This paper explores everyday practices of social housing occupations in the municipalities of Lisbon and Loures, Portugal. Recently, studies that focus on the political aspects of “needs-based” occupations have begun to emerge in Europe. Yet, it is argued that this field still lacks a solid theoretical basis, evident in the way the concepts of “resistance” or “everyday practices” are often not clearly defined. I propose to contribute to filling this gap, through a careful analysis of everyday practices and politics, using the conceptualisations of “quiet encroachment” (Bayat, 2013) and “improvised lives” (Simone, 2019b). Occupations present an interesting case of everyday politics, because they are used to enact directly the right to housing and contest housing exclusion. By occupying, bodies make political claims: the act of occupation alone, the refusal to succumb to the existing conditions, is already an act of delegitimation of the state (Butler, 2011). They occupations can thus be conceived as acts of collective world-making which can contribute to alternative political imaginaries. The paper is based on ethnographic and activist fieldwork, conducted from December 2017 to April 2019 in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, in close collaboration with the Association Habita. The paper illustrates how both the everyday modalities of governance as well as the everyday practices of occupiers are enmeshed with diverse forms of informality, producing both housing exclusions and inclusions. The management practices of the state, forcing the residents to wait patiently, further encourage the adoption of everyday practices, rendering the creation of long-term strategies of resistance difficult and thus undermining the conditions of collective action. The paper argues that occupations contribute directly to the making of a different kind of everyday, but the condemnation and stigmatisation they face often undermines their potential to question current neoliberal practices of production of space and to produce of new democratic urban practices.

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occupations,right to housing,housing exclusion,everyday politics,Portugal