Squat (place)

See also: Squat

The squat (of English “to squat itself”) is the action to settle illegally in an unoccupied place; by extension, it is also about the place thus invested. The term squattor indicated in the beginning, in the the United States of the 19th century, a pioneer who was installed on an unexploited ground of the West, without legal title of property and paying royalty. In the 2004, largest squat of France was in the building F of the campus of the National university of Cachan: it was occupied by thousand people, including 700 Without-papers and 170 children. The occupants were expelled in August 2006. However, the phenomenon is far from being limited to such structures.

According to '' the squat of A to Z '' (2004), guide resulting from mobilities of the political squats:

“Squatter, it is inter alia, not rent to be paid, not interrogation to undergo to know if one can repaint his room in green apple. It is to be free and responsible in its place for life. It is also a means of daily survival which can carry out to be questioned on our ways of living, on work, the family, the collective life, the daily humdrum routine, on the possibilities of living our ideas in such a company…”

“Each squat is different. The practices and the theory developed by the occupying ones depend largely on the contexts policy, socio-economic, legal, inter-relational, etc, but all squat is “political”, insofar as it upsets, even sometimes involuntarily, the social order and the private property. ”

“the squat is depend on the spaces left with the abandonment by the middle-class and the capitalist system in general. Knowing that, it cannot be regarded a goal, but at most as a means. But not any means. The squat can be a place of resistance and experimentation. While squattant, the search for autonomy makes it possible to return some of our effective ideas. Squatter, it is to take a share of the interdict, it is to place a minimum in rupture at the socio-economic level. ”

“the fight with the daily newspaper of the squats can be found thus in various practices: self-management, exemption from payment, recovery/recycling, requisitions in any kind, opening on the outside and confrontation in the ways of living, debates in all kinds…”

In a different step, the artistic squats appeared of number with Paris and in the big cities of France as of the Années 1980, unearthing more or less vast places, establishing bonds with more or less good relationship with the owners. They are in general places of creation and reception of demonstrations (concerts alternative Rock, expos, festivals, etc) opened with the public. The places are self-managed and sometimes rehabilitated by the artists of which some can live or not on the spot. Some squats artistic French (of which the majority do not exist any more): Art-Bell, Soccapi (street Picasso), the Factory Faded-Kao, the theater of glass (street of the chess-board), Récollets, Squat of the Stock Exchange, Squat of the Barn to Beautiful, Free Electron street of Rivoli, the Forging mill in Paris, the Factory with Montreuil, Mix-Art Myris in Toulouse, Devils Blue in Nice… Some are transformed sometimes into official place dedicated to the culture (in particular the Forging mill or the squat of the street Rivoli in Paris), which enters in contradiction with the step protestor of the squat (to read in particular Interface or Intersquat, a history of charters).

A polymorphic reality

The squat can lodge a person alone like several tens, in a small apartment of the downtown area as in an industrial waste land of suburbs. The conditions of habitat there are very varied, of total insalubrity to a comfort comparable with that of an “average” housing (water and electricity, heating, sufficient space, insulation…). The inhabitants of the squats are as varied as their motivations: young absconders refusing to integrate a hearth, migrant African or Eastern-European, artists without workshop, wandering Truckers, private Tziganes of surfaces of reception, drug addicts Without fixed residence, militants of the libertarian cause…

Spaces and community

For a large majority of squatteurs, the occupation thus fits in a residential course marked by precariousness. This is why much of squats envisage a space explicitly dedicated to the lodging of people of passage: the sleep' in . Moreover, those often reconcile place of dwelling and space of activity: they try to develop a collective management of the daily newspaper, through the rehabilitation of the place, the organization of meetings and debates, creation and the diffusion cultural, the installation of workshops (or workshops ), and of course information and the political action. There are also squats which lodge free stores, that one usually calls free-shops or “zones of exemption from payment” (secondhand clotehes shops, access Internet, etc).

The difficulty of finding buildings “available” and the often unhealthy state of these buildings pose sometimes problems of overpopulation and hygiene, although that is not always the case.

Why squatter?

