Beyond proper political squatting: exploring individualistic need-based occupations in a public housing neighbourhood in Naples

Abstract

The public and academic debate about urban squatting in Western cities has been dominated by research on collectively organized, politically-motivated occupations. By contrast, occupations promoted to fulfil urgent housing needs by uncoordinated urban poor without any connection with activists (i.e. need-based squatting) have been far less explored. The present paper contributes to filling this research gap concerning squatting as a sheltering strategy by marginalized individuals. To this end, this article focuses on the overlooked phenomenon of the illegal occupation of public buildings for residential purposes in Italy that occurs outside any explicit political framework. In particular, it provides an ethnographic investigation of a case of squatting in an abandoned school located in a public housing neighbourhood in Naples. This investigation is the basis for the conceptualization of a specific type of need-based squatting, that is to say ‘individualistic squatting’, whose specific features (including its distinct political character) are highlighted, together with its peculiarity vis-à-vis other types of need-based squatting.

Keywords:

• squatting
• occupations
• public housing
• illegality
• informality
• poverty

Acknowledgements

This article is the result of the combined research activity undertaken by the two authors. Both authors contributed to conceiving the article, defining the methodology, building the theoretical framework and writing (and reviewing) the manuscript. The fieldwork has been conducted by Emiliano Esposito, during his Ph.D. research supervised by Francesco Chiodelli.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In this paper, we will use the term squatting in narrow terms, with reference only to the occupation of buildings in European and North American cities. For a discussion about the different meanings of squatting with reference to the so-called ‘global South’ and ‘global North’, see Aguilera and Smart (2017).

2 We do not intend to uncritically support the dichotomy between need-based and proper political (or radical) squatting that has been convincingly challenged by several authors (see for instance Mudu and Chattopadhyay, 2017). However, we think that, for analytical purposes, it is useful to distinguish between cases of squatting in which the political component is prevalent (or, at least, very relevant) and cases in which squatting is driven essentially to satisfy housing needs (see Figure 1).

3 We do not yet know the negative effects of the pandemic crisis on housing in Italy, but we can presume that it has worsened the Italian housing crisis even further (Chiodelli, 2020).

4 Other initiatives like rent-supplement schemes have been marginal, as has social housing (Bargelli and Heitkamp, 2017a). By public housing, we mean housing built directly by public authorities and assigned to households that fulfil specific socio-economic criteria, offering very low rent; access to public housing occurs through rankings compiled at municipal level; these rankings prioritise the more disadvantaged households. Public housing does not include so-called ‘social housing’ [edilizia convenzionata], a term which in Italy refers to housing built by private developers with their own funds on the basis of specific agreements with public authorities. Social housing is sold or rented out below market rates but, despite this, it is not economically accessible to low-income households.

5 Occasionally, this illegal trading of a public flat is later legalised, taking advantage of loopholes in the law on hereditary transfer of the right to occupy a public dwelling unit. For further details on this practice (the so-called ‘fraudulent takeover’), see Esposito and Chiodelli (2020).

6 In a southern European country like Italy family is deemed to be the third pillar of housing provision alongside the market and the State (Arbaci, 2007; Bargelli and Heitkamp, 2017b).

7 Literally people who live in basements. It is a Neapolitan word that refers to people who lives in non-residential spaces, such as basements.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Emiliano Esposito

Emiliano Esposito ([email protected]) obtained his PhD in Urban studies at the Gran Sasso Science Institute with a thesis entitled ‘From squatted public house to squatted public home: unpacking the informal occupation of public housing in Italy’. From September 2021 he will be a postdoctoral research fellow at the Geography Department, University of Manchester. His research focuses on housing informalities in the urban context with reference to the several forms that housing struggle can take. His investigations aim to explore the complex meanings of home and dwelling at the margins of the city. He employs ethnographic and visual research methods. He recently published ‘Our Lady of Squatters: housing and religion’ (in Visual Ethnography, 2019) and ‘Juggling the formal and the informal: The regulatory environment of the illegal access to public housing in Naples’ (in Geoforum, 2019).

Francesco Chiodelli

Francesco Chiodelli ([email protected]) is Associate Professor of urban and legal geography at the University of Turin (Italy), where is the director of OMERO – Interdepartmental Research Centre for Urban Studies. His research centres on questions of illegality and informality in the urban sphere, focusing in particular on their complex nexus with public institutions. He also works on issues of urban pluralism and diversity, as well as on the social effects of spatial regulation more generally. His papers have appeared in international journals such as Urban Studies, Political Geography, International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Urban Geography, Planning Theory, Progress in Planning, Town Planning Review, Geoforum, Planning Theory and Practice. He has recently published ‘Shaping Jerusalem. Spatial planning, politics and the conflict’ (Routledge, 2017) and co-edited ‘The Illicit and Illegal in the Governance and Development of Cities and Regions: Corrupt Places’ (Routledge, 2018)