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Saaristo, S.-M. (2022). Why Occupy a House? Understanding the forms of subalternisation. Twenty-Eighth International Conference of Europeanists The Environment of Democracy.

S. M. Saaristo,  "Why Occupy a House? Understanding the forms of subalternisation", in Twenty-8th Int. Conf. of Europeanists The Environment of Democracy, 2022

@misc{saaristo2022_1776793962009,
	author = "Saaristo, S.-M.",
	title = "Why Occupy a House? Understanding the forms of subalternisation",
	year = "2022",
	url = "https://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/2022-final-programs/"
}

TY  - CPAPER
TI  - Why Occupy a House? Understanding the forms of subalternisation
T2  - Twenty-Eighth International Conference of Europeanists The Environment of Democracy
AU  - Saaristo, S.-M.
PY  - 2022
UR  - https://councilforeuropeanstudies.org/2022-final-programs/
AB  - This paper concerns the question of why some single mothers with low income do not have any legal forms of housing within reach, and on why they occupy council housing without authorisation in Lisbon, Portugal. Examining housing exclusions and their contestations gains relevance in the current context, in which housing exclusions are quickly becoming an important factor causing poverty (Desmond, 2016). It is crucial to understand how diverse population groups are differentially affected by the processes of neoliberal urban governance and what constraints and restrictions they face, in order to enable a design of inclusive urban policies. In this paper, these constraints and restrictions are analysed as forms of subalternisation. The paper is based on engaged ethnographic fieldwork, conducted from December 2017 to April 2019, in close collaboration with the Association Habita, as well as on 13 life history interviews conducted with people occupying council homes in Lisbon. 

The study identified following classed and gendered forms of subalternisation: gendered causes of homelessness, such as domestic violence; the capitalist exploitation of low-income female workers; and inaccessible housing that emerges in two major forms. Instead of effectively supporting these subalternised groups in securing housing, the responses provided the state actors, in this case municipal employees, tend to further alienate these residents from the right to housing. In these actions, the state officials and authorities often enter the realm of “informality” (Roy, 2003) themselves, employing variegated extra-legal techniques of governance, directly producing homelessness.

ER  -