By need

One can thus consider that the squat takes part in the construction of a model of alternative economy. And in fact, the occupation often has for first cause of the pecuniary reasons: individuals, families or groups of people seek a place where to live, whereas they cannot pay rent.

For example, in France, the first squatteurs appear after the Second world war. To protest against the administrative obstacles which slow down the implementation of the law of requisition, they proceed to the occupation of empty residences. Resulting from the Popular movement of the families, itself near to the Christian working Youth, this movement is born in Marseilles before gaining other provincial towns. In five years, some 5.000 families are thus rehoused. These occupations are accompanied by a campaign in the press, in particular catholic ( Esprit ), and of a militant action which sensitizes the public opinion with the question of the housing shortage.

This example shows clearly that the economic and political problems are not, in last analysis, dissociable. And thus, of the Abbot Pierre with the libertarian communist Organization (OCL) while passing by Right to housing (DAL), many which is those define the fact of squatter like the expression of a Social movement asserting the right to a dignified life.

By conviction

Certain squatteurs are close to the Anarchisme or the autonomous Mouvement and into practice put the idea of Propriété of use. They support that by abolishing the rent, and while making it possible to share the resources and the expenses, the squat can reduce the dependence to the money and allow réapproprier his time life. Especially, they seek to promote cultural and political alternatives by the means of the Autogestion. The whole of the inhabitants as often meets as it is necessary, to make and assume collectively the decisions engaging the operation or the development of the place. This mode of organization has, according to its partisans, the advantage of not supporting the appearance of leaders.

Lastly, in the most stabilized squats, one observes systems of mutual aid and solidarity which protect the individuals from a too great vulnerability. The squat can thus play a part of Soupape of safety, and accommodate populations for which there is no really place elsewhere. For example, the image of the Shantytown of the Years 1970, it makes it possible to the immigrants of fresh date to profit from the trainings carried out by those which preceded them. Or even, it can constitute an acceptable alternative to the psychiatric internment for some psychotics.

Legalization and perenniality

The squats represent a European phenomenon in full expansion, following the hardening of the access terms to a housing, and with the parallel increase in the number of Vacant housings. Cities as Barcelona count each one nearly a hundred to squats, in permanent renewal. In France, in spite of the existence since the October 11th 1945 of a law known as of requisition of the empty residences (which aimed at regularizing the consecutive squatts in fact to the housing shortage of the post-war period) and the Loi Besson of 1990, the occupation remains in theory illicit; it is a permanent Délit, which means that each day of occupation constitutes a red-handed. On request of the owner, and at the end of a more or less long procedure, it is thus not rare that the police force intervenes to proceed other than the occupants. The question of legalization thus arises with those. For this reason, one can schematically distinguish two factions among them:

  • the partisans of legalization, who want to negotiate the right to occupy the places on the long run. Such as for example some squats artists in France, they negotiate with the public authorities while putting forward the cultural and political benefit of their presence in the district. It is a sometimes viable solution, since in Holland or Italy (social centres), many squats was thus legalized.
  • the partisans of it, who are in a logic of confrontation with the authority and refuse any negotiation. They consider that the legalized squats and their inhabitants take part in repression against the others squats, less “acceptable” and in fact less accepted by the capacities in place (squats political, of without-papers , of “the poor” in general, etc).

See too

External bonds

General topics

  • Squat.net: international of topicality and basic gate devoted to the squats and their fights.
  • '' the squat of A to Z '': small guide written by squatteurs and squatteuses to open a squat and to prevent or delay its expulsion.
  • Infokiosques.net/squat: texts devoted to the anarchistic movement squat of tendency.
  • To live differently: Some texts about the squat.

Particular experiments

  • Grenoble: Part of the movement squat on Grenoble.
  • Grenoble: Proclamation of a squat (resulting from the CPA from Grenoble, 2001).
  • Dijon: Maloka is a collective with the multiple self-management activities on Dijon, credit in particular around the self-managed space of the Tanneries.
  • Lille: Infos on the squats in Lille.
  • Mountain: Valetta, or the squat with the mountain of Parisian ex-squatteurs.
  • Barcelona: " The war of the squatts" : inquire into the movements of squatters in Barcelona.
  • Paris: History of the frontage of Rivoli: misadventures of BIBI squattor

References

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