From squat to cottage: materiality, informal ownership, and the politics of unspotted homes

Abstract

‘Homeless’ people are usually considered as citizens without property. The absence of ownership, especially in terms of housing, co-creates the very idea of homelessness in current societies. Despite this fact, ‘homeless’ citizens negotiate and experience their property, things, or the shelter in which they dwell. This paper sheds light on how this property is negotiated and experienced and how it influences home-making. It does so by drawing on long-term ethnographic research in the city of Pilsen, a second-order city in Czechia. Based on the intra-urban comparison of informal dwelling in two abandoned buildings – a former railway station tower and an allotment cottage – the paper conceptualize the unspotted home and argues that it arises from the assemblage of socio-materiality, meanings, and various dimensions of politics, where the politics of home-ownership has an important position. While informal ownership here is related to power asymmetry within home-making, paradoxically, it also brings about more complex informal citizenship and the potential for political action.

Keywords:

• Homelessness
• unspotted homes
• materiality
• citizenship
• home-ownership
• informal dwelling

Acknowledgments

I am grateful for the inspiration and long-term friendship of all my informants from Koterov and the Chata, especially to Pavel and Petra. Also, I would like to thank Bára Vacková, Gina Caison, Michal Růžička, and Petr Gibas for their inspiring suggestions and guidance; and the participants of the Matters Turn Political panel of the RC21 conference in Antwerp for their keen insights and comments. Any errors are, of course, mine alone. The research for this article was partially sponsored by the Central European University Foundation of Budapest. The theses herein represent my own ideas and do not necessarily reflect the opinion of the Central European University Foundation of Budapest/Közép-európai Egyetem Institute for Advanced Study. The paper builds on material and extends arguments that I separately mentioned in my recent book on homelessness in Czechia (Na jedné lodi: Globalizace a bezdomovectví v českém městě, 2020) and in a chapter on DIY (‘Je tam úplně nejlíp’: Sociomaterialita, svépomoc a alternativní politika domova v českém stanovém městečku, 2020).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In the European context, the ETHOS typology is used to distinguish between four groups of homeless people: (1) roofless (i.e. living rough), (2) houseless (e.g. institutional settings), (3) insecure (e.g. squat), and (4) inadequate (e.g. a trailer) (Edgar & Meert, 2005). In contrast to this typology, I do not define ‘homelessness’ primarily in terms of housing. I understand the actors studied herein as the poorest class (Vašát, 2012). The people featured in this paper have lived over the years in all categories of the above typology, including conventional dwellings. Therefore, I view ‘homelessness’ as an entirely dynamic phenomenon with its specific culture, where housing represents one of the culture’s dimensions.

2 In order to ascribe meanings and a sense of place to both places, I have used original Czech expressions in italics (Chata, Koterov). On the other hand, when referring to the physical structure of objects, I have employed English translations, such as ‘cottage’ or ‘tower’. The term ‘squat’ can have both meanings; however, I have applied it primarily in the second, descriptive mode.

3 In the paper, I prefer the term ‘socio-materiality’, as it better captures the predicament of the entangled agency of things and humans. However, as the notion of ‘materiality’ is more common in the literature on which the paper is based, I use both terms synonymously here.

4 For the last entry was n = 238.

5 Unlike McFarlane et al. (2017), however, I stay in the context of one city and don’t make the case for the ‘componentary relationality’ to other cities.

6 Zfoukaný is the street-connected expression for being high and under the influence of methylbenzene (toluene). A person gets high by inhaling the substance, typically a solvent.

7 Quasi-households represent specific socio-economic units typical of (Czech) street culture. Members of the quasi-household share a shelter, cooperate in everyday practices and jointly distribute and consume their goods (Vašát, 2013). Unlike ‘traditional’ households, which are mainly related to nuclear families, quasi-households usually also include more members and/or are formed by friendship ties (rather than via the family or partner).

8 Homeless people in Czechia are very much aware of society’s dominant views and stigmatization of them (Vašát, 2020a, Vašát, 2021). The specific embodiment of this stigmatization is the image of the ‘real homeless’ (Vašát, 2021). In the context of post-socialist Czechia, this takes the form of an elderly man, typically bearded, with long hair, who wears old, worn and dirty clothes, who most often hangs around train stations, various shops or supermarkets, or possibly the busy streets of a city and can be found sitting on benches or elsewhere in the public space. He is considered to be a person who ‘does not want to do anything about his situation’ and ‘just survives’. Thus, squats and, to a lesser extent, encampments or the street itself, have become a crucial element in the construction of a resistant identity through which people resist the idea of the ‘real homeless’ (Vašát, 2021).

9 In the case of younger people on the street in Czechia, this is a relatively common experience. In our survey from 2016 (see Bernard, et al. 2018), approximately 1/4 of respondents under the age of 30 mentioned a disagreement with parents as one of the four causes of their loss of stable housing.

10 Dostihy a sázky (Betting on Horses) is a board game based on the principles of Monopoly.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Petr Vašát

Petr Vašát is an anthropologist and senior researcher at the Czech Academy of Sciences, Institute of Sociology. His research is focused on the comparative study of architecture/design and poverty; informality and city; and the temporal, spatial, and social dimensions of ‘street culture’. He has conducted his research in Czech and Colombian cities.