Cosenza, 10-12th September 2015

Performing the ‘right to the house’, affirming the ‘right to the city’.

Practices of Resistance in Rome

PhD student Carlotta Caciagli

Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence

XXIX Convegno Sisp

Abstract

Over the last twenty years the process of globalisation and interurban competitionradically transformed cities, modifying geographies, public spaces and social relations.The hegemonic trend in urban restructuring, based on profit-oriented paradigm andon neoliberal individualistic ideas, is going to exclude a growing part of populationto the services and opportunities of living in the city. An example is the increasingnumber of people having no more access to the house. Against this dominant trend,many grassroots organisations, inscribed in what Lefebvre termed ‘right to the city’(1996), are struggling against the dispossession of opportunities and spaces, acting topledge house for weaker categories and to resist against eviction. Born from 70th urbansocial movements, the contemporaneous ones, with their own peculiarities, repertoiresof actions and relationships, are political and social actors more e more importantin reshaping urban dynamics. The following paper is part of a broader research onurban social movements in Rome and is the result of my first approaches with thefield. Focusing the attention on one of the most active movements in the capital city,the Coordinamento cittadino di lotta per la casa, I aim at showing how the currentmovements for the house are not just attempts to face the housing emergency. Indeed,combining concrete needs and cultural urgency to reframe socio-economic paradigm ofcapitalistic city, these movements also represent a fundamental resource for the entirecommunity. Buildings squatted by these movements are, at the same time, protestingsites and “free spaces” (Polletta: 1999) to experiment new paths of property and col-lective life.

keywords: Urban social movements, right to the city, right to the house, resistance,squats.

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1 Introduction

Over the last twenty years, the processes of globalisation and interurban competition haverapidly transformed many cities around the world, reshaping social, economical and archi-tectural landscape. Neo-liberalization dissolved forms of social solidarity in favor of individ-ualism and entrepreneurial activation (Mayer: 2013). The combination between economiccrisis and neoliberal paradigm makes the qualities of urban life prerogative of a small num-ber of actors (Harvey: 2012a). The competitive global city results to be symbolically andphysically divided: by a side there are local elites that benefit from urban opportunities,by the other side there are people mostly excluded by these rights and benefits (Lefebvre:1970). Being the services lacker and the costs of living in metropolitan areas higher, thepoverty affecting large part of population is going to be more and more touchable. Urbanterritory results to be both the epicentre and the victim of profit-oriented paradigm.

Against this dominant trend, a lot of grassroots organisations take form, showing theurban territory as the context in which globalisation and economic prosperity put theirroots but also as the place in which they reveal their contradictions. The desire to have amore equal distribution of resources and spaces inside the urban fabric is resumed by whatLefebvre termed ‘right to the city’ (1996). Urban social movements recalling this right can bereally variegated in specific demanded claims, repertoires of actions, internal organisationsand relationships with institutions. However, they emerged from conflict caused by thecontradiction of advanced capitalism and the role played by local policy makers which actas organisers of the city users’ everyday life (Finquelievich: 1981). Local policies tend toprivatise common goods and public spaces (D’Albergo, Moini: 2011) contributing to createwhat has been termed as a “city for profit” and not for citizens.

Basically, all these different movements and organisations are recalling a transversalmeaning and affirming a new sense of community and participation on the urbanisationprocess (Harvey: 2008). Even if the interest of sociologists, political scientists and socialmovements researchers in theses grassroots actions is increasing day by day, a systematicanalysis of the main claims and actors involved is a challenge largely unresolved (Castells,Cherki, Godard, Mehl: 1977). Urban social movements can deal with transversal prob-lems, as pollution, public transports, public spaces, and also with located goals, as there-qualification of a park, garden, street or services for neighbourhood. Then, a general clas-sification risks to be not just useless but also dangerous. However, what distinguish urbansocial movements from the so called Nimby-movements (Della Porta and Piazza: 2008) isthe broad frame in which they inscribe their struggle.

Beyond different declinations, urban social movements converge on the important roleplayed by the space and on the reformulation of the link between global and local. Thesemovements are “urban actors because they are spatially localised [...], however their reach ofaction is not only local but also regional, national, global” (Piazza: 2013: 90). The conceptof locality, linked with the urban sphere, became more dynamic and design, more exactly aglocal territory in which actions are conducted locally but as expression of a global meaning(Moyersoen: 2010).

Between all the claims demanded by current european movements, the one of the house is

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largely shared by an increasing number of people. Not just to poorer people, today the houseis inaccessible to precarious workers, immigrants, students (Pisano: 2012). As Mayer pointsout: “claiming housing as a right has a great potential to win mass support” (Mayer: 2013:6). Around the right to the house, many different forms of participation rose up and arerising up with different configurations. If the house emergency has a significant importance inmany european cities (and not only), its intensity and the answers of population are differentin accord to urban features, geographies of discomfort and social and political opportunitystructure (Mc Adam: 1996, Tarrow: 1994). Urban movements for the house are reallydependent to the territorial heritage and social history of the environment in which theyare embedded. For this reason, I think that is worthwhile to pay attention to the political,social, architectural and geographical features of different cities, avoiding the risk to fall intosimple generalisations.

The present paper focuses the attention on the intensity of ‘housing problem’ in Rome andon the actions that social actors are conducting to resist against the progressive dispossessionof the city (Butler and Atanasiou : 2013). In particular, I will address features and issues ofthese struggles looking at one of the most significant movement, the Coordinamento Cittadinodi lotta per la casa, discussing its activities in a paradigmatic period of three years. Providingan overview on the main features of the movement and on its position in the panorama ofhousing participation in Rome , I aim at showing how ‘Coordinamento’ is becoming an actormore and more important in shaping urban dynamics. Spaces occupied by the movementare concrete solutions for homeless but are also opportunities for the entire community tounderstand that other ways of experiencing the city are possible and near to come. Theyoperate as “eco-social egalitarian alternatives to capitalistic relations” (Cattaneo, Engels-DiMauro: 2015: 346). In this broader meaning, squatted buildings, become counter culturesites (Kohn: 2001), functioning as reference for the territory in which they are embedded.

