Youth as a Political Movement: Development of the Squatters' and Autonomous Movement in Copenhagen

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is firstly to construct a political theory of urban youth movements, and secondly to explain the international setting and transnational commitment of one of the most vigorous movements in Denmark after the second world war. The BZ-movement, as it was called, began as a squatter movement firmly embedded in communal mobilization and later turned into a political movement with strong ties to squatters' and Autonomous groups in Germany and the Netherlands. We attempt to describe and explain the development of the BZ-movement, the repertoire of collective actions, and how a process of goal displacement took place from around 1981 until 1995. In our theoretical appraisal we reject most cultural arguments, postmodernism and social marginalization in favour of concepts of place, organization, interaction and political opportunity. Thus, local social networks as well as national and international political opportunities, including relationships to opponents and allies, play a major role in determining the everyday social and political life of the BZ-movement. Copyright Joint Editors and Blackwell Publishers Ltd 2001.

The Citizen Participation of Urban Movements in Spatial Planning: A Comparison between Vigo and Porto

“…This is the paradigmatic case with the squatting movement, whose activities consist in the occupation of empty dwellings and the creation of self‐managed social centres in different European cities. Existing studies on this subject have combined approaches traditionally used to analyse social movements with others from the field of urban sociology (see, for example: Mikkelsen and Karpantschof, 2001; Pruijt, 2003; Adell and Martínez, 2004). In various countries, the connections between these groups of activists transcend the scale of a single city so that their mutual support networks simultaneously have urban, state and transnational dimensions, derived from their origins in ‘alterglobalization’ movements (Martínez, 2007).…”

The autonomous city

“…As a number of scholars have recently shown, the veritable explosion of squatting in Europe in the 1970s and 1980s represents one important example in the production of an alternative and autonomous urbanism (Bieri, 2012;Mikkelsen and Karpantschof, 2001;SqEK, 2013;Vasudevan, 2011a;Waits and Wolmar, 1980). For many scholars, this wave of squatting represented a 'new urban movement' characterized by the development of practices around collective forms of self-determination, struggles against housing precarity and a broader commitment to alter-global concerns and extra-parliamentary modes of political engagement (López, 2013: 881; see Pruijt, 2003;SqEK, 2013).…”

How Do Squatters Deal with the State? Legalization and Anomalous Institutionalization in Madrid

“…Squatters are now obliged either to leave or to buy the properties. Repression of squats and immediate evictions became the general pattern, although local authorities allowed and even subsidized a few legal social centres for radical and autonomist activists to meet — one, at least, of which was previously squatted (Folkets Hus), while in other cases agreements were reached with the owner (Candy Factory 1) and with the city government (Candy Factory 2) after a different building had been squatted before, and the case of the famous Ungdomhuset, from which squatters were evicted in 2007 after well‐publicized street battles, also forced the City government to provide activists with a new self‐managed Youth House in a less central area of the city) (Mikkelsen and Karpantschof, : 618; Hellström, ; Fox, ; author's own fieldwork). Only a few squatted social centres, therefore, found a legal solution, while most of the residential squats were fiercely repressed, with Christiania being an exceptional case that ended up in ‘terminal institutionalization’ after four decades of both political and legal resistance.…”

“…The squatting movement in European cities began to be recognized in the 1970s and 1980s as part of new urban uprisings, movements and political regimes (see, for example, Bailey, 1973;Dunleavy, 1980;Wates and Wolmar, 1980;Castells, 1983;Priemus, 1983;Lowe, 1986), although systematic research was not abundant until the 1990s (see, for example : Mayer, 1993a;Koopmans, 1995;Mikkelsen and Karpantschof, 2001;Martínez, 2002;Pruijt, 2003;Adell and Martínez, 2004;Mudu, 2004;Hodkinson and Chatterton, 2006;Membretti, 2007;Bouillon, 2009;Owens, 2009;Aguilera, 2010;Holm and Kuhn, 2010). The legalization of squats has often been a crucial point of analysis.…”