Squatting, Commons and Conflict: A Discussion of Squatting's Challenges to the Commons

Abstract

This piece aims to provide critical distance to the notion of the commons, increasingly used in academia to depict social movements. Squatting shows particularly useful to expose the blind spots of neo-institutionalist approaches but also confronts the unitary and homogenizing Marxist "urban commons" narratives. A circumstantial history of squatting in Barcelona is provided to contextualize the internal conflict examined in this paper. Then, an introduction to the case study, Espai Social Magdalenes (ESM), is provided. ESM was the stage of an intense conflict opposing different sectors of Barcelona's squatters' movement. I use interviews made with activists close to the squatter's movement to reinforce the theoretical claims of this piece with their assessments. Arguably, untamed and open conflict is at the heart of squatting, leading to movements that are far from the pacified and orderly framework of a significant part of the commons literature.