The Nomad, The Squatter and the State: Roma Racialization and Spatial Politics in Italy

Abstract

What happens when Roma people move from the space of an informal settlement to that of a squat of a housing rights movement? In this article, which is based on the analysis of housing squats involving Roma people in the Italian capital city of Rome, I argue that this move is more than a housing solution: it is a new form of contentious and aesthetic politics. In Rome approximately 7,000 Roma face extreme housing deprivation and segregation, in both official and makeshift camps. While different associations have for many years advocated Roma housing inclusion through a minority and human‐rights framework, in the aftermath of the 2007/2008 economic crisis an increasing number of Roma have moved to squats set up by social movement activists. The aim of the article is threefold. First, it illustrates the collective action repertoire of Roma‐squatting. Secondly, it considers its aesthetic politics, which through spatial dislocation unsettles the racializing discourse endorsed by policymakers that underpins the segregation of the Roma. Finally, this article unpacks the process of politicization of Roma‐squatting and discusses the urban frames and material resources that consolidate this transformation through a comparison of four housing squats that Roma people joined.

Territory and territorial stigmatisation: On the production, consequences and contestation of spatial disrepute

“…Camps are the product of both willing congregation and confinement through formal regulation and informal social control (Clough Marinaro, 2019;Maestri, 2017;Picker, 2016). However, the latter are obscured within representations of camps as evidence of an inherently unassimilable social body, 'beyond' integration, and exterior to European civility (Creţan and Powell, 2018;Creţan and O'Brien, 2019;Maestri, 2017Maestri, , 2019Tyler, 2013). In each of these cases, race is 'selectively accentuated' or 'fictively projected' (Wacquant et al, 2014(Wacquant et al, : 1274 in the symbolic construction of spatial concentration: spatial concentration is represented as the cause of poverty, marginality, and disadvantage.…”

“…The occupiers practised territory in their appropriation of space for alternative social relations of 'collective provisioning and cross-class collaboration' and their generation of alternative forms of capital, solidarity, and democracy (Tyler, 2013: 152). Maestri (2017Maestri ( , 2019 describes a similar case in Rome, where many Roma people participated in a squatters' movement that protested generalised housing exclusion by occupying a number of buildings across the city. The new social relations that emerged through this material appropriation facilitated new solidarities, place attachments, and identities (Maestri, 2019).…”

“…Maestri (2017Maestri ( , 2019 describes a similar case in Rome, where many Roma people participated in a squatters' movement that protested generalised housing exclusion by occupying a number of buildings across the city. The new social relations that emerged through this material appropriation facilitated new solidarities, place attachments, and identities (Maestri, 2019). Queirós and Pereira (2018) suggest that this politics of occupation may not be so new in their account of struggles in 1970s São João de Deus, Porto.…”

Alliances, friendships, and alternative structures: Solidarity among radical left activists and precarious migrants in Malmö

“…Although differences between activists do appear in the material, my focus here is not on tensions as such (for example, disputes over framing and strategies, see Jämte et al, 2020) but on the domains of mutuality and common practice (Çağlar & Glick Schiller, 2018) created through activism, in which different activist groups collaborate and involve precarious migrants (Hansen, 2019;Maestri, 2019;Uitermark & Nicholls, 2014). This makes the focus on political activists relevant, since they act as political subjects who continuously point to the political and socioeconomic issues that they perceive as problematic.…”

Generating Solidarity in Diversity: The Case of Housing Struggles in Rome

“…Particularly relevant is the anti-eviction struggle carried out by activists in the most marginalized neighborhoods of Rome. Combined with the arrival of precarious migrants over the last years (Maestri, 2019), the economic crisis has led to a significant increase in the number of people who cannot afford housing costs. Additionally, with the retrenchment of the welfare system, housing movements often become the only actors able to provide shelter to this population (Grazioli and Caciagli, 2018).…”