2 Research Design and Methodology

The work here presented is the result of preliminary considerations coming from first ap-proaches with the field under study. As part of a broader analysis on urban social movementsin Rome, this paper does not pretend to be an exhaustive dissertation on what housing emer-gency is and on what the answers provided are. Rather, it wants to be the occasion to reflectupon all the materials and inputs coming from one of the biggest and most problematic cityin Europe. Rome has a long history in urban battles and in particular in providing solutionsfor the house coming from grassroots level (Mudu: 2014a). However, if urban social move-ments struggling for this right are sons and daughters of the 70th urban movements, theyare different today. Political and social panorama in which they take place has changed alot and also repertoire of actions, spaces of impact and configurations are not the same than40-50 years ago.

The aim of this work is to have a look into the struggles for the house in Rome to showhow related movements are going to have an important role in urban dynamics not just inprotesting against, but also in plotting alternative ways of living the city. Despite all the

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attempts done to divide and classify squats on the basis of concrete necessity or culturalmeaning (Pruijt: 2004; Bouillon: 2009), I aim at showing how in Rome such a distinctionrisk to be useless and dangerous. What characterise the modern movements for the ‘right tothe house’ is exactly the capacity to blend together concrete and cultural needs convertingabandoned spaces in “free spaces” (Polletta: 1999) where other forms of collective life areexperienced.

The notion “free spaces” is used by many authors with different meanings -as Evansand Boyte (1986) and Futrell and Simi (2004). Other scholars use different terms referringto quite similar concept: the “safe spaces” quoted by Gamson (1996) and by Bosi (2013)are not far away from “spatial preserves” inquired by Fantasia and Hirsch (1995). In thispaper “free spaces” are defined in accord to the meaning confered by Polletta (1999): asthe ‘spatial occasion’ to articulate a counter-power, to plot alternative life-style testing thelimit of legitimate power. In “free spaces” spatial constraints are turned to advantage inpolitical and social struggles; they are recovered sites where phenomenal, social and symbolicexperiences occur at the same time (Kohn: 2001). Basically, recovered spaces become theopportunities for popular resilience (Cattaneo and Engels-Di Mauro: 2015).

In the next section I will provide an overview on the housing emergency in Italy andon the main problems, questions, challenges and typologies developed by scholars to studysquats and movements for the right to the house. Then I will focus my attention on thecase of Rome. Firstly, I will describe the peculiarities of Rome urban fabric; secondly Iwill present the different kinds of participation around urban and housing issues enacted byinhabitants across the time. The empty leaved by local administrations, the geographicaland architectural features of neighbourhoods and the social configuration of the community,forced people to self-make the city. Immediately after, I will concentrate my reflectionson the answers provided by the movement Coordinamento cittadino di lotta per la casapresenting its main features and actions developed between 2011 and 2013. The last andconclusive section will be an attempt to summarise what emerged and to open debate forfurther researches.

Concerning the methodology used, I cannot count on official databases considering thelack of empirical researches and homogeneous body of literature. However many attempts tomap the phenomenon of housing emergency and the participation around it have been madeby activists, academic researches and political administration. Productions coming fromthese preliminary datasets are important because they represent the direct participationand evaluation of citizens in urban dynamics. The material of this paper is based on threeprincipal sources: my direct observation of movement under study, the analysis of self-produced documents, texts and books and a set of structured and semistructured interviews(Della Porta: 2010) with experts and activists. I conducted eight in depth interviews: threewith experts of urban social movements for the house, two with leaders of two differentassociations for housing issues, two with activists of the ‘Coordinamento’ and one with astudent squatting in a social centre. The period considered is the one between 2011 and2013. These three years were really significant for Rome because many squats occurred,many other were evicted and many attention was paid to the housing questions by media

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and institutions (Armati: 2015). Finally, the research does not aim at generalisations, beingan in-depth analysis of one city. Nevertheless, the work aims at providing new cleavagesto interpret and discuss about the fundamental role of urban social movements in shapingpatterns of old and new cities.

3 Housing: the state of the art

Economic crisis and, in many european cities, the welfare crisis, impedes the access to thehouse to many families. The phenomenon is regarding not just the poor workers but alsothe middle class, precarious, immigrants and other marginalised categories of people (Sebas-tianelli: 2009). Inscribed in this panorama, Italy is not an exception. Data1 concerning theprocedures of evictions in our country design a complex and alarming scenario.

The issued evictions between 2001 and 2007 were more or less constant, fluctuatingbetween 40500 and 43869; but between 2008 and 2013 the increment is more significant(+40,3 %) moving from the 43869 of 2008 to 73385 of 2013. If in 2011 the issued evictionscaused by delays in payment were 55543, in 2013 the number has grown up to 65302. Asignificant picture of the long running period can be traced if we look at the relationshipbetween issued evictions and the number of resident families: in 2001 issued evictions were 1on 539 resident families, in 2013 the relationship is decreased to 1 on 353 resident families2.Exclusion made for 2003 and 2007, when the relation seemed to be stable, the number offamilies for which eviction has been issued, is getting bigger.

