aim of this conference is to encourage dialogue between studies focusing on squatting in the North and the South, between illegal occupations of land and real estate. The goal is to combine different disciplinary approaches and various fields of study in order to understand what illegal or informal occupations can tell us about our contemporary societies.

1. Relationship to politics and the political 

The typologies that differentiate between squats of necessity, associated with precarious populations, and ‘political squats’ embedded in a protesting stance, construct a hierarchy in regard to the political significance of different squats (Bouillon, 2009; Péchu, 2010; Pruijt, 2013; Vasudevan, 2015; Martínez, 2020; Campos, Martínez, 2020). This conference seeks to overcome these divisions in order to rethink ways of engaging in politics through the practice of squatting. What forms of mobilisation, collective projects and solidarity emerge in occupations that do not have an explicitly militant orientation? What is the relationship between the squat and the place, the group, the outside? Are there any signs of prefiguration, of “politicisation of the slightest gesture” or of micropolitics (Simone, 2008; Yates, 2015, 2020; Pruvost, 2015; Paterniani, 2018)? Finally, how does research on squats contribute to thinking about the link between infrapolitics and politics (Scott, 1985)? We will pay special attention to proposals that discuss the theoretical choices made, whether it be the concept of agency (Benjamin, 2008; Roy, 2011), Eigensinn (Lüdtke, 1995) or any other concepts mobilised to consider the relationship the studied groups have to politics and the political. Contributions may also show how activist squats fulfil other functions: reproduction or subsistence (Mies, Bennholdt-Thomsen, 1999; Ruiz Cayuela, García Lamarca, 2023). They may highlight the dynamics that squats go through over time: processes of (de)politicisation, opening up or withdrawal into the private sphere (Breviglieri, Pattaroni, 2005).

2. Relationship with the state and with capitalism; transformations in public action

Public action has an ambivalent relationship with illegal occupations : it tolerates, regulates, represses or supports them (Davis, 1989; Aguilera, 2017). As a result, these occupations seem particularly conducive to the study of changes in public action in a neoliberal context, and to transformations in various sectors of the economy. Papers may thus explore these dimensions. Firstly, in both the Global North and South, the formalisation of one part of the slums or squats often comes at the cost of the exclusion or marginalisation of another part, which is poorer and/or more politically radical (Davis, 2006; Blot, Spire, 2014; Bouillon, 2013; Gelder, 2013; Nakamura, 2014; Dadusc, 2017; Vasudevan, 2017). How do these dynamics of formalisation and legalisation materialise? Can squats subvert or contribute to the creation of new institutional apparatuses ? In what ways do changes in laws and regulations and the fight against repression alter the strategies and trajectories of squatters (Rosa, 2009; Dee, 2014; Starecheski, 2016)? How can a right to the city be negotiated in urban contexts increasingly marked by socio-economic inequalities (Lefebvre, 1971 ; Martínez, 2020)? Occupations contribute to the informalisation of housing markets, in both the Global North and the Global South (Huchzermeyer, 2022). They contribute to the emergence of new real estate operators and market segments targeting precarious populations (Fawaz, 2016; Ferreri et al., 2017; Vasudevan, 2017; Vivant, 2022; Ferreri, Sanyal, 2024). How do squats interact with these market dynamics and with repression? Do these dynamics contribute to the disappearance of squats? Are there other forms of normalisation/formalisation that make it possible to perpetuate these experiences in a positive way?

3. Relationship to space and socio-spatial trajectories

Squatters do not form a homogeneous group : they come from varied social backgrounds and their residential trajectories are diverse. Papers may seek to understand the porosities between different social spaces. They may also focus on the circulation of actors and practices in order to explore the interactions they produce (Mudu, Chattopadhyay 2016; Paterniani, 2022). How are informal occupations key spaces for observing the recompositions of relations of class, gender, race or other forms of domination? The papers may first focus on residential trajectories, to show the dynamics that lead from the street or slum to squatting, from a discreet squat to a more visible one, and vice versa. How do these various squatting practices and residential trajectories relate to social trajectories? Finally, what emerges from the crossing of trajectories within the squats? The relationship between the processes of marginalisation and the dynamics of integration can also be considered and questioned at different levels. Does squatting appear to be a spatial dynamic of recentralisation in the face of the commodification of space, or, on the contrary, does it reinforce marginalisation on the periphery? How does the squat influence the movements of squatters within their immediate environment – the neighbourhood, village or region – or towards local, national or international networks?

Submission procedure

Proposals must be sent at https://www.squatconference.com/submission 

before July 7, 2025.

