Squat all over the world, international conference

Welcome to the website of the “Squat All Over the World” Conference, to be held in Paris on January 8–9, 2026!

This conference follows on from a previous initiative—the Squatting Europe/Everywhere Kollective (SqEK)—which brought together international researchers between 2009 and 2018 and led to a number of conferences and publications.

The aim is to continue and expand upon the work initiated by SqEK, by addressing not only the occupation of buildings but also land and other types of property. Our focus extends beyond Europe to include squats and occupations across the globe.

The first Squat All Over the World conference seeks to bring together researchers from across the Global North and South to build an international research network on squatting in its broadest sense. Over the course of two days, we will explore a wide range of occupation practices, including squats, informal settlements, self-managed social centers, ZADs, and other forms of land or housing occupation.

Beyond this two-day event, our ambition is to develop a transnational research network on the topic of occupation. We warmly invite you to join us by submitting a presentation proposal!

Download the call for papers

Timetable

July 7, 2025 : deadline for submission of proposals
October 1th, 2025 : notification to candidates concerning their acceptance or refusal
January 8-9, 2026 : conference, taking place in Paris (France)

Submission procedure

Proposals, of no more than 500 words, must include a title, clearly state the type of occupation studied, the methodology, the research question and the initial results. They must indicate the thematic axis they fall under.
They must be anonymised.
They must be sent before July 7, 2025
here
The proposals will be anonymously evaluated twice by the members of the scientific committee.

Scientific committee:

Thomas Aguilera (Arènes UMR 6051, Sciences Po Renne, France)
Marcelo Carvalho Rosa (Não-exemplar, CPDA/UFRRJ, Brasil)
Sutapa Chattopadhyay (St. Francis Xavier University, Canada)
Margherita Grazioli (GSSI – Gran Sasso Science Institute, Italia)
Miguel Martínez (IBF, Uppsala University, Sweden)
Stella Paterniani (State University of Campinas, Brasil)
Cécile Péchu (IEP et CRAPUL, Unil Lausanne, Switzerland)
Suraya Scheba (University of Cape Town, South Africa)
Alexander Vasudevan (University of Oxford, United Kingdom)

Organizing committee:

Olivia de Briey (Lasco; UCLouvain)
Coralie Douat (Labex PasP; ISP; Université Paris Nanterre)
Alizée Lazzarino (Labex dynamite; Géographie-cités; Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne; IFAS-Research)
Kossi Loumonvi (UMR SENS; Université Paul-Valéry Montpellier 3)
Agathe Nieto (HAR, LESC; EUR ArTeC; Université Paris Nanterre)
Oriane Sebillotte (Géographie-cités; EHESS; ICM)
Alice Thibaud (UMR8547 Pays germaniques; CMB Centre Marc Bloch; ENS)

Call for papers

Squatting can be defined as occupying a place without the approval of its legal owner. It encompasses practices that can be termed in various ways and that are found in both urban and rural contexts: occupation of buildings (whether or not intended for residential use), of land or agricultural plots, slums, makeshift camps, informal settlements, occupied or self-managed social centres, ZADs (zones à défendre, i.e. zones to defend) and squats occupied by artists or activists

Informal settlements have been maintained in many geographical contexts since at least the Middle Ages (Alsayyad, Roy, 2006). It was after the Second World War that the term ‘squat’ became widespread and the practice took the form of a social movement (Squatting Everywhere Kollective, 2018). Militant squatting unfolds in other social and geographical contexts, including the Global South (Cleber Rudy, 2013). Since then, in both the Global North and South, militant squats have coexisted with informal settlements and slums. These various forms of squatting have given rise to the development of distinct bodies of literatures that engage in too little dialogue, with gaps between works on the North or the South, on activist or non-activist squats, on the occupation of buildings or plots of land and public space (Aguilera, Smart, 2017 ; Smart, Aguilera, 2020 ; Scheba, Millington, 2023).

The aim of this conference is to encourage dialogue between studies focusing on squatting in the North and the South, between illegal occupations of land and real estate. The goal is to combine different disciplinary approaches and various fields of study in order to understand what illegal or informal occupations can tell us about our contemporary societies.