So, disadvantages linked to the difficulties of renting an house are touching a more andmore large part of population. Many people are forced to look for an apartment out of thecity where prices are still affordable. To the impossibility to access to the house followsthe impossibility to have access to the city: with the right to the house is denied also theright to the city. Difficulties to have access and to keep houses is the result and cause of atransformation: no more a social right, house became a merchandise from which to obtainprofit (Pisano: 2012). Through the example of the house, the entire city is becoming placefor economic transformation than space of services.

In such panorama, while many citizens decide to renounce to urban life for living inneighbouring villages, many other people do not want to renounce to what city can offer andstart resistant actions thought the squat of empty buildings (De Angelis: 2012). Squattingbuildings, right to the house is demanded with the right to the city. Resistance to eviction isperceived as physical and symbolic act pursued out of recognised laws but in accord to notyet recognised right to the house (Sebastianelli: 2009). In a kind of sense squats are illegalbut licit acts.

Linked to the spatiality of urban fabric, resistance against eviction can assume differentconfiguration: it can be straight on by single families that do not consent to leave the house,or it can be organised by movements, social centres and associations. In the second case

1Data comes from the ‘Scuola superiore dell’amministrazione e dell’interno’, Quaderni di statistica, n.1,2014.

2Rapport was 1/394 in 2011 and 1/375 in 2012.

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resistance against the eviction is not just the immediate solution to an urgency, it is alsoa protest, a daily manifestation of dissent able to produce new life styles (Pisano: 2012).It become concrete example of an attitude of resilience in hard times of crisis. Just toprovide and example, practices of squatting in Rome had the merit, in 2005, to have pushedinstitutions to think about the solution of housing need3.

Struggles for the right to the house leaden by different actors can present different fea-tures. Squats are modalities through which movements act but they do not consume therepertoire or the meaning of protest (Pruijt: 2013). Moreover, the enormous variation ofkinds of squats make difficult to use the same term ‘squat’ for all different forms of appro-priation of the spaces. For this reason, In italian panorama the word ‘occupation’ is moreused because it refers to a very broad range of actions and implies different meanings (Mudu:2014a). Also squatted buildings can be various: they can be cultural places as abandonedtheatres or cinemas, or they can be expression of an economic failure as factories or offices.

What is common in all the social actions using squat is the ‘collective dimension’ of theoccupation (Pechu: 2010). In all these shared forms of housing, the paradigm of ‘to do’is performed instead of the paradigm of ‘to make’ (Sebastianelli: 2009). Contestation andresistance are mixed in contemporaneous squats: illegal actions construct new scenario, newsymbols and interpretations of urban life (Pechu: 2010). As Mudu underlines, occupationis a destruens and construens part of making the city: “an occupation is an action thatinterrupts phases of homelessness, or of living under degraded housing conditions. Second,it is an action that allows people to build a material and symbolic lifestyle alternative to thetrends of mainstream capitalism” (Mudu: 2014a: 137).

In order to take into account the diversity of actors, modalities, repertoires and charac-teristics of the spaces occupied, many configurations, typologies and descriptions have beendeveloped by scholars. Bouillon makes a division between ‘squats for activities’ and ‘squatsfor necessity’ (Bouillon: 2010). The firsts are considered spaces for cultural, artistic andpolitical creation, the second are described as moved by the concrete necessity of having anhouse. This second category is composed by squats that organise manifestation and protestcampaign to make pressure on institution and also by squats that wants to be invisibleto not be evicted. Instead of speaking about categories, Pruijt recognise the flexibility ofsquats and orders them in 5 configurations resulting from combination of different char-acteristics (Pruijt: 2004). Squats can be: deprivation based, alternative housing strategy,entrepreneurial, conservational and political squatting (Pruijt: 2004 and 2013). Pechu (2009)used considerations of Bouillon not to define typologies but to understand the abundance ofthe phenomenon. She speaks about ‘logics’ of squats and recognises two type of squats. Onecalled “class-oriented”, gathering all kinds of squats enacted to provide houses. The secondone refers to squats not just as instruments to face housing emergency but more as goal byitself. In accord to this logic, squatting is a way of experiencing new politics and collectiveslives.

However, as I try to show, making such distinctions for italian panorama risks to be

3‘Delibera programmatica sulle politiche abitative e sull’emergenza abitativa nell’area comunale romana’,n.110 of 2005.

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dangerous and misleading. Protagonists of the struggle for the house are going to be impor-tant actors in urban and social dynamics because they are based on the connection betweenpractical and cultural struggle. It’s exactly in the link between the concrete necessity ofobtaining a roof and the counter-culture discourse that movements develop a significant rolein the social field. What characterise the current squatting practices of urban movementsis the capability to combine the demand for the house with the cultural urgency to rethinkparadigm underlined in capitalistic cities. No broader meaning of cultural reshape could bereal if it did not start from the concrete necessity of many citizens.

Combination of these two aspects makes of squatted buildings not just the roofs ob-tained by illegal appropriation but the transversal places of contestation (Smith: 2002), theoccasions to embody, and not just enunciating, a “counter culture” of resistance (Boudreau:1996). Occupied places became so“free space”, heterotopia4 sites challenging the social struc-ture (Kohn: 2001). Squatted spaces became “free spaces” because they do not just performan opposition, they also experiment a new form of political participation trough a dailypractice. They reflect “the ideal of democracy that was the basis for constantly challengingthe strict limitations to participation maintained by the restricted suffrage and patronagesystem of liberal state” (Kohn: 2001: 518).

As I argue in the following pages, squats in Rome are conducted by different actors:it is not unusual that building are occupied by associations or informal territorial groups.However, squat become a largely used and powerful practice resounding in the entire city,if handled by two actors: social centres and movements for the right to the house. Kindsof squat resulting by the two main actors can be very different or quite similar, generatingoverlapping and conflictual actions. The enormous variation resulting, characterises bothItalian and Roman territory (Mudu: 2014b).

