Contesting Displacement Through Radical Emplacement and Occupations in Austerity Europe

Displacement from a place of home can have multiple manifestations and engender different practices of resistance. Ferreri draws on academic debates and activist publications to offer a critical synthesis of recent resisting practices that contest and counter residential displacement in northern and southern European cities. The chapter focuses on forms of organised place occupations that have emerged in response to the global financial crisis and subsequent austerity programmes to contest new processes of gentrification, neoliberal restructuring, and speculative real estate development. Selected examples from England, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Sweden, and Spain reveal shared repertoires of action and the potential for tactical convergences towards a place-based and intersectional politics of radical emplacement

Should Monrovian Communities Agree to Voluntary Slum Relocations: Land, Gender and Urban Governance

Slum-dwellers in Monrovia, Liberia, facing extreme environmental hazards and flooding are being advised by the National Housing Authority (NHA) to relocate, but the process and outcome is unclear. The slum-dwellers are vulnerable owing to their location, risks and socio-economic profile given prolonged civil war, the tenuous return to democracy and an Ebola health epidemic in one of the poorest economies of Africa. This chapter analyses the multi-stakeholder endeavour to develop voluntary gender-responsive relocation guidelines, while addressing issues such as land, livelihoods, financing and urban services in a relocation package. The chapter explores how good urban governance is a requirement for a successful community-led and human rights-based sustainable slum resettlement