Utifrån egna erfarenheter av deltagarnära forskning resonerar vi i kapitlet om forskningsetik och forskaretik baserat på olika etiska dilemman och överväganden vi mött, olika betydelser av god forskningsetik och god forskning. Vi reflekterar över hur vi som forskare kan utveckla ett särskilt etiskt förhållningssätt som präglas av närhet och samarbete i en strävan att skapa kunskap som är praktiknära och samhällsrelevant. Vi har valt att utgå från tre forskningsprojekt. Två av projekten kretsar kring barn och unga. Det tredje fokuserar på hyresgästers upplevelser av bostadsförnyelse och hur boende organiserar sig i frågor som rör hemmet och boendet. Mot slutet av kapitlet resonerar vi om hur forskare ständigt bör reflektera över etik, i förhållande till sin roll som forskare och sina forskningspraktiker. Här diskuterar vi även fördelar med deltagarnära forskning som förespråka rhandling, teori, reflektion och praktik i forskningen.

Under de senaste decennierna har fastighetsägare, byggbolag, banker och riskkapitalister tjänat enorma summor på bostäder, medan andra förlorat sina hem eller sett sina bostads­kostnader öka kraftigt. Den sociala bostadspolitiken har övergivits, hemlösheten har ökat och bostadsstandarden har försämrats. Samtidigt har det finansiella systemet blivit centrerat kring en bolånespiral som har gjort hushållen och den svenska ekonomin otroligt sårbara.

Sverige behöver ett nytt, socialt och klimatanpassat bostads­system, men ett sådant kan bara åstadkommas genom radikala förändringar. Utifrån en gedigen genomgång av över hundra års svensk bostadshistoria analyserar "Kris i bostadsfrågan" orsakerna till och konsekvenserna av att bostadens bruksvärde helt har kommit att överskuggas av dess bytesvärde, och föreslår hur den pågående krisen – med radikala förändringar i politik, finans och byggande – skulle kunna demonteras och utgöra grunden för ett nytt bostadssystem, där alla människors behov av ett hem står i centrum.

Forskarkollektivet Fundament består av Dominika V. Polanska (Södertörns högskola), Åse Richard (Uppsala universitet), Ståle Holgersen (Örebro universitet), Timothy Blackwell (Uppsala universitet), Maria Wallstam (Upp­sala universitet), Hannes Rolf (Stockholms universitet).

This article casts new light on the processes of collective claims and identity formation in social movements, with the help of the radical political framework of Laclau and Mouffe (Hegemony and socialist strategy: towards a radical democratic politics, Verso, London, 2001). Polish tenants, classified as “losers” of transition and marginalized in the mainstream discourse, nevertheless act collectively, mobilizing alliances with other democratic struggles and thus challenge the hegemony of neoliberal dogmas in the country. The very fact of mobilization of a socially and economically deprived group demanding the right to the city is provocative in the studied context. The empirical foundations of our study are 20 in-depth semi-structured interviews conducted with Polish tenants’ activists cross-referenced with media material produced by and about the movement, and previous studies on the topic. The contribution of this article is twofold: it combines social movement theory with radical political framework and fills the empirical gap in the body of literature on social movements in post-socialist Europe.

Here we introduce the special issue of Partecipazione e Conflitto concerning the theme "Squatting and Urban Commons: Creating Alternatives to Neoliberalism". In particular, we present the context and origins of this edition, the rationale behind these theoretical and empirical concerns, and the main contents of the gathered articles.

Radical social movements are more and more often the subject of academic inquiry, where their agenda, identity-building processes and repertoires of action are examined vis a vis the dominant discursive opportunity structures. The case study presented in this articleis the squatting movement in Poland. We interpret this movement, its actions and in particular alliance-building strategies, through the perspective of radical flanks of broader urban social movements environment.

The first decade after the fall of state socialism in Poland was characterized by moderate aspirations to reform or oppose the dominant (neoliberal) rhetoric by social movements in the country. In the last decade, a turn toward more informal grassroots activity has been observed by scholars, above all in the field of urban activism. This article looks into this recent development in urban activism and focuses especially on the hitherto neglected grassroots, noninstitutionalized, and nonformalized forms of activism that take place in Polish cities aimed at urban change. It will be argued that this form of urban activism developed as a reaction to professionalization and NGO-ization of social movements, defying the (until now) established forms of organizing collectively. The analysis is built on qualitative data gathered in 2014–2015, including 36 in-depth interviews with urban activists in informal initiatives and groups in different Polish cities.

