Leiden University Student Repository

Bauer, Mika (2020)

“Your laws are not our laws” – The Invisible Struggle for the Right to the City

Bachelor thesis | Politicologie (BSc)

After the 2010 Kraken en Leegstand bill, squatting was criminalized and is now punishable with a prison sentence. This poses the question of “What is the impact of the 2010 Kraken en Leegstand legislation on the squatter movement in the Netherlands?”. I hypothesize that the squatter movement adopted infrapolitical tactics to fly under the radar of the state which in turn allows the movement to continue operating despite repression. I conducted an in-depth interview with a member of the squatter movement and, moreover, analyzed the 2016 policy report of the Kraken en Leegstand legislation and the Squatter Yearbook 2018 to answer the research question. I found that the squatter movement was greatly impacted by the 2010 legislation regarding its organization, tactics and identity. Furthermore, the movement indeed adopted infrapolitical means to survive. These findings are significant for the study of new social movements and political opportunity structures because it demonstrates that...Show moreAfter the 2010 Kraken en Leegstand bill, squatting was criminalized and is now punishable with a prison sentence. This poses the question of “What is the impact of the 2010 Kraken en Leegstand legislation on the squatter movement in the Netherlands?”. I hypothesize that the squatter movement adopted infrapolitical tactics to fly under the radar of the state which in turn allows the movement to continue operating despite repression. I conducted an in-depth interview with a member of the squatter movement and, moreover, analyzed the 2016 policy report of the Kraken en Leegstand legislation and the Squatter Yearbook 2018 to answer the research question. I found that the squatter movement was greatly impacted by the 2010 legislation regarding its organization, tactics and identity. Furthermore, the movement indeed adopted infrapolitical means to survive. These findings are significant for the study of new social movements and political opportunity structures because it demonstrates that infrapolitics are a viable strategy for new social movements in unfavorable political opportunity structures. This introduces a novel way to think about the relationship between state repression and social movements in social movement theory.Show less

infrapolitics

new social movements

political opportunity structures

squatting.

Author

Bauer, Mika

Faculty

Faculty of Social & Behavioural Sciences

Supervisors

Kopecky, P.
De Zwart, F.

ECTS Credits

20

Language

en