4 Self-making the city: the example of Rome

Rome is crossed by many self-made practices that design a rich and ambiguous social andurban word. Housing emergency in Rome is intrinsically linked with the characteristics ofurban fabric and the struggles for the right to the city are rooted in a tradition of grassrootsparticipation. From both architectural and social point of view, Rome is a sui generis Eu-ropean city characterised by a traditional lack of interest in city planning (De Lucia: 2013).Rome seems to be a city built up spontaneously, with no underlined meaning or generalplan. In this context, housing resources are linked with the phenomenon of spontaneousgrowth and abusive buildings (Cellamare: 2013 and 2014; Pisano: 2012; Pezzetta: 2012).Today more that 1/3 of urban fabric has an abusive origin (almost the 37 % of the terri-tory). As Rome demonstrates, taking into account social struggles, as the one for the house,researchers cannot disregard from the consideration that spatial features influence humanrelations opening occasions or closing opportunities (Soja: 1980).

The explosion of housing demand and the incapacity of public administrators to constructcouncil buildings pushed many people, in the second post war period, to construct self-

4The concept of heterotopia is a Foucaultian one, expressed in the work “Des Espace autres”, 1984.

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made houses in the peripheral areas. Later, the abusive zones become the main sourcesof profit for many builders, causing the phenomenon of speculation. This second stage ofdevelopment of these areas produced neighbourhoods with no services: water, electricity,transports and infrastructures. Being the speculators interested in maximising profit, whatsorted out were zones completely absent of public spaces where social discomfort were highand rooted. Fragmentation and marginality of urban fabric is touchable (Armati: 2015)still today: public administration has never developed a systematic and homogeneous urbanplan, leaving these areas rising up into the indifference of politics and institutions (De Lucia:2003; Cellamare: 2013). If until the end of 90th were almost peripheries the protagonists ofpoverty and lack of services, now the phenomenon of gentrification, the increase of costs forliving in the cities and the unreal safeguard for disadvantage people, make discomfort andmisery spread in all part of the city5. What 10 years ago regarded marginal areas is nowconcerning entire urban landscape. Looking at Rome, we cannot say where centre startsand periphery stops. This aspect is increased by the policies of deregulation that, since thebeginning of 2000, interested Rome (De Lucia: 2003). The not planned growth of the citymarks both the geography and the participation of citizens in the urban affairs.

If inhabitants wanted services, spaces and infrastructures, they had to create them bythemselves. Today the practices of ‘self made’ is formally blamed by politicians but it isalso something they count on to face problems never affronted (Cellamare: 2014). Thereare many examples of neighbourhoods totally constructed by the spontaneous activitiesof people living there (Tor Bella Monica or Valle Borghesiana). Grassroots participationin Rome starts from these peculiar relationship with territory and public administration(Cellamare: 2012). Marginality of these areas became the centre of an alternative story,the story a Rome self-made in which confines, borders and exclusion has the advantage to“preserve the ability to resist political repression and subordination” (Couto: 1993: 58).

Social participation, due to this singular history, is an element strongly characterisingRome urban fabric. Participation can be the one of citizens committees, described by DellaPorta (2004) or be organised trough associations, organisations and networks. As emerged bythe annual relation of Censis, in 2011, at about the 45% of citizens are inscribed in vary kindsof social activism. Some of these forms of participation follow a process of institutionalisationobtaining the management of public services or public areas; in other case they drive adiscourse of protest against the ‘dispossession’ of urban spaces, keeping alive the conflictualrelationship with institutions. Participation can be directed to the entire city but usually isrealised at the neighbourhood level: depending on the characteristics of local area, activismproduces different results and has different repertoires of action. In some cases differentassociations, organisations and committees collaborate, in many other situations they donot construct networks, on the contrary, they entertain conflictual relationships.

Between all, activism around the ‘right to the house’ has a long tradition in Rome.Italian capital city is expression of Italian housing emergency but it is also a particularcase. Despite the amazing growth of constructions in the last 15 years -city counts 250000

5The source is the annual relation provided by Censis: Rapporto sulla coesione comunitaria nei territoridi Roma Capitale, Roma, 2012.

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not rented apartment (Armati: 2015)- there are an increasing number of people to whomhouse is not accessible (Sebastianelli: 2009). Since the beginning of 70th, movements, socialcentres, associations and organisations active in the territory guide manifestations, squats,cultural activities in order to denounce the processes that drove to the present situation and,at the same time, to find a solution. As described by Mudu (2014a), housing movements,and collateral activism, lived many phases. If at their first stage movements could count onthe support of left oriented political parties, starting from 80th, they conducted protest free-standing from institutional actors. Between parties and movements started to be in forcea conflictual logic. Movements of today are also the result of that broken relation with thePCI (Partito Comunista Italiano). Also the social composition of participants has changed:If in 60th and 70th activists were working poor people, 10 years later different heterogenousgroups became progressively involved.

Not without an high degree of conflicts, all these forms of resistance, protests and partic-ipations represent the subtended structure, a sort of ‘urban democracy’ (Della Porta: 2004),working to overturn the paradigm that since many decades is ruling Rome and other capi-talistic city. Moreover, born from the absence of public administrations, battles conductedby theses movements demonstrate how to construct city for citizens and not for profit is notjust possible but also urgent.