How the legal is implicated in the production of space and how displacement is both a material and discursive process stands at the fore of this study. The aim is to examine how the law is interpreted in cases of approval of renovation of rental housing and how these interpretations are articulated, presented, and justified in the Swedish context. Questions on what definitions and justifications are used in the interpretative legal practice are linked to processes of discursive displacement of tenants. It is argued that the unequal relationship between property owners and tenants is sustained in this legal practice through the techniques of abstracting, naturalising, and shifting responsibility, and uncritically reproducing financial logics, thus contributing to discursive displacement of tenants. The arguments of tenants are silenced and circumscribed with economic and technical reasons, along with narrow and vague definitions, reflecting a position of privilege, and reproducing the politics of property. 

What is action research and what are its benefits for social science? How has it developed and who is applying it? How can action research be both a method and a philosophy in research? In this text, the author reflects over her application of the method and what makes it particularly useful and discusses the benefits of collaborative approach to research. The issue is discussed from the point of view of social science research and in the light of a decade of research on and among urban social movements in Sweden and elsewhere. Action research is partly a critique of the view of how knowledge is created and used in the social sciences. It opposes the monopoly of academic institutions over the creation of knowledge and emphasizes that knowledge created in action research has changed the world in more positive ways than research created with conventional methods. The author argues that researchers in the social sciences have a responsibility and obligation to return parts of their research to those they research. 

Hemmet är den plats som ger oss trygghet och kontroll, det nav i tillvaron där vi umgås med familj och vänner på våra egna villkor.

Något har dock hänt. Sedan några årtionden har starka krafter förändrat innebörden av hemmet för den som bor i hyresrätt. Hyresvärdar renoverar som de vill och höjer hyrorna dramatiskt, vilket tvingar hyresgäster att flytta. De blir renovräkta.

I den här boken granskas de rättsliga instanser som ger hyresvärdar tillstånd att utföra renoveringar som leder till kraftigt höjda hyror. Skarp kritik riktas mot hyresnämndens och hovrättens tillämpning av hyreslagen och mot rådande praxis. Författarna blickar också tillbaka i historien för att spåra hyresgästers rättigheter vid renovering och sätter hyresboendet i en vidare bostadspolitisk kontext.

Displacement in the making. Renoviction as cultural traumaBased on interviews with tenants in an area facing eviction following forced renovation, this study presents an analysis of the reactions and forms of resistance that arise among residents in the early phase of a renovation process. The concepts of cultural trauma, resistance and action repertoires are used in the analysis to understand the processes that residents in renovation areas have to face and how their collective self-image and strategies for action change during these. We argue that the exceptionally high trust in Sweden, based on the Swedish welfare state and housing policy, results in traumatic experiences among tenants when facing forced renovation. In this study, we respond to questions about how traumatic experiences are expressed, what causes are identified by the tenants, and what forms of resistance emerge among tenants who face costly renovations. We hereby demonstrate how the experienced cultural trauma can be transformed into individual and collective resistance actions.

In 2019 we organized a conference casting light on the housing crisis and especially on the historical and contemporary organization of tenants to contest housing inequalities. By placing housing struggles and tenants’ organization at the centre of the debate we aimed at exposing and politicizing current capitalist development and, hopefully, at proposing a different view of how housing can be organized and imagined by discussing how resistance can be used, with what effects and how it can be connected to other struggles. This special issue is a result of this conference dealing with tenants’ organization in different contexts examining how tenants organize(d), why and what could be learned from it. In this introducing text we give an overview of this field of research by asking why tenants’ mobilizations are important to study, what is still under-studied in the field and which perspectives are important to raise in future research.

I det här kapitlet berättar författaren om hur hon i ett forskningsprojekt kring hyresgästers upplevelser av bostadsförnyelse arbetat för att inkludera deltagarna i ett gemensamt ” kunskapsskapande”. Vi får följa medfrån början då forskningsfrågan formulerades, där växelverkan mellan aktivism och forskning varit avgörande för att ringa in problemet, och under processen, eftersom studien genomförts i en återkommande dialog med deltagarna, samt till den punkt då forskningsresultatet presenterades och hur det togs emot av deltagarna och andra berörda aktörer. Kapitlet visar hur en genomtänkt men flexibel design som syftar till att involvera deltagare kan utformas, vilka fördelar och nackdelar en sådan förankring i fältet innebär för spridningen av forskningen och forskningens samhällsnytta. Vidare diskuteras fördelar och nackdelar med att arbeta med aktörer utanför akademin samt hur en växelverkan mellan aktivism och forskning kan bidra till att skapa kunskap, slipa metodologiska och teoretiska verktyg i en forskningsstudie samt sprida forskningsresultat,inverka på deltagarna och vilken relevans forskningsämnet har.

