Visibilities and the Politics of Space: Refugee Activism in Berlin

This article examines the ways in which refugee activists attained visibility within the public sphere while they contested, resisted, and helped transform multiple spaitials as part of their movement in Berlin, Germany. Scholarship on refugee and immigrant protests has focused on demonstrations and every day acts of resistance in refugee camps or accommodation. However, there has been less focus on the ways in which refugees engage in spatial politics. This article focuses on urban resistance in Berlin where refugee activists in alliance with supporters occupied several spaces and transformed them to political sites

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