Evictions Research Papers - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

In this paper we analyze the historical roots of neoliberal housing policies, mottos and principles in Italy and Spain, two countries with a Mediterranean welfare regime, showing how they are embedded in the twentieth century fascist-dictatorial regimes of Mussolini and Franco. To stimulate economic growth in a situation of autarchy, both regimes saw the construction sector and the promotion of homeownership as keys to fuel the accumulation process while believing this guaranteed social order. After acknowledging these long-standing roots, we show how the current phase of neoliberalism, characterized by severe austerity policies, relies on similar principles, the main reforms approved in both countries proceeding mainly towards cuts to service provisions and resources, while the promotion of homeownership remains unchallenged.
Keywords: neoliberalism; housing policy; austerity policies; Mediterranean welfare regime; Italy; Spain

- by and +1
- •
- Italian Studies, Welfare State, Fascism, Housing Policy

Debt and personal indebtedness have become a global problem as consumption-driven economies have spread across the world. These days, outstanding consumer debt is a normal feature of many economies and for a large number of people, the source of great mental distress. However, an understanding of personal debt requires an understanding of the complex social systems that produce poverty. This book frames credit use as a social phenomenon, and explores the dynamic interplays between consumers who need credit and credit granting institutions. By drawing upon a range of international perspectives, this book sheds much needed light on the social and psychological factors that contribute to the growth of personal debt and its associated impact on wellbeing. In so doing, the book contributes to an understanding of why more and more people are in debt, why it is causing so much harm to so many people and exactly who is benefiting from what has become the world's number one growth industry.
Edited by Serdar M. Degirmencioglu & Carl Walker.
Hardcover 9781137407788. forthcoming in June 2015.

Dutch local authorities are entitled to close down a building because of drug-related crime. After closure, occupiers are not allowed to live there for a while. The number of closures because of drug-related crime increases. Although the closure of a home is a most serious interference with the right to respect for one’s private life and home, the procedure has not been analyzed systematically. This paper provides the first statistic empirical analysis of litigation concerning drug-related closures of homes in the Netherlands. The paper contains some first conclusions about the characteristic features of cases about drug-related closures, based on the statistical analysis. The results show, inter alia, the relation between the type of drugs and the judicial decision. Moreover, the results provide insight in the line of reasoning of the mayor, occupiers and judge with regard to the closure of a home.

- by Michel Vols and +1
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- Housing, Drug Policy, Evictions, Cannabis
- by Nausheen H Anwar
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- Infrastructure Planning, Urban Planning, Pakistan, Urbanism

Apartheid was a regime of socio-spatial relegation: racialised populations were banished to South Africa's urban peripheries and rural hinterlands. In the post-apartheid period, the ruling ANC framed its democratisation project as remedial , a corrective to centuries of dispossession. This entailed government providing the physical infrastructure required for black South Africans to return to cities, not as precarious squatters on the urban fringe, but as residents with an equal right to the city. Yet, more than a quarter century later, little progress has been made in any substantive sense. While South Africa has delivered more free, formal housing units than any other modern democracy, it has consistently failed to coordinate this programme with employment, transportation, and food security initiatives. This has left residents with homes to be sure, but typically delivered to locations where residents already live, rendering the geography of apartheid permanent. This chapter also accounts for the substandard quality of the units delivered; the slow pace of delivery ; and the fact that the housing backlog continues to grow despite the ongoing provision of homes. It concludes with an analysis of the exclusionary effects of the government's equation of housing delivery with democratisation tout court.

Häußermann und Siebel konzeptionalisierten 1993 mit der Festivalisierungsthese die stadtpolitische Instrumentalisierung von Großereignissen. Seither haben sich die Events und die theoretische Auseinandersetzung verändert. Hinsichtlich der Megaevents lassen sich derzeit zwei Trends beobachten: 1. der enorme ökonomische wie politische Bedeutungsgewinn der Events und 2. die Events finden immer häufiger im ‚Globalen Süden‘ statt. Dieser Beitrag untersucht die urbanen Bedingungen und Effekte von Megaevents am Beispiel Rio de Janeiros. Der Fokus liegt auf den in zumeist informell organisierten Wohngebieten einkommensschwacher Gruppen, auf den favelas, die sich als besonders sensibles Wirkungsfeld der Festivalisierung erweisen. Im Zuge der Auseinandersetzung mit den urbanen Effekten entwickeln wir eine analytische Perspektive, die sich auf andere Gastgeberstädte im Globalen Süden übertragen lässt. Thematisiert werden exkludierende Strategien und marktimperiale Effekte der Eventvorbereitung...