Squatting in Sweden peaked in the 1980s. Stockholm and Gothenburg were the epicenters, among other smaller towns throughout the country. Researchers identified punk music, influences from abroad, anarchist ideas and the emergence of urban social movements as central to the increase in squatting during this decade. Only a fragmented picture of squatting events has been presented until now, however, often at the city level and during a limited period. This perspective fails to connect squatting actions across the country, and beyond its borders. Departing from the approach to squatting as a form of contentious repertoire, I will analyze how squatters negotiated and legitimized their actions, and in relation to different opponents. Special attention is given to the contradictions caused by different and sometimes contradictory ideals in the communication of the significance of squatting. Based on materials produced by the squatters and other secondary materials, this chapter explores the arenas of interactions, or fields where contentious actors interact within their own group or movement, or with the authorities and the police.

The aim of this chapter is to analyze the process of home destruction and how home is given meaning and politicized by those experiencing displacement through renovation. The objective here is both to conceptualize the processes of the destruction in the displacement process including the creation and re-creation of home(homemaking), and to understand the role homemaking plays in citizens’ negotiation of their place and position in society, political engagement, and agency. I place the processes of un-homing and homemaking as pivotal for the development of political subjectivity. Political subjectivity is conceptualized as agency based on a subjective and shared multi-scalar understanding of oneself and as part of a collective, a multi-dimensional process characterized by social, political, material, and spatial dimensions. Sweden serves as an example of a post-welfare context and the analysis is built on interviews with tenants facing displacement through renovation, organizing collectively to contest it.

Tenants’ movements have been part of European history for over one hundred years and are still unevenly studied. They developed in reaction to the housing shortages and poor living conditions at the end of the nineteenth and beginning of the twentieth century and were closely linked to the labour movements of this period. Tenants’ mobilizations developed differently in various national contexts and achieved varying degrees of success. In many cases they succeeded in making an impact on the living conditions of the working classes by demanding affordable housing and improved housing standards. Their development in recent decades has, however, been affected by the commodification of housing and the recurrent political and economic crises, which are interlinked and affect collective mobilization and identification among tenants. As the housing crisis deepens across Europe, fuelled by housing financialization, climate and economic crises, tenants are again mobilizing – this time from a more marginal position than ever.

This study explores the renovation of housing governed by two tenure formsin Sweden, rental and cooperative housing. Based on a relational approach,we argue that despite requiring a similar need of maintenance at regularintervals, renovation in rental housing takes a substantially different formcompared to cooperatives, regarding the extent of the work, the involvement of, and the outcome for, the residents. With the concept of predatoryhousing commodification, we aim at examining how the process of housingrenovation is organized, what driving forces motivate renovations, along with how it impacts affected residents. Our contribution is twofold: firstly,we conceptualize renovation of housing as a commodifying process, withinthe realm of financialization, most often carried out brutally and contributingto housing inequality; secondly, our contribution is empirical as it covershousing renovation from a relational and contrasting perspective in a fieldthat is still under-studied in the Scandinavian context.

Den förnyelsevåg vi ser i dag gäller i första hand ombyggnationer och renoveringar av hyresbestånd som byggdes främst på 1960- och 1970-talen, men även tidigare. Majoriteten av detta bestånd står inför en välbehövd upprustning av avloppsstammar och el. Många hus har inte fått en upprustning sedan de byggdes. En stor del av dessa tillhör miljonprogrammet som sedan länge huserat människor som historiskt tillhört en mindre bemedlad socioekonomisk grupp i Sverige. Vad händer när denna upprustning blir så omfattande och kostsam att de boende tvingas flytta? Hur påverkar det stadsdelen och grannskapet? Vad gör det med hyresgästers förhållande till sina hem? Och hur kan de påverka denna process? Det är dessa frågor kapitlet kommer söker svar på. Utgångspunkt är den forskning vi bedrivit de senaste åren i tre stadsdelar i södra Stockholm. Vårt material bygger på ett trettiotal intervjuer samt ett tiotal gruppintervjuer genomförda 2018 med hyresgäster som befunnit sig inför, under eller efter en omfattande renovering av sitt hem.

