Deprivation-based squatting as a choice from necessity: The housing pathways of low-income squatters in public housing in Naples, Italy

Abstract

In this study, I investigate a unique sheltering strategy employed by the urban poor to satisfy their housing-related needs – an individualistic squatting in public housing (Esposito & Chiodelli, 2021). People with low income and no connection (or partial) to social movements or housing activists frequently engage in this practice. Such occupations are among the forms the most recent literature has defined as ‘deprivation-based’ or ‘survival’ squatting, stressing housing precarity/desperation as the main driving force. To enrich the existing debate on the latter phenomenon and by exploring a deep ethnographic work in a public housing neighbourhood in Naples (Italy), I propose that individualistic squatting can be a routinised housing option among others. In some cases, squatting is not the last-resort strategy of the urban poor who choose to squat, aiming at materialising long-term solutions within a highly unstable housing context.