Abstract

The public and academic debate about urban squatting in Western cities has been dominated by research on collectively organized, politically-motivated occupations. By contrast, occupations promoted to fulfil urgent housing needs by uncoordinated urban poor without any connection with activists (i.e. need-based squatting) have been far less explored. The present paper contributes to filling this research gap concerning squatting as a sheltering strategy by marginalized individuals. To this end, this article focuses on the overlooked phenomenon of the illegal occupation of public buildings for residential purposes in Italy that occurs outside any explicit political framework. In particular, it provides an ethnographic investigation of a case of squatting in an abandoned school located in a public housing neighbourhood in Naples. This investigation is the basis for the conceptualization of a specific type of need-based squatting, that is to say ‘individualistic squatting’, whose specific features (including its distinct political character) are highlighted, together with its peculiarity vis-à-vis other types of need-based squatting.

摘要

关于西方城市的城市占屋的公众和学术辩论主要是对集体组织的、出于政治动机的活动的研究。相比之下，为满足城市贫民的紧急住房需求而提倡的职业（即基于需求的占屋），与活动人士没有任何联系，而这些职业的探索却少得多。本文有助于填补有关占屋作为边缘化个人的庇护策略的研究空白。为此，本文重点关注意大利非法占用公共建筑用于住宅目的这一被忽视的现象，这种现象发生在任何明确的政治框架之外。特别是，它对位于那不勒斯公共住房社区的一所废弃学校的占屋案件进行了人种学调查。