- by Christoph Haferburg and +1
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- Urban Geography, Economics of Football (soccer), Mega Events As Catalysts For Regeneration, Urban Planning
- by Julia Tulke
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- Tourism Studies, Gentrification, Urban Graffiti, Contemporary Graffiti
- by Eliška Lindovská and +1
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- Homelessness, Radical Social Movements, Radical Social Work, Evictions

Die historische Sonderstellung Wiens im Bereich Wohnungspolitik ist wohlbekannt. Stärker als in vielen anderen Städten spielte in der Politikformulierung der Bedarf nach adäquater Behausung eine gewichtige Rolle gegenüber der Sicherung... more

- by Justin Kadi
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- Gentrification, Housing, Vienna, Evictions

Het recht op huisvesting kan worden geëffectueerd via de burgerlijke en politieke grondrechten Mr. Vital E.H. Moors Huisvesting is een basale levensbehoefte, maar is ook medebepalend voor de identiteit en het welbevinden van de persoon.1 Het huis is de plaats, het fysiek bepaald gebied, waar het privé-en gezinsleven zich ontwikkelt.2 Huisvesting is essentieel voor de ontwikkeling van het individu omdat het toegang biedt tot een sociaal netwerk, betere kansen voor werkgelegenheid3 en participatie en integratie4 in de samenleving5. Het recht op huisvesting als een mensenrecht ontspringt niet uit de kwestie van burgerschap, maar vanuit het mens-zijn zelf.6 Het recht op huisvesting houdt in dat iedereen toegang heeft tot ten minste standaard huisvesting waarmee ook de bescherming van de persoonlijke levenssfeer samenhangt. Dit is van fundamenteel belang niet alleen voor het individu en zijn familie maar ook voor de stabiliteit en continuïteit van de samenleving.7 Daarom kan zelfs worden betoogd dat zonder het sociale grondrecht op huisvesting de realisatie van de klassieke grondrechten weinig om het lijf heeft. Welke betekenis heeft het verbod om zonder toestemming de woning te betreden8 als je geen woning hebt? Dit wordt onderschreven in de slotverklaring van de VN-Wereldconferentie Mensenrechten van Wenen in 1993 die benadrukt dat alle mensenrechten universeel, onscheidbaar, onderling afhankelijk en samenhangend zijn.9 Dit pleit voor een convergente benadering van de mensenrechten.10 In dit artikel wordt onderzocht hoe het recht op huisvesting verder is geconcretiseerd en geëffectueerd via burgerrechterlijke en politieke grondrechten. Door de nadere precisering van de sociale grondrechten onder meer door de toezichtorganen op deze verdragen, lenen de sociale grondrechten zich steeds beter voor rechterlijke toetsing.11 Na een schets van het internationale en nationaal juridisch kader van het recht op wonen zal worden ingegaan op twee casussen namelijk de huisvesting van woonwagenbewoners en van niet rechtmatig in Nederland verblijvende vreemdelingen. Beide onderwerpen zijn niet alleen actueel maar geven ook aan hoe internationaal verdragsrechtelijke bepalingen elkaar kunnen versterken.

- by Vital E H Moors
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- Human Rights, Housing, Asylum seekers, Roma and Sinti in Europe

This thesis is about renoviction – the process of evicting tenants through renovations, but more generally, it is about displacement. The geographical context is the contemporary practice of renoviction in Sweden, generally, and in the municipality of Uppsala, specifically. The history of displacement in a Swedish context cannot be captured solely through the concept of renoviction however. Other mechanisms have also been primary drivers of displacement, so this thesis is not solely about renoviction but about displacements more generally. By highlighting displacement and the displaced, I hope to contribute to a radicalization of research that for long has focused on the middle-class experience of urbanism in studies on gentrification and beyond.

- by Emil Pull
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- Critical Theory, Geography, Phenomenology, Gentrification

Fuori casa. Antropologia degli sfratti a Milano […] offre un importante contributo antropologico all’analisi critica della complessa interazione tra forme di esclusione sociale, logiche del profitto urbano e politiche abitative. Esplora la centralità dei margini a partire dal fenomeno degli sfratti e della sua articolazione nella città di Milano secondo due traiettorie principali. Da un lato interpreta quel vasto apparato sociale, politico ed economico che produce profitto dalle periferie e dai margini urbani, dotandoli di un’ambigua e inattesa centralità politica ed economica. Dall’altro promuove una riflessione antropologica che si concentra sulle nuove forme di cittadinanza all’interno di più ampi processi di costruzione della marginalità urbana. Entrambe le declinazioni si basa- no sulla produzione sociale e antropopoietica di una specifica categoria di soggetti: i senza casa. In questo senso, il testo si focalizza sul tentativo di rendere problematica la costruzione di questa forma di umanità (dalla Prefazione di Roberto Malighetti)