1. Relationship to politics and the political

The typologies that differentiate between squats of necessity, associated with precarious populations, and ‘political squats’ embedded in a protesting stance, construct a hierarchy in regard to the political significance of different squats (Bouillon, 2009 ; Péchu, 2010 ; Pruijt, 2013 ; Vasudevan, 2015 ; Martínez, 2020 ; Campos, Martínez, 2020). This conference seeks to overcome these divisions in order to rethink ways of engaging in politics through the practice of squatting.

What forms of mobilisation, collective projects and solidarity emerge in occupations that do not have an explicitly militant orientation? What is the relationship between the squat and the place, the group, the outside? Are there any signs of prefiguration, of “politicisation of the slightest gesture” or of micropolitics (Simone, 2008 ; Yates, 2015 ; 2020 ; Pruvost, 2015, Paterniani, 2018 )? Finally, how does research on squats contribute to thinking about the link between infrapolitics and politics (Scott, 1985) ? We will pay special attention to proposals that discuss the theoretical choices made, whether it be the concept of agency (Benjamin, 2008 ; Roy, 2011), Eigensinn (Lüdtke, 1995) or any other concepts mobilised to consider the relationship the studied groups have to politics and the political.

Contributions may also show how activist squats fulfil other functions: reproduction or subsistence (Mies, Bennholdt-Thomsen, 1999 ; Ruiz Cayuela, García Lamarca, 2023). They may highlight the dynamics that squats go through over time: processes of (de)politicisation, opening up or withdrawal into the private sphere (Breviglieri, Pattaroni, 2005).

2. Relationship with the state and with capitalism ; transformations in public action

Public action has an ambivalent relationship with illegal occupations : it tolerates, regulates, represses or supports them (Davis, 1989 ; Aguilera, 2017). As a result, these occupations seem particularly conducive to the study of changes in public action in a neoliberal context, and to transformations in various sectors of the economy. Papers may thus explore these dimensions.

Firstly, in both the Global North and South, the formalisation of one part of the slums or squats often comes at the cost of the exclusion or marginalisation of another part, which is poorer and/or more politically radical (Davis, 2006 ; Bouillon, 2013 ; Gelder, 2013 ; Nakamura, 2014 ; Dadusc, 2017 ; Vasudevan, 2017). How do these dynamics of formalisation and legalisation materialise? Can squats subvert or contribute to the creation of new institutional apparatuses ? In what ways do changes in laws and regulations and the fight against repression alter the strategies and trajectories of squatters (Rosa, 2009 ; Dee, 2014 ; Starecheski, 2016) ? How can a right to the city be negotiated in urban contexts increasingly marked by socio-economic inequalities (Lefebvre, 1971 ; Martínez, 2020) ?

Occupations contribute to the informalisation of housing markets, in both the Global North and the Global South (Huchzermeyer, 2022). They contribute to the emergence of new real estate operators and market segments targeting precarious populations (Fawaz, 2016 ; Ferreri et al., 2017 ; Vasudevan, 2017 ; Vivant, 2022 ; Ferreri, Sanyal, 2024). How do squats interact with these market dynamics and with repression? Do these dynamics contribute to the disappearance of squats ? Are there other forms of normalisation/formalisation that make it possible to perpetuate these experiences in a positive way?

3. Relationship to space and socio-spatial trajectories

Squatters do not form a homogeneous group : they come from varied social backgrounds and their residential trajectories are diverse. Papers may seek to understand the porosities between different social spaces. They may also focus on the circulation of actors and practices in order to explore the interactions they produce (Mudu, Chattopadhyay 2016, Paterniani, 2022). How are informal occupations key spaces for observing the recompositions of relations of class, gender, race or other forms of domination ?

The papers may first focus on residential trajectories, to show the dynamics that lead from the street or slum to squatting, from a discreet squat to a more visible one, and vice versa. How do these various squatting practices and residential trajectories relate to social trajectories? Finally, what emerges from the crossing of trajectories within the squats ?

The relationship between the processes of marginalisation and the dynamics of integration can also be considered and questioned at different levels. Does squatting appear to be a spatial dynamic of recentralisation in the face of the commodification of space, or, on the contrary, does it reinforce marginalisation on the periphery? How does the squat influence the movements of squatters within their immediate environment – the neighbourhood, village or region – or towards local, national or international networks ?

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