Timetable

• July 7, 2025 : deadline for submission of proposals

• October 1st, 2025 : notification to candidates concerning their acceptance or refusal

• January 8-9, 2026 : conference, taking place in Paris

Guidelines

• Proposals, of no more than 500 words, must include a title, clearly state the type of occupation studied, the methodology, the research question and the initial results. They must indicate the thematic axis they fall under.

• They must be anonymized.

• They must be sent before July 7, 2025 at https://www.squatconference.com/submission 

• The proposals will be anonymously evaluated twice by the members of the scientific committee

Organizing committee

Olivia de Briey (LASCO, RECOM; ILC; UCLouvain); Coralie Douat (Labex PasP; ISP; Université Paris Nanterre); Alizée Lazzarino (Labex dynamite; Géographie-cités; Université Paris 1 Panthéon- Sorbonne; IFAS-Research); Kossi Loumonvi (UMR SENS; Université de Montpellier Paul- Valéry); Agathe Nieto (HAR, LESC; EUR ArTeC; Université Paris Nanterre); Oriane Sebillotte (Géographie-cités; EHESS; ICM); Alice Thibaud (UMR8547 Pays germaniques; CMB Centre Marc Bloch; ENS)

Scientific committee

Thomas Aguilera (Arènes UMR 6051, Sciences Po Rennes, France); Sutapa Chattopadhyay (St. Francis Xavier University, Canada); Margherita Grazioli (GSSI – Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italia); Miguel A. Martínez (IBF, Uppsala University, Sweden); Stella Paterniani (State University of Campinas, Brasil); Cécile Péchu (IEP et CRAPUL, Unil Lausanne, Swiss); Marcelo Carvalho Rosa (Não-exemplar, CPDA/UFRRJ, Brasil); Amandine Spire (Université Paris-Cité, CESSMA, France); Alexander Vasudevan (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)

Works cited

Aguilera T., 2017, Racialization of informal settlements, depoliticization of squatting and everyday resistances in French slums, in Mudu P. P. & Chattopadhyay S., Migrations, Squatting and Radical Autonomy, London, Routledge, p.130 - 142.

Aguilera T. & Smart A., 2017, Squatting, North, South and Turnabout: A Dialogue Comparing Illegal Housing Research, in Freia Anders & Alexander Sedlmaier (ed.) Public Goods versus Economic Interests: Global Perspectives on the History of Squatting, London, Routledge, p. 22-55.

Alsayyad N. & Roy A., 2006, Medieval modernity: On citizenship and urbanism in a global era, Space and Polity, 10, 1, p. 1-20.

Benjamin S., 2008, Occupancy Urbanism: Radicalizing Politics and Economy beyond Policy and Programs, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 32, 3, p. 719-729.

Blot J. & Spire A., 2014, Déguerpissements et conflits autour des légitimités citadines dans les villes du Sud, L’Espace Politique, 22, 1.

Bouillon F., 2009, Les mondes du squat, Presses Universitaires de France.

Bouillon F., 2013, What’s a ‘good’ squatter? Categorization’s processes of squats by government officials in France, in Squatting Europe Kollective, Squatting in Europe. Radical Spaces, Urban Struggle, Brooklyn, Autonomedia, p. 231-245.

Breviglieri M. & Pattaroni L., 2005, Le souci de propriété : Vie privée et déclin du militantisme dans un squat genevois, in Haumont B. & Morel A. (ed.), La société des voisins : Partager un habitat collectif, Paris, Éditions de la Maison des sciences de l’homme, p. 275-289.

Campos C. & Martínez M. A., 2020, Squatting activism in Brazil and Spain:: Articulations between the right to housing and the right to the city, in Grashoff U. (ed.) Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe, London, UCL Press, p. 110-129.

Cleber Rudy A., 2013, Ocupar com K, Revista de Historia da Biblioteca Nacional, Rio de Janeiro, p. 32-35.

Dadusc D., 2017, Squatting and the undocumented migrants’ struggle in the Netherlands, in Mudu P. P. & Chattopadhyay S., Migrations, Squatting and Radical Autonomy, London, Routledge, p. 275-284.

Davis J., 1989, From ‘Rookeries’ to ‘Communities’: Race, Poverty and Policing in London, 1850–1985, History Workshop Journal, 27, 1, p. 66-85.

Davis M., 2006, Planet of Slums, New York, Verso.

