"Grounding Migration: The Right to Housing"

Defining migrants as metaphors of ‘inbetweenness,’ constantly moving through ‘non-places’, works as a colonial erasure of their strive to make space locally. Not surprisingly, there is a near absolute absence of the ‘immigrant’ from the literature of social movements demanding housing rights. Furthermore, the narrow focus of ‘immigrant rights’ as the exclusive realm of the ‘immigrant subject’ underpin the disconnect between immigrants’ political action and larger social movements in the society of destination. This presentation works through this aporia, and is part of my larger book project on the ties between migrant rights and social movements at large. Specifically, I address the key role of immigrants in the 15-M Movement in Spain, and how Ecuadorian residents in Madrid are leading initiatives for housing rights, revealing the continuities between transnational processes, and access to housing in specific locations. Under this light, the human category of the ‘migrant’ is not a transient subject, but rather a resident and historical actor in our cities.

Resident Fellow Speaker Series: Araceli Masterson-Algar