Struggling within illegality against housing crisis in Paris

In this paper I propose three hypotheses. First, I assume that the struggle within illegality presents some features that influence the result of the mobilization and the treatment by public actors. Some actors without any legal resources can use "negative resources" by disturbing public order (mass challenge) and get some considerations from public actors: welfare and houses. Second, I assume that the level of institutionalization and of social, economic and political capital of the dwellers impacts on the mode of action used. I will show that some squatters have legal resources and use it in order to conserve alternative spaces in the city. But most of slum inhabitants are not able to develop a large network of resources. Third, I assume that the radicalism of such occupations drives decision makers and officials to implement specific urban policies at the local level. In the first part of the paper, I present my methodological approach and the databases. Second, I present a theoretical point of view of what is an illegal occupation. Finally, I address the conditions of mobilization within illegality and the different configurations of squats and slums in the Ile de France Region. Readers wishing to cite this document are asked to use the following form of words: Aguilera, Thomas (2011) Struggling within illegality against housing crisis in Paris. Squats and Slums as a Challenge to Urban Policies Working papers du ProgrammeVilles&territoires, 2011 03, Paris, Sciences Po For an on line version of this working paper and others in the series, please visit our website at: http:/blogs.sciences po.fr/recherche villes/ Cahiers de recherche du Programme Villes territoires ndeg 2011 03. Aguilera (Thomas) Struggling within illegality against housing crisis in Paris. 1/24 "Struggling within illegality against housing crisi s in Paris. Squats and slums as a challenge to urban policies." 1 The European cities experience an important housing shortage and the recent global crisis has reinforced this trend. In France, the last national survey on housing (Annual Report of FondationAbbe Pierre, 2011) shows that more than 3.6 millions of people live in precarious housing conditions. Among them, more than 600 000 people don't have a roof. Paris is one of the densest European capitals and space is a scarce resource. However, paradoxically, we estimate that 9% of the housing in Paris is vacant (more than 120 000 free housing) Public actors are not able to provide housing to all citizens because of a lack of funding, of space and sometimes of political decisions. This deficiency and this governing failure generate and reinforce the development of sub systems (Mayntz, 1993) of self organization to get a place to live with the minimal vital services. Legality is too expensive (De Soto, 2000) and actors survive by developing alternative strategies beyond the logic of property ownership and beyond public control of space. More than one billion people in the world could be considered as "squatters" living in squats and slums (United Nations, 2003; Neuwirth, 2004; Davis, 2006) Literature usually focuses on unruly places like slums in the suburbs of the global cities in the South (Fernandez and Varley, 1998; Aldrich and Sandhu, 1995; Varley, 1995; Huchzermeyer, 2008 Tayyab, 2010) or illegal settlements in exponential and uncontrolled growing metropolitan areas in emerging countries (Smart, 1995, 2001, 2002, 2006; Chui et Smart, 2006; Berner, 2000, 2002; Mangin, 1967) Western societies however also know these types of urban poverty and informality. The settlements and the squats are considered as targets of public policies and particularly of large scale regularization programs. These studies are absent in Europe. Sociologists interested in "marginality" address the problems of ghettos or "quartiers sensibles" (Wacquant, 2006; Avenel, 2007; Lapeyronnie, 2008; Kokoreff, 2009) but the question of illegality is often put aside. Slums are approached by sociologists and geographers who analyze the Roma and Sinti situation at the margin of European metropolises (Legros, 2010; Vitale, 2010) Finally, some French scholars try to understand the logics of "refugees' camps" (Agier, 2002, 2008; Bernardot, 2008) Yet, there are many illegal settlements persisting at the doors of big cities in different forms: squats in buildings or illegal occupations of land. I propose here to address these two kinds of occupations. The 1 Paper presented at the 7 CEU Conference in Social Sciences: "What Follows after the Crisis? Approaches to global Transformations" Central European University, Budapest, May 27 29, 2011.  "Crisis and emergence: radicalization, institutionalization, and generation of social movements" I thank Albin Lazare and Julie Seghers for their input on the first draft of the paper and the editors of the Working paper series for their valuable help. 2 Nevertheless, these vacant housings are not only vacant during long period but are mainly the results of "turn over" relocations or renovation programs. Thus, we cannot estimate precisely how many houses are vacant for a long period (Driant, 2009) Insee Local Datas, Paris, datas from Insee, RP1968 a 1990 denombrements RP 1999 and RP 2006 exploitations principales: http:/www.statistiqueslocales.insee.fr/FICHES/DL/DEP/75/COM/DL_COM75056.pdf Cahiers de recherche du Programme Villes territoires ndeg 2011 03. Aguilera (Thomas) Struggling within illegality against housing crisis in Paris. 2/24 example of Paris at the metropolitan scale is quite relevant to underline the persistence of spaces of illegality and extreme precariousness in European countries. Squats and slums could appear as two different practices but they are both illegal occupations of space in view to get a house and a place to live or survive. Many differences can be underlined: forms of mobilizations, locations, populations living in, temporalities and spaces (the squat is the occupation of buildings, the slums is an occupation of land) However, here, I wish to integrate these two kinds of occupations in the same analysis in order to understand the features of an illegal occupation of space as well as the underlying logic. The European literature on squats is very significant. Squats are usually studied from a sociological and anthropological point of view. Squatting is seen as a deviant occupation of the urban space and a reaction to the housing shortage. Many scholars study squatters and the strategies used to build an alternative place and way of life, at the margin of norms and legality. The squat is considered as a shelter which permits homeless people to find a house and, above all, as a community that builds a new social link (Bouillon, 2002, 2003, 2005, 2009 and Coutant, 2000) This work, based on qualitative interviews and participative observations, usually needs a monographic approach and the studies are often limited to case studies (Bailey, 1973; Berthaut, 2008) Besides, a wide literature is dedicated to describing squatting as a collective action. These scholars are more interested in studying "political" squats: alter globalization and counter culture dynamics (Martinez, 2007; Adell and Martinez, 2004; Vivant, 2008) or housing right protestations (Pechu, 2001, 2006, 2009, 2010) The main issue of all these studies is to analyze the organization of squatting, theirs stories and the discourses of squatters in order to understand this urban practice. The squatters have many resources to mobilize and occupy new spaces. Some authors consider the squat as an element of "urban fragmentation" (Pattaroni, 2007) A series of works focus on the processes of institutionalization and cooptation asking if these processes are inevitable for the movement to survive and to preserve its identity in order to understand the impact of the different squatting strategies on their political treatment (Pruijt, 2003; Uitermark, 2004; Martinez and Lorenzi, 2010) In fact, illegal settlements like squats and slums host precarious inhabitants who try to organize themselves to face housing shortages, discrimination in the access to social housing and housing policies unable to give a roof to all citizens. Squats and slums are both problems and solutions (Aguilera, 2010; Bouillon, 2011) a solution to get a house, a problem for public actors and in terms of security, public health and poverty. Sometimes, these occupations are accompanied by movements of collective action (cases of squatters who claims or develop alternative ways of life and political actions) but not necessarily. For instance, many inhabitants in slums don't have the resources to mobilize themselves. Nevertheless, I am precisely interested in understanding the different forms of struggles to get the right to the city (Lefebvre, 1968) or sometimes the absence of active struggle and rather "passive occupations" subject to public policies. In this paper I propose three hypotheses. First, I assume that the struggle within illegality presents some features that influence the result of the mobilization and the treatment by public actors. Some actors without any legal resources can use "negative resources" (Wilson, 1961; Fillieule, 1993) by disturbing public order (mass challenge) and get some considerations from public actors: welfare and houses. Second, I assume that the level of institutionalization and of social, economic and political capital of the dwellers impacts on the mode of action used. I will show that some squatters have legal resources and use it in Cahiers de recherche du Programme Villes territoires ndeg 2011 03. Aguilera (Thomas) Struggling within illegality against housing crisis in Paris. 3/24 order to conserve alternative spaces in the city. But most of slum inhabitants are not able to develop a large network of resources. Third, I assume that the radicalism of such occupations drives decision makers and officials to im