- by Giacomo Pozzi
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- Social Movements, Urban Anthropology, Housing Policies, Social Housing

A discourse analysis of court documents in slum-related cases from the past 25 years leads to the conclusion that the basic statement that “slums are illegal” is a very recent juridical discourse and the rise of court orders to demolish slums in Dehli is due to reinterpretation of nuisance law. The “new nuisance discourse” that arose in the early 2000s re-problematised slums as nuisances and became the primary mechanism by which slum demolitions take place at present. The paper draws conclusions on how civil law is used to violently re-create urban space in the interests of private property owners.

- by Asher Ghertner
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- Discourse Analysis, Urban Geography, Development Studies, Political Ecology

Drawing from the cases of housing squats in Rome and Turin, this article analyses potentialities and limitations of the extra-institutional refugee settlements, as well as their fate after the restrictive turns of the 2018 security decree. Building on international literature on urban informality, we highlight the social value of informal housing, as well as the importance of building on these initiatives rather than erasing them. By combining ethnographic observations, interviews and policy analysis, we compare squatting and eviction in these two urban contexts. Those experiences illustrate the key role of informal housing in the emergence of grassroots forms of social support and «acts of citizenship». Whilst those spaces are considered «unliveable» by securitarian narratives, their eviction often results in an increased vulnerability of an already vulnerable population.

- by enrico fravega and +2
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- Securitization, Urban Informality, Non linear narratives, Squatting

In property management, some reasons would make it imperative to terminate some tenancies so, tenant eviction is
almost inevitable. It is a global phenomenon, occurring in all parts of the world, both developing and developed
countries. The main thrust of this study is to assess the relative incidence of eviction in residential and commercial
properties in Ilorin metropolis. Primary data for this study including records of tenant evictions from residential and
commercial properties within the ten-year period were collected by self-administered questionnaires administered on
the 16 practising firms of Estate Surveyors and Valuers within Ilorin metropolis during the period covered by the study.
There were increasing trend in eviction during the period. Results showed that evictions from residential properties
accounted for 67.35 % while commercial properties accounted for 32.65%. The incidence of tenant eviction was higher
on residential properties while low income earners residing in tenement and block of flats are mostly affected. The
paper provides a basis for comparing the occurrence of evictions from residential and commercial properties with a
view to guiding policy makers, property managers and tenants.

- by IBRAHIM AKOGUN
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- Lease, Property Management, Facility Management, Evictions

Neste artigo queremos compartilhar um conjunto de aprendizados e reflexões alcançados pela iniciativa coletiva da Perícia Popular no Centro Histórico de Salvador (CHS). A Perícia Popular foi um espaço de colaboração urbana, criado em 2016, por meio de uma aliança entre a Associação de Moradores e Amigos do Centro Histórico de Salvador (Amach) e um grupo de estudantes, professoras e pesquisadoras da Universidade Federal da Bahia. No devir dessa colaboração, as pessoas envolvidas na Perícia Popular, incluindo as autoras deste artigo, participaram da construção de uma expertise coletiva que, dentre outras coisas, fez emergir um conjunto de questões urbanas que vinham sendo ignoradas pelos porta-vozes oficiais da cidade – particularmente, os desejos, as demandas e urgências colocadas por um grupo de moradoras organizadas na Amach. Essa prática investigativa também não restringiu seu papel a uma dimensão crítica, enunciativa ou esclarecedora. Pelo contrário, apostou por produzir um espaço de experimentação política, engajado com algumas práticas desobedientes que disputavam as formas convencionais de fazer cidade. Nomeadamente, aquelas formas de habitar divergentes das definições institucionais do Centro Histórico, que, há quase 30 anos, enfrentam a política racializada de despossessão e cercamentos urbanos executada através do Programa de Recuperação do Centro Histórico de Salvador.

