Squatting and the State: Resilient Property in an Age of Crisis

Abstract

In Squatting and the State, Lorna Fox O'Mahony and Marc L. Roark propose a new theory to analyse how states approach the issue of homeless people squatting on land. Their approach is called Resilient Property and draws upon the different conceptual frameworks of ‘wicked problems’ (based on Ritterl and Webber), sustainability theory, fiduciary theory (citing Underkuffler), actor-network theory (engaging with the work of Law), and vulnerability theory (referencing Fineman). The authors take squatting as their topic because it motivates passionate legal discussions over both possession and ownership. Squatting is indeed a wicked problem for analysis since it defies easy categorization and in contesting what private property means, and serves to question the way in which global society functions under capitalism. The authors write that ‘our aim is to better understand how domestic institutions, norms, and narratives in each of these jurisdictions have shaped the nomos within which “the state” acts in response to homeless squatting on empty land’ (p. 25). However, the resulting theory is rather opaque and is only explained in full in Chapter 5. It would have been helpful to have it sketched out earlier in the book, for example in the Introduction.