5 Self-making the house: the example of Coordina-

mento cittadino di lotta per la casa

If national data show important numbers concerning the housing problems in national terri-tory, a design more alarming emerges from Rome. The relationship between resident familiesand the number of evictions is the worst in Italy with one eviction each 246 resident families(national media: 1/353) in 2013. Situation was already alarming in 2011: instead of 1/394as the national media, the relationship for the capital city was 1/257 and in 2012 it reached1/224. The trend of the last three years demonstrates how the phenomenon of difficulty offamilies in keeping an home is growing up: if in 2011 the number of issued evictions was6686, in 2013 arrived to 8121 (Figure??). However, evictions concluded have not followedthe same trend: even if the issued evictions increase, the number of concluded evictions kept,from 2010 to 2013, more or less, constant (figure ??).

The vastness of housing difficulties makes of Rome one of the cities more active and alertin the struggle for the right to the house. Many people joined in recent years movementsand social centres to begin a resistant action against the impossible economical requisitionsto have access to the house. Squatting, as affirming right to the city and to the house, isa practice growing up year by year provoking different approaches of media, public opinionand political control. The years of 2011, 2012, 2013 were characterised by tolerant behaviourof left parties and by an opposing attitude of centre-right parties. Instead the media crimi-nalised them. Squatters are compared, by newspapers, to terrorists whom the police shouldarrest (Mudu: 2014a). When the number of squatted buildings increases, usually increase

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Figure 1: Data on eviction procedures; source: Quaderni di statistica, n.1, 2014: http://ssai.interno.it/download/allegati1/pubblicazionesfratti2013.pdf

Figure 2: Trend of eviction procedures; source: Quaderni di Statistica, n.1, 2014: http://ssai.interno.it/download/allegati1/pubblicazionesfratti2013.pdf

also the number of evictions made and the repression of squats. But even in case of evic-tion, the territory in which squats rose up experienced an alternative space that, in manycases, changed perception of inhabitants and, consequently, the way trough which reasons ofprotest are framed. Then, squats, even when set for short period, contribute to revolutionpolitical maps of neighbourhoods (Mudu: 2013). What should be taken into account it isnot just the number of squats evicted and still operative but where they are situated.

If traditionally the part of the city more active in squats was the south west areas, todaythe struggles are interesting more and more neighbourhoods. As we can see from the picturein the figure ??, in 20016 squats were localised in more external, even if not peripheral,areas. In zones where no public spaces functioned as meeting points or cultural spaces,social centres established as alternative promotion of socialisation.

In recent years more and more squats occured in central neighbourhoods dealing with

6The decision to show a picture of 2001 is done in order to consider the variation of squats in a lapse oftime of 10 or more years to take into account the long perspective.

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Figure 3: Map of squats in Rome in 2001; source: http://maps.squat.net/en/

cities/roma/squats

parts of the city in which public administration was less absent and also police control moreactive (figure ??). Summarising all squats experimented in Rome (figure ??), we can seetheir range7. Starting from 2010, in particular, many squats begin to interest also centralareas.

Figure 4: Map of squats in Rome in 2013; source: http://maps.squat.net/en/

cities/roma/squats

The difficulties of retracing a clear distinction between different forms of squats is dueto the overlapping images resulting from different actions. Hight resonance squats can beconducted also by associations not born for housing goals8.

Squats directed by social centre were largely studied by Pier Paolo Mudu (2013, 2014aand 2014b). Successors of workers associations organised as mutual aid societies, cooperative

7Pictures consider both housing and not housing squats.8An example is the ‘Associazione Ex-Lavanderia’ in the neighbourhood of Monte Mario. Activists re-

claimed the usage of buildings of the ex-asylum of Santa Maria della Pieta for social, cultural and publicuses. In order to defend the spaces they started an housing squat.

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Figure 5: Map of squats in Rome; source: http://maps.squat.net/en/cities/roma/

squats

and then ‘case del popolo’ (Mudu: 2013), social centres changed their configuration acrosstime presenting now new characteristics and activities. No more called social centres, todaythey are ‘squatted and self- managed social centre’, ‘self- managed social centre’ or ‘Publicand self-managed space’. Self-management is at the core of social centres activities but theyare marked by different ‘decision-making’ processes (Piazza: 2013). When squats take placein social centres, the main users are activists and occupation is, fundamentally, a strategicaction to affirm a counter culture discourse (Mudu: 2013). In this case, squatted buildingsare mostly theatres, cinema or other significant cultural symbols occupied to contrast theprivatisation of public space heritage for the community. However, in Rome social centresalso face housing emergency supporting immigrants in their first approaches with the city.

Decision to squat comes more from cultural consideration than from the necessity tobe hosted. It does not mean that social centres are not able to answer to the needs ofthe community in which they rise up. An example is the Cinema Palazzo in the centralneighbourhood of San Lorenzo. Between activists and inhabitants of neighbourhood hasbeen created a strong relation. Citizens participate in Cinema Palazzo activities and thesocial centre realises services for the community as library or nursery school. Moreoveractivists of Cinema Palazzo and citizens of neighbourhood made proof of their capacitiesof transformation elaborating a new urban plan for the neighbourhood to be presented to

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local institution9. Also the institutionalisation of social centres can follow different paths.Many squatted social centres were regularised by local policy; on the contrary others preferto keep alive their counter-institution discourse. As underlined by Mayer social centres oftoday “offer not merely spaces for performances, happenings, conecerts, exhibits, communityorganising [...] but also to urban residents beyond those circles, which allows them to serveas “recruting” spaces” (Mayer: 2013).

The second main actors in squat practice are the movements for the right to the house.These movements squat buildings mainly and basically to provide houses for an huge numberof people. Even if based on a concrete need, this form of occupation cannot be consideredsimply a ‘deprivation based squat’ practice as the one described by Pruijt (2013). Peoplewho decide to squat decide also to share the reasons of protest and to accept to participateto the struggle. Moreover, occupied buildings are points for the neighbourhoods in whichthey are embedded and rings of a chain that cross the entire city landscape.