In-depth studies of and attempts to theorize or conceptualize resistance to gentrification have been somewhat sidelined by attention to the causes and effects of gentrification in the now rather extensive gentrification studies literature. Yet resistance to gentrification is growing internationally and remains a (if not the) key struggle with respect to social justice in cities worldwide. In this article, we address this gap head on by (re)asserting the value of survivability for looking at resistance to gentrifications around the globe. U.S. urban scholars have been at the forefront of writing about resistance to gentrification, especially in cities like San Francisco and New York City, but in a situation of planetary gentrification it is imperative that we learn from other examples. Critically, we argue that practices of survivability can be scaled up, down, and in between, enabling the building of further possibilities in the fight against gentrification, the fight to stay put. There needs to be a stronger and more determined international conversation on the potential of antigentrification practices worldwide and here we argue that survivability has a lot to offer these conversations

- by sandra annunziata and +2
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- Urban Studies, Resistance (Social), Evictions, Gentrification and displacement
- by Gautam Bhan
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- Urban Poverty, Evictions

The Constitution radically altered the substantive norms that underpin the division, regulation and enforcement of property and housing rights in South Africa. Under the aegis of Constitutional Court, there has been a deliberate effort to bring into being a system of legally enforceable rights and duties which, when viewed as a whole, afford commensurate protection to the often conflicting interests of individuals. This process of reconstruction, however, is far from complete. One of the areas which requires further development is the law regulating evictions. As regards the rights of unlawful occupiers, it has been held that evictions that would result in homelessness may not be executed until alternative accommodation is provided by the state. Whilst this delay in the execution of an eviction order will often be commercially unbearable, landowners have been told to be patient. In this article it is argued that the existing legal scheme, without more, fails to strike a proper balance among the rights and interests of owners, occupiers and society. It is argued that this institutional failure arbitrarily deprives landowners of property and that to remedy this constitutional defect such owners must, as a rule, be afforded a compensatory remedy against the state.

- by Matthew Kruger
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- Constitutional Law, Property Law, Housing Law, South African Constituional Law

Water is one of the world's most contested resources, and Africa's river basins are no exception. In December 1993 the Great Ruaha River upstream of Tanzania's Mtera Dam stopped flowing for the first time in living memory. This became a matter of national concern in 1995 when electricity shortages and rationing in Dar es Salaam were blamed by the national power supply company (TANESCO) on the continuing drying-up of the Great Ruaha. Since then different institutions and interest groups have sought to explain the river's increasing seasonality, focusing on resource use in and around its immediate source, the Usangu wetland, and laying the blame on different groups of resource users. In 1998 the core of the wetland (Ihefu) was gazetted as part of a new game reserve, and fishermen and livestock keepers were forcibly removed. Increasing government concern over power shortages culminated in the mass expulsion in 2006–07 of livestock keepers and their cattle from Usangu and Mbarali District, large parts of which were to be incorporated in an expanded Ruaha National Park. This was the largest eviction of its kind in recent Tanzanian history, widely condemned by NGOs and in the national and international media. This article examines in detail the development of the environmental panic and events which led to this eviction, highlighting the behind-the-scenes role played by actors and interests in the public and private sectors in fostering the panic and its controversial outcome.

- by Martin Walsh
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- Rural Sociology, Environmental Science, Peace and Conflict Studies, Social Sciences
- by Alessandra Esposito
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- Gentrification, Platform Studies, Naples, Evictions

This report, which builds on a first edition published in 2013, responds to the fact that neither property owners nor municipalities have fully come to terms with the significant paradigm shift in the law relating to eviction and urban regeneration. Despite years of litigation and a host of progressive court judgments, which have substantially contributed to the constitutional right of access to adequate housing, municipalities like the City of Johannesburg are still failing to fulfill their duties in relation to evictions and the provision of alternative accommodation. The report includes the latest developments in the law relating to housing rights and evictions and aims to highlight what they have contributed towards South Africa's housing and evictions jurisprudence. Stuart Wilson co-authored the second edition of the report. The report was published by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI).

- by Michael Clark
- •
- Constitutional Law, Urban Studies, Housing, Socio Economic Rights

El presente trabajo versa sobre las medidas estatales arbitradas en ocasión de la crisis del COVID-19 en materia habitacional, tras la atención inicial de las medidas para los deudores hipotecarios y la desatención completa de medidas arrendaticias, subsanada mediante el Real Decreto-ley 11/2020. Asimismo, examina la reciente reforma que ponía fin a la suspensión de los lanzamientos de vivienda habitual de la Ley 4/2022, y a la contrarreforma, un día después, del Real Decreto-ley 3/2022 que deroga esta previsión. En este elenco de normas, se disponen diversos instrumentos para atender la necesidad habitacional sobrevenida de las personas vulnerables, cuya situación se ha ocasionado o agravado por el actual contexto: la suspensión de desahucios y de lanzamientos, la prórroga de los contratos de arrendamiento, la moratoria de la deuda del alquiler, el aplazamiento temporal en el pago de la renta, ayudas para el pago del arrendamiento mediante un aval bancario, y ayudas para el pago del arrendamiento mediante préstamos del Estado. Se atenderá especialmente a las medidas para la mantención en el uso habitacional del beneficiario de la medida, referidas a la suspensión estatal de los lanzamientos, y las medidas autonómicas de cesión obligatoria de viviendas para alquiler social, la propuesta de arrendamiento social previa a la ejecución hipotecaria, la obligación de realojamiento, y el arrendamiento con opción de compra.

