[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