Today there are three main housing movements active in Rome: The “Coordinamentocittadino di lotta per la casa”, “Action” and “Blocchi Precari Metropolitani” (BPM). Rela-tionship among them can vary from collaboration to conflict. The coordination among threegroups only emerged in 2012, with the informal institution of the network called ‘Movimentiper il diritto all’abitare’ (Movements for the right to the house). They entertain also differ-ent contacts with institutions. “Action”, for examples, is open to confrontation with policymakers and they managed, in 2008, to have one of its member elected as councillor in themunicipality of Rome. Recently, the scandal of ‘Mafia Capitale’ recognised councillors of“Action” as implicated in the affair. That episode signed the collision with the other twomovements. At the current state of the art, many squats are performed by “Coordinamento”in collaboration with BPM. In the following subsection I will focus on the performance of“Coordinamento” to show how its presence on the territory is going to increase thanks tothe daily practices aim at combining the attempt to face the housing necessity and the willto promote an alternative counter hegemonic strategy against the neo-liberal city.

5.1 Coordinamento cittadino di lotta per la casa

Coordinamento cittadino di lotta per la casa is the first organised movement on the rightto the house in Rome. The inception of the movement is marked by the the occupation,in 1988, of 350 apartments of council housing, situated in San Basilio, a north-west quietperipheral neighbourhood, that public administration were leaving with no recipients andwith no waiting lists. After San Basilio many occupations and manifestations followed inthe later 80th and 90th. In few years the number of participants increased and protests

9The document, termed ‘The will to knowledge’ quoting Foucault, is the result of a common work doneby associations, social centres and committees of the neighbourhood San Lorenzo. All these forms of partic-ipation are gathered together under the network ‘Free republic of San Lorenzo’. The text is available here:http://www.liberarepubblicadisanlorenzo.it/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/la-volont\unhbox\

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web-150417.pdf

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organised by ‘Coordinamento’ obtained an identity, being recognised by politicians and allthe society.

Since the beginning, the movement was one of the principal urban actors pressuringfor the housing issue. Today the movement is rooted in many neighbourhoods and itsactivities are driven by the conviction that “ri-appropriation is the only way to overturnproblems voluntarily unresolved by institutions” (Armati: 2015: 200-201). Its activitiesare mainly three: to squat new buildings, to safeguard the already squatted ones and toorganise manifestations and sieges in order to press institutions for the construction of councilbuildings. If the manifestations are isolated moments (even if frequent ones) the research ofnew buildings and the safeguard of old ones, are constant day by day practices. As expressedby activists, squats and resistances against eviction are not strategical behaviours decidedby leadership but possibilities for people to create autonomies (Armati: 2015).

The period taken into account, 2011-2013, was intense for the struggle for the housein general and for ‘Coordinamento’ in particular. Many buildings have been occupied andmany others resisted against the eviction. In that period local administration recognised 31squatted buildings10. Among them, 10 buildings were squatted by ‘Coordinamento’ and 4with the collaboration of other movements. Old schools, hotels, factories occupied were, andare, houses for a really significant number of people. They hosted, and in many cases arestill hosting, from 10 to 600 families. One of the biggest squat is the one of Via Battistiniin the neighbourhood Primavalle, squatted the 28 jun 2013 and now hosting 368 families(Armati: 2015).

What characterise, and maybe distinguish ‘Coordinamento’ are fundamentally three as-pects: the internal organisation, the capability of resistance and the transversality of action.

Organisation-The high number of people that ‘Coordinamento’ brings to the squares andstreets is just one of the visible effect of the internal organisation of the movement. Movementis organised through four help desks placed in squatted buildings in different parts of the city.Here activists provide, to interested people, the first informations concerning what squat isabout and furnish also the knowledge about housings normative and laws. As expressed inthe web site, the “ ‘housing points’ are the occasions to met people in the same situationand to realise that alternatives exist”. To reach the help desk is the first step to “constructtogether mobilisations, answers and solution”11. High degree of organisation occurs in dailylife.

Far away from being roof under which everything is admitted and right, the squats arespaces to lead on the cause of squatting. For this reasons people must participate in themanifestations and in the recurring meetings. Meetings occur, for each building, once a weekand at least one member for family has to participate. During the reunions are discussedthe organisational issues concerning the life in the squat and also problems concerning thefamilies. As interviewed said me, the problems of one person is the problem of the entirecommunity. Meetings are also physical spaces where people spend time together to figure

10Recognised by public administration does not mean recognised as legal ones. 32 is the number of illegallysquatted buildings inscribed in the public registers.

11Web site is: http://www.coordinamento.info/index.php/sportelli

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out problems. Episodes of domestic violence or criminal acts as trafficking or theft, if allthe building agree, can also be punished with expulsion. As activists explained, this is doin order to avoid phenomenon of free-riderism and criminalities that could make easy theidentification of squat with a space for the illegal market.

In the meeting is discussed also the relation with the territory. This issue, not alwaystaken into account in the first stages of the movement, is becoming more and more importantfor activists. Characteristics of neighbourhood in which squats take place let emerge syner-gies or contrasts between squatters and inhabitants: how to improve socialisation betweeninside and outside is considered an important problem to face in order to avoid the riskof a trade off between territory and squats.Once a week take place also meetings betweenall squats of the movement spread in the city. One person, the delegate, of each buildinghas to participate in order to discuss new steps of the struggle. Here is decided if andwhere to occupy new buildings, the modalities and timing of new manifestations or how tostop evictions. In the occasion of general assemblies, theoretical aspects and practical onesare treated together and combined. Meetings represent the moments to think and rethinkterms, contentious and challenges of the urban struggles. The organisation become clear dur-ing manifestations. Occupants converge in the interested point coming from really differentparts of the city by worth of mouth and avoiding police. Thanks to internal organisations,activists are able to guard the buildings for days and inform the other hosts to come incase of police intervention. All this concerns the coordination of hundreds of people in fewminutes.

