Occupying vacant buildings in Brussels-Capital An ethnographic study of the occupying collectives of "St-vide-Leegbeek"
(2023) ECREA Summer School — Location: Roskilde (7.August.2023)
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- Abstract
- In 2019, six associations fighting against real estate vacancy declare the existence of a 20th municipality in the Brussels-Capital Region: Saint-Vide-Leegbeek. A fictitious and symbolic commune, this initiative denounces the 6.78 million square meters of unoccupied space in Brussels and their untapped potential to meet the city's social and societal needs. Initially practiced without a legal framework, the occupation of empty buildings, commonly called squatting, is studied in the sociology of collective action as a social movement. The legalization of certain forms of occupation has led to the appearance of new occupants from the associative and private sectors. Some squatters' collectives have regularized their situation to get out of precariousness by forming associations and others preferred to stay out of the legal system. We study occupation as an enactment of the right to the city. It demonstrates through action that another way of (re)housing, of revitalizing the city and its neighborhoods and of mobilizing is possible. The occupant collectives share temporary occupation as a practice, but experiment and motivate it differently. Tensions and disagreements exist between them about the ways in which they occupy, and more deeply, between the ideals of occupation that these occupations represent. Using a theoretical framework that combines sociology of social movements and organizational communication, this thesis studies occupation inhabitants through their practices and discourses from a communicative perspective. More specifically, we study occupations as alternative organizations, and how their discourses and practices are performing their alternativeness and their politicization. By alternativeness, we mean how they are constructed in opposition to one or many aspects of the current society system. Politicization is not defined in its classical party driven meaning but, as Hamidi defined it, as the identification of shared problems calling for collective solutions. The project mobilizes a multi-sited ethnographic method in three Brussels’ occupations to understand their conflictual dynamics : the first one is managed by a lucrative company, the second one by a non-profit and lobby and the last one is self-managed and doesn’t enter any legal frame. We will engage ourselves in these three very different organizations in order to comprehend, transcribe and analyze their discourses and practices in logbooks. This data collection will be coupled with semi-directive interviews.
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de Briey, O. (2023). Occupying vacant buildings in Brussels-Capital An ethnographic study of the occupying collectives of "St-vide-Leegbeek" ECREA Summer School, Roskilde.