[EN] Fighting for spaces, Fighting for our lives: Squatting Movements Today

Squatting everywhere kollective (SqEK) aims with this book to move beyond the conventional understandings of squatting, investigating its history in different places over the past four decades.

While waves of repression against squatters seem to spread across many places, attacking and shutting down its remaining squatting strongholds and its historical spaces of rebellion, some squatted social centres manage to persist and new occupied zones arise – successfully defended through public mobilization and widespread solidarity, alongside militant action. At the same time, squatting has seen a rebirth as a tool of radical praxis in movements fighting against the rising number of evictions and foreclosures during the financial crisis, facing the policies of racism and creating open spaces for refugees, migrants and people of colour. The collected essays, first-hand accounts and photographs in this book do not intend to offer an over-arching narrative of where the squatters movement is heading. Instead the book provides glimpses into a diverse and multi-faceted movement, with accounts from local struggles, experiences of repression and stories of collective forms of life which have grown out of squatted spaces in various cities and countries throughout the world, including accounts from Rio de Janeiro, Istanbul, Seattle and Australia.

PDF available to download (10MB)

PRINTBOOK AVAILABLE NOW! From the publisher. Cheaper in person or at a forthcoming talk.

For presentations of the book, events, discusions or direct contact : begleiterscheinungen [at] riseup [dot] net



Editors:

SqEK (squatting everywhere kollective) is a network of radical activists and researchers from diverse social and political movements around the world. The primary aim of the collective is to produce reliable and fine-grained knowledge about squatters´ movements as a public resource, especially for squatters and activists. Critical engagement, transdisciplinarity and comparative approaches are the bases of this project. SqEK holds yearly meetings which have thus far taken place in Madrid, Milano, London, Berlin, Barcelona, Amsterdam, Paris, København, Roma, New York, Rotterdam, Praha and Catania.

More info can be found at http://sqek.squat.net

Table of contents

Instead of an Introduction

SqEK-Kollective

Voices of Resistance – About the Refugee Movement in Kreuzberg (Berlin)

Napuli Paul Langa

You Can’t Evict a Movement – From the Rise of the Refugee Movement in Germany to the Practice of Squatting

Colectivo Hinundzurück (Berlin)

Overflowing the walls. The squatting is on the paths.

Elisabeth Lorenzi

Hidden Histories of Resistance – The Diverse Heritages of Squatting in England

needlecollective

Squatting in Denmark

Frisk Flugt

A history of urban squatting in Slovenia

Tina Steiger

Istanbul – Beyond Gezi

some comrades

“Zad News” – The occupation of Notre-Dame-des-Landes narrated through its weekly newspaper

Margot Verdier

The Revenge against the Commons

zadforever

The economy of the squatters: How squatters live with less money and suffer less from the crisis

Claudio Catteneo

Squatting in Prague

Arnošt Novák and Jan Trnka

Interview with a Seattle Squatter

mujinga

Ireland’s Autonomous Zones and Collectives

Freda Hughes

The hidden history of squatting in Ireland

Alan MacSimoin

Resisting evictions – Squatting in Rio de Janeiro as an alternative for housing

Juliana Canedo and Julia Caminha

“Das ist unser Haus …” – Squatting in Germany from 1970 to the present (2018)

azozomox

A Short History of Australian Squatting

Iain McIntyre

Squatting in Greece: An open case with closed doors

Nick Souzas

Penal Archipelagoes, Incarcerated Immigrants and Squats

Sutapa Chattopadhyay

“You can’t evict an idea” – The criminalisation of the squatting movement in the Netherlands

Deanna Dadusc

Le occupazioni per la casa e per i centri sociali in Italia – Squatting for

housing and Social Centers in Italy

Eliseo Fucolti

Italian Social Centres: conflictual political actors beyond the liberated spaces

Gianni Piazza

Squatting in France: Poverty, Housing Movement and Counterculture

Thomas Aguilera, Florence Bouillon,

Baptiste Colin and Cécile Péchu

Squatting in the Wake of the Economic Crisis in Spain: The Right to Housing as a Social Movement “Sí se puede, pero no quieren”

Julia Lledin

A Short Talk on Squatting in Spain

Miguel Martínez

Never Rest in Peace! The Eviction and Resistance of Liebig 14 (Berlin)

Lucrezia Lennert

A fast look at squatting in Rotterdam

AMADOK

Some recent mainstream media representations of squatting in Barcelona

Group Against Criminalization

Social Centers in Madrid

Alan W. Moore

Refugees’ Struggles in Athens: Voices from City Plaza

Refugee Accommodation Space City Plaza

Publisher link or buy it cheaper at a forthcoming SqEK event, more details coming soon