- by Cristina Argelich Comelles
- •
- Civil Law, Housing, Private law, Mortgage Foreclosure

Cette thèse se penche sur la précarité résidentielle vécue par des locataires vieillissantes à faible revenu en contexte de gentrification, à Montréal. Au Québec, la thématique du vieillissement sur place a pris récemment une portée médiatique et politique grandissante dans le sillon de l’adoption de la l’article 1959.1 (projet de loi 492), qui protège maintenant certaines personnes de 70 ans et plus contre l’éviction et la reprise de logement. Par contre, force est de constater que la capacité de certaines personnes vieillissantes à vieillir dans leur logement se trouve aujourd’hui mise en jeu par des transformations urbaines diverses comme la gentrification. Bien que plusieurs études en gérontologie sociale urbaine documentent l’expérience du déplacement dit indirect chez les populations vieillissantes dans plusieurs villes du monde, les effets de la gentrification sur les rapports au logement de locataires vieillissantes sont encore méconnus. Cette recherche qualitative, basée sur un terrain d’observation de plus de 2 ans ainsi que sur 31 entretiens semi-dirigés réalisés avec des intervenantes de comités logement (n=13) et des locataires vieillissantes (n=18), donne la parole aux personnes vieillissantes elles-mêmes, en grande majorité des femmes. Le concept de précarité résidentielle, défini comme un continuum de situations rendant l’occupation du logement incertaine, inadéquate ou inabordable, dont la forme la plus extrême est l’expulsion, est divisé en quatre grandes catégories : la sécurité d’occupation, la menace directe, la menace indirecte et l’expulsion. La recherche s’intéresse tout particulièrement aux diverses manières dont la relation locative entre propriétaires et locataires vieillissantes affecte la capacité au maintien dans les lieux de ces dernières. En effet, en contexte de gentrification, certains propriétaires auront intérêt à expulser des locataires vieillissantes, qui paient généralement des loyers moins chers que les prix du marché en raison d’une longue durée d’occupation. Comme ces locataires vieillissantes ont toutes été recrutées via des comités logement, la recherche s’est aussi intéressée à documenter les contours de leur participation dans ces organismes communautaires autonomes ayant comme mission de défendre les droits des locataires. Les politiques gérontologiques actuelles, mettant l’emphase sur le vieillissement sur place, doivent prendre davantage en compte les situations résidentielles des locataires vieillissantes en situation de précarité résidentielle.

- by Julien Simard
- •
- Gentrification, Landlord & Tenant Law, Social Gerontology, Evictions

Violent Neoliberalism explores the relationship between neoliberalism and violence through a critical poststructuralist perspective. Springer exposes the supposed humanitarianism of what has become the world's most dominant political economic model as a process of transformation that is shot through with a significant degree of cruelty. Employing a series of theoretical dialogues informed by the empirical experiences of development, discourse, and dispossession in contemporary Cambodia, Violent Neoliberalism engages as a diagnostic rupturing of commonsense to reveal the manifold ways in which ongoing patterns of neoliberalization have become engrossed with violence.

- by Simon Springer
- •
- Critical Theory, Political Sociology, Geography, Human Geography

Istoria socială a locuirii în case naționalizate își are începuturile în anii ’50, când o parte din cetățenii României au fost relocați din propriile locuințe de către autoritățile socialiste iar locul acestora a fost realocat unor familii sau persoane, de cele mai multe ori străine foștilor proprietari. La câteva decenii distanță, naționalizarea și ulterior retrocedările, continuă să infl uențeze experiența de locuire pentru diverse categorii de oameni. Articolul de față își propune să investigheze aspecte ale locuirii în case naționalizate a foștilor proprietari și a noilor locatari (împreună sau separat, de la caz la caz) și implicit reconfi gurarea relațiilor sociale și a culturii materiale pe parcusul celor două procese, naționalizare și retrocedare, urmată uneori de evacuări și locuirea în proximitatea imobilelor luate ca spații de analiză. Vom descrie procesele de reconfi gurare și negocierea geografi ei spațiului domestic de după naționalizare, formele de socializare structurate în timp între diferiții actori implicați, modurile în care procesele și, în cele din urmă, restituirile de facto, i-au împins pe unii dintre interlocutorii noștri la adoptarea unor strategii de supraviețuire, de la locuirea în vecini sau la rude și până la bricolarea unor locuințe pe stradă