Capability of resistance -The capability to resist violence comes in primis from the bignumbers on which they can count and from the preparation and monitoring of the situation.Resistance against eviction successes thanks to the people able to funnel into the interestedplace. Counting on hundred of families in the same and in other buildings, occupants areliterally able to hold one’s own to policeman. People engaged are able to resist physicallyagainst policemen and, not rarely, to force them to retreat. Resistance is demonstrateduring the manifestations. Sieges can take place for many days. Coming from tens years ofprotesting actions, many techniques have been proved to not give up. 2013 is the year ofmany squats but also of many avoided eviction. Resistance against eviction can be physicaland symbolical. One technique adopted by squatters is to climb on the top of roofs tosimulate a barricade of hundred of bodies. Sometimes the vision of many people on the topof the buildings is enough to force policemen to come back.

Depending on political strategies adopted by public administrators, skin to skin is lookedfor. Even if police intervention is not always let known in advance, the resistance is effectivethanks to the exercise of an horizontal organisation and democracy (Armati: 2015). Finally,what pays in resistance is the strong ties between members of the same community. Tiesbased not on emotional and sentimental familiar relations but on political and ethical con-ception. All people marginalised by profit-oriented logic of capitalistic city are “comrade”,united by a denied right and by the need to overturn the situation. All the “comrade” areready to resist for themselves as well as for the others.

Transversality -Pluralism and transversality could be the keywords of the movement.

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‘Coordinamento’ conduces its struggle but it is ready to support other struggles recognisedas antagonist of the same enemy: the paradigm that allow speculation and dis-appropriationof the spaces. Activists are ready to join other activists in all part of Italy. An exampleis the struggle against the high speed train that in July of 2013 conducted many activistsof ‘Coordinamento’ in Val di Susa to protest and to be, in some cases, incarcerated. Samesolidarity was demonstrate in Bologna when ‘Coordinamento’ joined workers of the factoryGranaiolo that were protesting with picket lines against low salaries.

Transversal is also the way trough which movement cross the city. Squats map a newcity: the one of contentious and resilience. Under the coordination of ‘Coordinamento’,neighbourhoods stop to be isolated cities inside the city and became moments to articulatedifferently the spaces, to convert distances and to practice different urban dynamics. Squat-ted spaces stop to be forgotten schools, streets, offices and become the visible proofs thatmarginal borders can be overturned into the centres of another city, a city able to reshapedistances and degradation.

Transversal and multiple are also the features of squatted buildings. Depending on peo-ple animating the squat and on the qualities and position of neighbourhood in which it riseup, squat can produce different experiences. An example is the squatted factory of PortoFluviale, occupied by ‘Coordinamento’ in 2003 and now an heterogeneous site where need ofhousing is interconnected with multi cultural and artistic experiences (Pisano: 2013). PortoFluviale is one of the main examples that show how the division between squats for necessityand squats for cultural aims is more theoretical than practical in the reality of Rome. Het-erogeneous as the social and geographical background of people living there, Porto Fluvialeis also the mirror of the complexity and contradictions of the entire society.

During the three years considered much of the alternative history of Rome has beenwritten. The three features resumed above, consented to movement to undertake manysignificant actions. Combining capability of organisation, attitude to resistance and hetero-geneous composition, between 2011 and 2013 Coordinamento cittadino di lotta per la casawas the protagonist of an increasing number of occupations thanks to the ‘tsunami tour’,the venture that gathered together all the movements for the housing right in the city. The‘tsunami tour’ consisted in a spectacular event: a series of full scale mobilisations and squatsoccurred at the same time in different parts of the city. The first ‘tsunami’ took place the6 december 2012 and the second one on 16 april 2013. In both episodes more than 10buildings were firstly occupied and then defended by occupant people, activists and neigh-bouring inhabitants. In particular, 2013 was not just the years of many occupations butalso a period of an increasing popular pressure on housing demand. After ‘tsunami tour’institutions understand what they suspected before: that movement was becoming an actorthat administration cannot ignore anymore.

The 26 April 2013 at about 1000 activists reached the building of Lazio Region andobtained the meeting with all the exponents of the majority. The request was one: to findmoney to construct council housings. Request accepted: the Region engaged in a deliberationfor the housing emergency for 200 millions of euro. The deliberation will be approved the

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15 january 2014 but the real win was another one. Pressure acted forced institutions torecognise the legitimacy of movements (Armati: 2015). Moreover, the Region announcedthe establishment of a negotiating table between institutions and movements to verify thefulfilment of housing plan. The success was concrete one, because Region moved backwardin the privatisation practices, and political, because the requests made by movements wererecognised as well-founded.

Determination and supervision enacted by ‘Coordinamento’ were perceived as dangerousby institutions also with the manifestation of 18 and 19 october 2013 when the movementsactive in Rome filled streets and squares collecting activists coming from all parts of Italy.Under the demand for the house were summarised all the topics denied: instruction, salary,jobs, wealth, rights (Armati: 2015). The manifestation was literally a concrete requestand also an attempt to change the terms of the debates, to create new alliances betweencategories. As expressed by the activist Cristiano Armati in his book: “In the manifestationof 19 october walked in the streets the misery, not parties or trade unions. What 19 octoberproposed was not a electoral program but frontline struggle against capitalism” (Armati:2015: 106). Not representative and evocative manifestation, the 19 october, as well all 2013,was the first act able, if not yet impact, at least to let recognised movements as interlocutorsof institutions.

