Squatting for more than housing: alternative spaces and struggles for the right to the city in three urban areas in Brazil, Spain, and the Basque Country

• Ano de defesa: 2020
• Autor(a) principal: Clarissa Cordeiro de Campos
• Orientador(a): Rita de Cássia Lucena Velloso
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Tipo de acesso: Acesso aberto
• Idioma: eng
• Instituição de defesa: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
• Programa de Pós-Graduação: Programa de Pós-Graduação em Arquitetura e Urbanismo
• Departamento: ARQ - ESCOLA DE ARQUITETURA
• País: Brasil
• Palavras-chave em Português: Urban squatting movements; Differential space; Heterotopias; Right to the city
• Link de acesso: http://hdl.handle.net/1843/34119; https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4535-4964

This research proposes that the space produced in urban squats greatly contributes to changes in how people relate to each other, their world views, and, ultimately, to changes in their social relations. As a start point, it assumes that urban space is at the same time a product and a conditioner of social relations, traditionally controlled by urban planning, which usually favors the interests of the ruling classes. Nonetheless, once space is socially produced, it also carries an emancipatory potency, well known by several urban social movements that have in insurgent spatial practices important tools of resistance against contemporary neoliberal policies. In this sense, this study aims at discussing urban social movements that have as their primary form of action the unauthorized occupation of urban property, in the context of struggles for housing and the right to the city, specifically squatting movements, in the Metropolitan Region of Belo Horizonte, Brazil, in the city of Madrid, Spain, and six municipalities of the Basque Country, within Spanish territorial limits, focusing, but not restricted to the last ten years. As studies on both contexts have mostly focused on particular cases or regions, without engaging in an intercontinental perspective, this study also aims at contributing to filling this gap. From a methodological point of view, it has a qualitative and comparative approach, with data collection from documental and bibliographic research and case studies, while suggesting a critical use of Lefebvre’s notions of differential spaces as opposed to abstract spaces, and the right to the city; and Foucault’s concept of heterotopias as key theoretical lenses. Contextual differences, distinctive forms of appropriation, transformation, and use of space, related repercussions, and challenging issues, especially concerning self-management processes, networking, criminalization, and other legal aspects, are discussed in each case. At the same time as it is argued that housing injustice and other forms of socio-spatial oppression have been the main reasons for unauthorized occupations in all three contexts, this study also suggests that squatters’ struggles are intimately connected to a broader dispute for the right to the city.