- by Bogdan Iancu
- •
- Restitution of Property, Housing Policies, Material Culture, Evictions

The jurisprudence (case law) of the South African courts (especially the Constitutional Court and the Supreme Court of Appeal) has significantly contributed to the right of access to adequate housing, enshrined in section 26 of the Constitution. The courts have supplemented the legal framework by developing a number of progressive legal principles that should be upheld in eviction cases. The jurisprudence has therefore led to the development of a new cluster of relationships between the parties involved in eviction proceedings, a cluster of relationships that is characterised by a series of rights and obligations pertaining to various parties. Yet despite years of litigation and a host of progressive judgments municipalities have been hesitant, unwilling or unable to act on the obligations laid down in case law. It is amid this complexity that this report seeks to provide a comprehensive analysis of the jurisprudence on evictions and alternative accommodation, and the contingent obligations on municipalities in respect of the provision of alternative accommodation. It is hoped that the report might act as a to guide activists, communities and public interest law practitioners caught up in eviction related struggles, as well as local government officials who are tasked with devising and implementing housing policy. This report is published by the Socio-Economic Rights Institute of South Africa (SERI).

- by Michael Clark
- •
- Law, Constitutional Law, Urban Studies, Housing

Employing a poststructuralist-meets-anarchist stance that advances conceptual insight into the nature of sovereign power, this article examines the dialectics of capitalism/primitive accumulation, civilization/savagery, and law/violence, which are argued to exist in a mutually reinforcing 'trilateral of logics'. In deciphering this triadic system, this article offers a radical (re)appraisal of capitalism, its legal process, and its civilizing effects, which together serve to mask the originary and ongoing violences of primitive accumulation and the property system. Such obfuscation suggests that wherever the trilateral of logics is enacted, so too is the state of exception called into being, exposing us all as potential homo sacer (life that does not count). Proceeding as a diagnostic assessment of sovereign power, where although signposted by Cambodia's contemporary experiences of violent land conflict, this article is not intended as a fine-grained empirical analysis. Instead, it forwards a theoretical dialogue where Cambodia's neoliberalizing processes offer a window on how sovereign power configures itself around the three discursive-institutional constellations (i.e., capitalism, civilization, and law) that form the trilateral of logics. Rather than formulating prescriptive solutions, the intention here is critique, where in particular it is argued that the preoccupation with strengthening Cambodia's legal system should not be read as a panacea for contemporary social ills, but as an imposition that serves to legitimize the violences of property.

- by Simon Springer
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- Critical Theory, History, Economic History, Sociology
- by Eleonora Sartori
- •
- Housing, Squatting, Evictions, Mobilizations

In this article, we trace the emergence of the false YIMBY/NIMBY dialectic now dominant in San Francisco housing rights discourse, studying its constitution and material effects. Specifically, we investigate how racial capitalism is constitutive of both YIMBYism and NIMBYism, drawing upon Cedric Robinson’s argument that racialization has always been constitutive of capitalism, and racism is requisite for capitalism’s endurance. We make our argument by drawing upon empirical research conducted by the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project (AEMP), a data analysis, oral history, and critical cartography collective of which we are both a part. We also draw upon collaborative research between AEMP and community-based housing rights nonprofits and local housing justice organizing efforts, as well as literary and cultural analysis. Such a methodological approach facilitates the unearthing of the racial logics undergirding YIMBYism, pointing to the need for alternative analytics to theorize and mobilize against heightened forms of racialized dispossession. We begin by outlining San Francisco’s YIMBY and NIMBY genealogies, and then proceed to unravel the basic statistical logic underpinning YIMBYism. In doing so, we introduce an additional analytic that we argue is requisite for deconstructing YIMBY algorithms: aesthetic desires of wealthy newcomers. In doing so, we suggest that the YIMBY “build, baby, build” housing solution fails when architectural and neighborhood fantasies are taken into account. We then study now racialized surveillance informs not only the NIMBY but also the YIMBY gaze, arguing that both camps are ultimately tethered to racial capitalism’s liberal legacies.