Impacts of movement on urban fabric are undeniable. Evictions of a large number ofpeople are one of the most dramatic events that squatters can suffer and, with them, theentire city. Avoiding many evictions and providing a roof for an huge number of peoplerepresent, by itself, an important impact on the urban fabric. But what ‘Coordinamento’obtained, once a time combining necessity and cultural reframe, is to be recognised, by socialfield, not just as protestor but as political actor able to imagine and perform solutions. Recentyears demonstrate how movement is going to represent a cardinal point for an alternativecity and not just for homeless people.

6 Between resistance and resilience: concluding re-

marks for further researches

This paper, far away from being an exhaustive dissertation on what the current movementsfor the housing right are, wanted to be the opportunity to reflect upon the big variety ofissues gravitating towards the struggle for the house. In particular the paper underlined howthe transversality of the current movements is the added value that let them be actors moreand more important in shaping urban dynamics.

In this regard, Rome is a paradigmatic case study according to the long tradition in thehousing movements and activism but also for the particularity of urban and social fabric.Participation from below is rooted in a territory quite forgotten by local policy makers. Suc-cessors of the 70th urban social movements, the housing ones are working in the vacuumleaved by a total absent public administration and in spaces at the mercy of speculators andland owners. The marginality enslaving Rome is the result of a capitalistic paradigm gov-

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erning cities, of the gap produced by an excluding and profit-oriented logic. But marginalityis also the occasion to recovered gaps and show failures of neo-liberalism. The struggles forthe house represent exactly this overturning.

Squats in Rome become more and more spread: starting from external areas, they arenow involving central neighbourhoods. All the squats connected together design a new city inwhich spaces are differently used and new alternatives are plotted. New sense of communityand democracy is, basically, what in spaces managed by movements is performed. Recallingthe ‘right to the city’, activists are letting exist a new way of experiencing social field. Asexpressed by Harvey: “the right to the city is far more than the individual liberty to accessurban resources: it is the right to change ourselves by changing the city. It is, moreover, acommon rather than an individual right since this transformation inevitably depends uponthe exercise of a collective power to reshape the process of urbanisation”(2008: 2). Squattedbuildings practice what have been already showed by the history: that the self-made manis not the beginning of the contemporaneity but its product: “L’homo œconomicus it’s notin front of but behind us: as the moral, rational, scientific man. Human being has beendifferent, just recently he became a machine; more exactly a calculating machine” (Mauss:1950). Around the house converge all the fundamental rights denied to contemporaneity.So, focusing on these practices means to take into account democracy and its contradictions.

House is demanded and pretended as a fundamental right, the starting condition sinequa non people cannot be part of the social field. But the term ‘housing’ represent notonly having a roof but also the possibility of redefining citizenship norms and of challengingpolicies constructing the city (Mudu: 2014). Right to the house is the purest demand madein the Right to the city. Final goal is changing the living condition, changing the city andourselves. More than manifestations, movements are identifiable with the spaces that are ableto open, reuse and transform. Different spatiality is a daily concrete practice that embodythe resistance. In this sense resistance deals with an attitude, as Tilly points out:“resistancedeals with everyday life rather than concentrating on rare moments of concerted action”(Tilly: 1991: 596). “Free spaces” taken into account are places where the daily resistancefind a way to be performed and acted.

If resistance is more than the protest action, “free spaces” are more than just squattedspaces; they are ‘physical site of resistance’ . A space is “free” not when is released by conflictsbut when conflicts can be faced without falling in a dichotomous perspective. Dominants andresisters are implied into the same relation of power: “dichotomising resisters and dominatorsignores the fact that there are multiple system of hierarchy, and that individuals can besimultaneously powerful and powerless within different system” (Hollander and Einwohner:2004: 550). We cannot liberate the space if we denied a relation that continues to determineus. To overturn domain, we have to act in the same relation, in the same space but withdifferent frame and meanings.

Finally, “free spaces” are spaces where resistance and resilience converge, where withprotest born alternatives. Resistance of the movements become the resilience of the neigh-bourhood, of the city (Catteneo and Engels-Di Mauro: 2015). The transforming power ofcurrent urban housing movements is exactly this one: to combine concrete needs and cultural

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and symbolic urgencies. As an activist said me: “we are all different, people squatting housescomes from different social groups, from different nations, they have different jobs and theyspeaks different languages. What all have in common is a necessity”. Just starting from thiscommon need we can think and perform new cultural frames. The attempt to combine thetwo aspects is the moment in which resistance becomes resilience, answers, alternatives.

This research is just the starting point, an approach proposed to analyse what movementsare and how to interpret their repertoire of actions. The focus on the space is fundamentalbecause space is both the starting point of these movements but also what they aim atchanging. Linking global and local (Piazza: 2013), they are acting in the neighbourhood notjust as a level of action but also as the microcosmos at the basis of any possible change. Theunderstanding of movements for housing rights proceeds in contemporaneity with politicaland social actions.

However, even if fundamental, the relationship between housing movements and the urbanfabric is not yet deeply inquired. What is the link between territory and movements? Hasthe territory a role in shaping the their perfomances? Are these movements representativeof the environment? All these questions should be taken into account for further researches.Focusing on the space can open perspectives and get complex the picture but, as movementsdemonstrate, nothing proceeds from simple to complex, not the history and not the life.The next step should be to recognise our implication, as political scientists, social actors andcitizens in the process that we want to analyse an to decide where to place our activity; ifby the side of the theoretical answers and conclusions or by the one of the constant, neverended social practices.

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