Abstract
In Lisbon, during the COVID‐19 pandemic period, new spaces for contestation and the action of urban social movements intensified, capitalising on the visibility for the right to housing, as a basic human right and an unconditional public health imperative, to fulfil the duties of lockdown and social isolation, imposed by the State of Exception. Its narrative and strategies reinforces the counter‐hegemonic movement that denounces the logics of commodification and financialisation in the housing sector, placing hope in a post‐capitalist transition in the post‐COVID horizon. We conclude that the actors in this urban struggle have limited power over the changes they initiate, or make an effort to inflict, if they are not involved in a concerted and politically integrated action, not least because the achievements they obtain are temporary and exceptional, like the state of emergency imposed by COVID‐19.
Highlights
A global emergency situation due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic obliges Governments to mobilise resources to enable the response of health authorities and implement economic recovery plans that protect the most fragile citizens from the impacts of the crisis caused by the pandemic
How are the urban social movements that formed in Lisbon in the pre-COVID responding to the growing and aggravated inequalities in the housing market during the current pandemic? Even though we know that the COVID-19 pandemic crisis is recent, and that the problem of the right to housing is as old in Portugal, as in the world, this paper aims to contribute to fill the knowledge gaps that exist in the national and international literature on this matter
The second part addresses the new spaces of contestation created by anti-evictions urban social movements in pre-COVID period in Lisbon, namely, their characteristics and organisational forms, assessing the political potential for reversing the current situation of housing crisis
Summary
A global emergency situation due to the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic obliges Governments to mobilise resources to enable the response of health authorities and implement economic recovery plans that protect the most fragile citizens from the impacts of the crisis caused by the pandemic.
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