- by Erin M B McElroy
- •
- Critical Race Studies, Urban Planning, Gentrification, Urban Studies

This article is the Introduction to Bhan, G (2016) In the Public’s Interest: Evictions, Citizenship and Inequality in Contemporary Delhi. The book is available from Orient Blackswan in India, and by the University of Georgia Press... more

- by Gautam Bhan
- •
- Sociology, Constitutional Law, Urban Studies, India

This paper investigates the coloniality of contemporary digital nomadism, an identity that numerous Western tech workers use to describe lifestyles of location independence in which they travel the world while maintaining Silicon Valley salaries. Specifically, I assess colonial genealogies of digital nomads and more problematically defined “digital Gypsies.” It was during the height of 19th-century Western European imperialism that Romantic Orientalist texts proliferated, celebrating the racial and sexual “free and wandering Gypsy.” This deracinated figure was used to allegorize colonial desires and imperial violence alike. As I suggest, nomadic racial fantasy undergirds contemporary freedom desires today emergent from the heart of a new empire—that of Silicon Valley. In describing Silicon Valley imperialism and its posthuman digital avatar, I assess how nomadic fantasy transits technologies of gentrification into new frontiers. For instance, sharing economy platforms such as Airbnb celebrate the digital nomad, bolstering contexts of racial dispossession while continuing to deracinate Roma lifeworlds. Might nomad exotica in fact index coloniality and its ability to traverse time and space? How has this fantasy been abstracted over time, also entangling with posthumanist nomadic onto-epistemologies?

- by Erin M B McElroy
- •
- Information Technology, Technology, Feminist Theory, Race and Racism

Over the past 20 years, of the 23 socio-economic rights decisions handed down by the South African Constitutional Court, 15 judgments have related to the s 26 right to adequate housing, making it by far the most litigated socioeconomic right. The relative frequency of housing rights cases before the Constitutional Court relates to the intensity of post-apartheid struggles over access to urban and peri-urban land. Analysing the contours and consequences of the housing rights related judgments over the past 20 years, we highlight the Constitutional Court's role as arbiter of clashing rights of ownership and occupation in the context of evolving and inadequately-managed urbanisation. The article was published in the South African Journal on Human Rights in Vol 31(3) in 2015.

- by Michael Clark
- •
- Law, Constitutional Law, Human Rights Law, Human Rights
- by Inga Jensen
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- Weimar Republic, Evictions, Historical and Comparative Sociology, Forced Evictions
- by Inga Jensen
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- Housing, Berlin, Evictions, Forced Evictions

South Africa’s post-apartheid government tried to use urban policy to reverse racial segregation. But as shack settlements proliferated on urban peripheries, squatters came to be viewed as a threat to the state rather than its beneficiaries. In Cape Town, urban policy has entrenched, rather than reversed, racially segregated settlement patterns.

This thesis traces the local government response to the presence of impoverished and street-homeless so-called vulnerable EU-citizens in Malmö (Sweden’s third largest city) between the years 2014-2016, and develops an analysis about how bordering takes place in cities. “Vulnerable EU-citizens” is an established term in the Swedish context, used by the authorities to refer to citizens of other EU Member States who are staying in Sweden without a right of residence and in situations of extreme poverty and marginality. A majority of those whom are categorised as “vulnerable EU-citizens” are Roma from Bulgaria or Romania. Starting from the observation that “vulnerable EU-citizens” have been pervasively problematised as unwanted migrants, the thesis asks how the municipal- and local authorities in Malmö act to discourage and otherwise manage their mobilities by controlling their conditions of stay. In doing so, it seeks to elaborate on theories about intra-EU bordering practices, and to elucidate some of the mechanisms, effects and implications of urban mobility control practices. Methodologically, the thesis is structured as a case study, centring on the case of the intensely contested Sorgenfri-camp – a makeshift squatter settlement that housed a large proportion of Malmö’s estimated total population of “vulnerable EU-citizens”. The Sorgenfri-camp was established in 2014 and lasted for a year and a half before it was demolished in November 2015 on the order of the City of Malmö’s environmental authorities. Often referred to in the media as “Sweden’s largest slum”, the Sorgenfri-camp was quite literally a central locus of a local and national political “crisis” regarding the growth of unauthorised squatter settlements. As a “critical case”, it offers a vantage point from which to trace the development of policy and government practices towards “vulnerable EU-citizens” and observe how the authorities negotiate the legal ambiguities, moral-political dilemmas, and social conflicts that swirl around the unauthorised settlements of “vulnerable EU-citizens”. It also serves as a key example of a more widespread framing of “the problem of vulnerable EU-citizens” as an order, nuisance and sanitation problem. The analysis is carried out with a theoretical framework informed by Foucaultian poststructuralist theory and theories of scale, combining insights from the field of critical border and migration studies with concepts from the legal geographic literature on urban socio-spatial control. In particular, it follows socio-legal scholar Mariana Valverde’s (2010) call to foreground the role of scalar categorisation and politics in the networked policing of various non-citizens. The analysis addresses the construction of the Sorgenfri-camp and its residents as a “nuisance problem” in popular and policy discourse, and explores the effects and consequences of this framing in the context of the administrative-legal process that resulted in the demolition of the settlement. The thesis highlights the city as a space where complex negotiations over residency-status, rights and belonging play out. It submits that local authorities in Malmö have responded to the presence and situation of vulnerable EU-citizens in the city by enacting a series of practices and programs that jointly add up to an indirect policy of exclusionary mobility control, the cumulative effect of which is to eliminate the “geographies of survival” for the group in question. Furthermore, it argues that this reinforces the complex modulations of un/free mobility” in the EU: destitute EU-citizens who are formally free to move and reside within the union are repeatedly moved along, and thus effectively prevented from settling. This is taken to be illustrative of an urbanisation of mobility control practices: a convergence between mobility control and urban socio-spatial control, or a rescaling of mobility control from the edges of the nation-state to the urban scale and, ultimately, to the body of the “vulnerable EU-citizen”.

