Securitization of Property Squatting in Europe

<p>Housing is no longer about having a place to live – but about state pressures to conform norms and policies regarding citizenship and practices of surveillance and security. Breaking new ground in the field of urban politics and international relations <em>Securitization of Property Squatting in Europe</em> examines and critiques legislative initiatives and examines governmental attempts to reframe urban property squatting as a crime and a threat to domestic security.</p><p>Using examples from France Netherlands Denmark and Great Britain Mary Manjikian argues that developments within the European Union – including terrorist attacks in London and Madrid the rise of right wing extremist parties and the lifting of barriers to immigration and travel within the EU – have had effects on housing policy which has become the subject of state security policy in Europe’s urban areas. In Denmark squatting has often had an ideological anti-state character. In Paris housing policy can be viewed as a type of identity politics with squatters as transnational actors who pose a transnational security threat. In Great Britain the role of the press has created a drive to criminalize squatting. Events in the Netherlands present two competing notions of what housing is – a human right or an economic good produced by the free market.</p>