Social Movements and Alternative Housing Models: Practicing the “Politics of Possibilities” in Spain

Abstract

The paper introduces Gibson-Graham’s conceptualization of the “politics of possibilities” to housing studies in order to reveal how alternatives to the neoliberal housing model can be practiced here and now through the action of social movements. Centred on the main current Spanish social movement around housing, the Plataforma de los Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), the paper shows how Gibson-Graham’s conceptualization, built around three moments (the “politics of language”; the “politics of the subject”; the “politics of collective action”) offers the possibility to understand the main political importance of subject and place as drivers of change and practice of alternative models. Indeed, the paper shows how the core of PAH’s political repertoire has consisted in disrupting the neoliberal model of “personal responsibilization” in order to set a variegated model of housing. The proliferation of the PAH all around the Spanish country and the politicization it favoured raise important questions for Spanish contemporary politics.

Key words:

• Spain
• PAH
• Alternative housing models
• Social movements
• Politics of possibilities

Notes

1. Beyond the weekly open meetings representing a common characteristic for any node of the PAH, the Sabadell node has introduced another group, the “support”, meeting on a weekly basis. As suggested by the name, the main aim is that attendants support each other by discussing any relevant concern, even if not strictly related to housing (for further explanation, see Section “The Politics of the Subject”). During my fieldwork, the weekly meetings of the support group were attended by 20–42 people, the majority of attendants being women (between 60 and 80%).

2. EMF data on homeownership rates differ from EU-SILC/Eurostat data reported also by the Spanish National Institute of Statistics. According to EU-SILC/Eurostat, the homeownership rate reached its peak in Spain in 2005 (80.5%), while in 2007, it was 80.1%.

3. Data checked on the PAH website (http://afectadosporlahipoteca.com/contacto/). Last visit: 16 March 2015. The PAH nodes are regrouped for communities following the administrative division of the Spanish State.

4. Source: http://afectadosporlahipoteca.com. Data retrieved on 29 September 2015.

5. Source: ibid.

6. The Spanish mortgage law is extremely severe, forecasting that even in case of property repossession, people owe the bank the outstanding debt. With the dación en pago, the bank accepts the house to extinguish the debt.

7. Since the PAH is a highly differentiated social movement, such a statement must be localized in time and space, each node of the network privileging one of the modes of activism delineated by Gonick (2015a).

8. The scalar focus marks a deep distance between the literature on neoliberalism, that has devoted a great attention to the global scale and the urban/local–global connections (e.g. Chomsky 1999; Harvey 2005; Peck, Theodore, and Brenner 2009), and the works on the alternatives to neoliberalism, mostly focused on the local scale.