- by Maria Persdotter
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- European Studies, Homelessness, Migration, Romani Studies

The article sets out some of the important developments in the law relating to housing and evictions in South Africa utilising plain-language. This non-peer reviewed journal article was published by Ndifuna Ukwazi (NU) in the September 2014 edition of the People's Law Journal, a plain-language, user-friendly legal publication targeting activists and community-based organisations (CBOs). The edition explores issues relating to urban land justice.

- by Michael Clark
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- Human Rights Law, Human Rights, Housing, Socio Economic Rights

Resettlement programs have always been in the political agenda of public institutions and administrators of Casablanca since its growth during the French Protectorate. Today real estate and private multinational capital sneak into local and national pow- ers, pushing public authorities to clear land for new urban development through demolition and resettlement of local residents. The dwellers of areas such as the old town centre (medina) and the slums (karyan) increasingly react to displacement by challenging this urban agenda frontally with their bodies and words, but often also deploying what James Scott calls “weapons of the weak”, i.e. implicit acts of resistance and symbolic dissent. Reversing Asef Bayat’s statement, we consider residents of these stigmatized neighbourhoods “revolutionaries without a revolution”, partisans of an intimate cause of their own, that aims at having a home and surviving in a hostile city. Our reflections are the product of two separate fieldwork researches: one with the inhabitants of informal neighbourhoods, another with residents and former resi- dents of the old medina. The two cases show how resettlement affects the sense of belonging and of cohesion of low-income classes by uprooting the founding element of the everyday life: the house. The uncertainty about the possibility to keep their own home deeply conditions the implicit social pact with the monarchy apparatus, and may represent one of the conditions that are undermining the allegiance to the monarchy itself.

- by Stefano Portelli
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- Morocco, Development Induced Displacement, Urban Renewal, Gnawa
- by Gautam Bhan
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- Poverty, Urban Studies, Urban Sociology, Evictions

This paper aims to examine the processes of gentrification from a somewhat different point of view. It focuses on 'renovation' and 'regeneration projects', as well as the gentrification concept with regard to urban policies that have particularly enriched the holders of capital in the historic neighbourhoods of Istanbul. Gentrification, happening alongside with renovation and regeneration, reveals significant problems in the social structure of the city such as displacement, social polarization, social inequality and damage to the historical environment. This paper contributes to the expansion of the understanding of gentrification concept with a case study that is outside the scope of 'usual suspects', while theorizing the role of the Turkish state during urban transformation processes through the everyday struggles and conflicts that unfold on the ground.

- by Aysegul Can
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- Urban Regeneration, Gentrification, Urban Studies, Social Exclusion
- by spire amandine
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- Urban Studies, Street Vending, Evictions, Accra

Little is understood about displacement in urban contexts. While some of the difficulties are methodological, the more serious problem is conceptual. Outside of the rent gap hypothesis or the philosophy of property rights, there has been little theoretical inquiry into the causal dynamics of displacement. In this article, I present a study of evictions in Los Angeles that addresses these conceptual and empirical shortcomings. A spatial analysis of more than 70,000 georeferenced evictions between 1994 and 1999 documents the existence of four distinct geographies of displacement, each
produced by separate types of causal circumstances. Gentrification explains only one of the four displacement geographies, while the other three are nongentrifying or pregentrifying contexts and more appropriately described through growth machine models, global city theory, and financial restructuring. The extent of displacement in pre- and nongentrifying areas reinforces Mark Davidson’s emphasis on Lefebvre’s production of space as a crucial framework for understanding displacement processes.

- by Revel Sims
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- Spatial Analysis, Gentrification, Evictions, Financial Restructuring