From citizens to<i>citadins</i>? Rethinking right to the city inside housing squats in Rome, Italy

In the prolonged aftermath of the economic crisis, urban citizenship is becoming nuanced with a multifarious array of quotidian grassroots organisational forms, aiming at re-appropriating essential right to the city, such as housing. In the case of the Italian capital city, Rome, squatting has become a widespread practice for both native and migrant dwellers for tackling with conditions of severe housing deprivation and lack of public housing, despite the punitive legislative context. This paper contends that their subjective composition, and the forms of organisation and life stemming from squatting nowadays, can contribute to updating Lefebvre’s definition of right to the city, and his critique of the citizen as the enfranchised subject for exerting a transformative power over the urban environment. In order to ground this argument, I will discuss the evidences collected in two big housing occupations located in the marginalised borough of Tor Sapienza, Metropoliz and four Stelle Occupato.

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