Dee E. T. C., 2014, The Right to Decent Housing and a Whole Lot More Besides: Examining the Modern English Squatters Movement, in Cattaneo C. & Martinez M., The Squatters’ movement in Europe. Everyday Commons and Autonomy as Alternatives to Capitalisme, London, PlutoPress.

Fawaz M., 2016, Planning and the refugee crisis: Informality as a framework of analysis and reflection, Planning Theory, 16, p.99-115.

Ferreri M., Dawson, G. & Vasudevan A., 2017, Living precariously: property guardianship and the flexible city, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 42, 2, p. 246-259.

Ferreri M. & Sanyal R., 2024, Conversions: The emerging informalisation of housing in the Global North, Planning Theory.

Gelder J.-L. van, 2013, Paradoxes of Urban Housing Informality in the Developing World, Law & Society Review, 47, 3, p. 493-522.

Huchzermeyer M., 2022, Cities with ‘Slums’, Cape Town, UCT Press.

Lefebvre H., 1971, Le droit à la ville, Paris, Anthropos.

Lüdtke A., 1995, The History of Everyday Life: Reconstructing Historical Experiences and Ways of Life, Princeton University Press.

Martínez M. A., 2020, Squatters in the Capitalist City: Housing, Justice, and Urban Politics, New York, Routledge.

Mies M. & Bennholdt-Thomsen V., 1999, The Subsistence Perspective: Beyond the Globalised Economy, London, New York, Zed Books.

Mudu, P. P. & Chattopadhyay, S., 2016, Migration, Squatting and Radical Autonomy, London, Routledge.

Nakamura S., 2014, Impact of slum formalization on self-help housing construction: A case of slum notification in India, Urban Studies, 51, 16, p. 3420-3444.

Paterniani S. Z., 2018, Resisting, claiming and prefiguring: Movements for dignified housing in São Paulo, Agrarian South: Journal of Political Economy, 7, 2, p. 173-187.

Paterniani S. Z., 2022, Ocupações, práxis espacial negra e brancopia: para uma crítica da branquidade nos estudos urbanos paulistas, Revista de Antropologia, 65.

Péchu C., 2010, Les squats, Paris, Presses de Sciences Po.

Pruijt H., 2013, The Logic of Urban Squatting, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 37, 1, 19-45.

Pruvost G., 2015, Chantiers participatifs, autogérés, collectifs : la politisation du moindre geste, Sociologie du travail, 57, 1, p. 81-103.

Rosa, M. C., 2009, Sem-Terra: os sentidos e as transformações de uma categoria de ação coletiva no Brasil, Lua Nova: Revista De Cultura E Política, 76, p. 197–227.

Roy A., 2011, Slumdog Cities: Rethinking Subaltern Urbanism, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 35, 2, p. 223-238.

Ruiz Cayuela S. & García Lamarca M., 2023, From the squat to the neighbourhood: Popular infrastructures as reproductive urban commons, Geoforum, 144.

Scheba S. & Millington N., 2023, Occupations as reparative urban infrastructure: thinking with Cissie Gool House, City, 27, 5-6, p. 715-739. Scott J. C., 1985, Weapons of the weak: everyday forms of peasant resistance, New Haven, Yale University Press.

Simone A., 2008, The politics of the possible: Making urban life in Phnom Penh, Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography, 29.

Smart A. & Aguilera T., 2020, Towards a political economy of toleration of illegality: Comparing tolerated squatting in Hong Kong and Paris, in Grashoff U. (éd.), Comparative Approaches to Informal Housing Around the Globe, London, UCL Press, p. 39-65.

Squatting Everywhere Kollective (SqeK), 2018, Fighting for spaces, fighting for our lives : Squatting movements today, Münster, Edition assemblage.

Starecheski A., 2016, Ours to Lose : When Squatters Became Homeowners in New York City, Chicago, University of Chicago Press.

Vasudevan A., 2015, The makeshift city : Towards a global geography of squatting, Progress in Human Geography, 39, 3, p. 338-359.

Vasudevan A., 2017, The autonomous city: a history of urban squatting, London, VersoBooks.

Vivant E., 2022, From margins to capital: The integration of spaces of artistic critique within capitalist urbanism, Journal of Urban Affairs, 44, 4-5, p. 490-503.

Yates L., 2015, Rethinking Prefiguration: Alternatives, Micropolitics and Goals in Social Movements, Social Movement Studies, 14, 1, p. 1-21.

Yates L., 2020, Prefigurative Politics and Social Movement Strategy: The Roles of Prefiguration in the Reproduction, Mobilisation and Coordination of Movements, Political Studies, 69, 4, p. 1033-1052.