Two Polish cities, Warsaw and Poznań, are studied in the article to examine how external structures are handled and used by squatters in these two settings. The aim is to analyze opportunity structures that condition the emergence and development of squatting and how squatters respond to and utilize these opportunities. Our ambition is to understand why squatting has developed differently in the two cities by emphasizing the duration and cohesion of the squatting scene as pivotal for the different trajectories of squatting. It is argued in the article that the durability of the squatting environment abates tendencies to open the squatting scene to external coalitions and establish more institutionalized forms of political struggle.

While governing practices, as articulated in policies and other documents intended to shape tenants’ behavior, have been given considerable attention in research, less attention has been given to the self-regulation of tenants in practice or how these governance practices are challenged and resisted from below. The ambition of our work is to study governing practices deployed by housing companies in two Swedish cities to achieve tenants’ compliance with extensive housing renewal plans, and to conceptualize this means of exerting power as practices through which tenants are governed, silenced and surveilled, and their collective interests divided. Building on several years of ethnographic work among communities of tenants experiencing extensive renovation of their homes and, in particular, qualitative interviews and focus-group interviews with tenants, this study analyzes how governing practices are exercised by housing companies and contested by tenants. Our contribution is twofold: First, we propose the broadening of the notion of repertoires of contention alongside collectively organized contention to include covert and individual forms of resistance. We understand these forms as mutually shaping, and distinguish between eight forms of resistance repertoires common among tenants facing renovictions (indirect evictions caused by extensive housing renewal and skyrocketing rents) in Sweden: building local identities, mixing formal and informal forms of organization, delaying the process, detournement, politics of disengagement, demanding accountability through visibility, reversing knowledge hierarchies, and reversed shaming. Second, we aim to add to the still understudied field of tenants’ mobilizations in the Swedish context. 

This study bridges research on squatting and urban commons by studying squatting - whencollectively self-organized for community wide social (material and immaterial) benefit and within largelyanti-capitalist and anarchist ways - as a practice of commoning. In this paper we analyze the “why” and“how” of such a practice in a Swedish context. A country where the provision of community spaces hashistorically been satisfied by public authorities within a contradictory hybrid model of corporatist/statecapitalism amidst a traditionally well-developed public service sector and strong civil society. Our empiricalmaterial consists of 17 semi-structured interviews with squatters, as well as the authors’ participantobservation at the longest lasting squats in the Swedish capital since 2000. We focus on how the creationof this ‘free and voluntary’ community led to a ‘commoning’ of knowledge and skills within squatters’ dailylives; and how these practices developed, evolved, and were maintained. Our analysis shows that while thespace, most objects in it, and the provisioning of goods there were commoned; the most profound‘commoning’ there was immaterial in nature. This commoning centered on the un/intentional sharing,diffusion, and commoning of knowledge, skills, and even emotions and feelings which happened within themixture of planned and autonomously rotating responsibilities in space. 

Squatting has been present in Central and Eastern Europe since the fall of state socialism and Poland is pointed out as exceptional in the development of squatting in the area. However, looking closer at the squatting environment in Warsaw reveals that the movements’ successes are a result of a cross-movement alliance with the tenants’ movement. The cooperation between squatters and tenants have in a short period of time gained a strong negotiating position vis-à-vis local authorities in Warsaw. The objective of this article is to analyse the mechanisms behind the cooperation of squatters’ and the tenants’ movements and in particular the cognitive processes behind the formation of an alliance. Specific research questions posed in the article cover how the cooperation between the squatting movement and the tenants’ movement emerge in the city, and what cognitive processes characterize the cooperation. The empirical material for the study consists of altogether 40 semi-structured interviews with squatters and activists in the tenants’ movement in the city. It is argued in the article that the development of alliance formation includes processes of defining common goals, underplaying of differences, and recognizing common strength. Moreover, in order to reach the point when the alliance is formed the process of recognition of common strength needs to be successful in both movements resulting in a shared perception of empowerment.

This paper examines how different social, economic, historical and physical conditions coincide in the formation of space and processes of decline in the period of transformation in Poland. The focus lies on a specific residential area in the centre of the Polish city of Gdansk and the question why no improvements have been done in this particular area to stop its successive decline. It is among other things argued that clear urban policy together with improved urban planning and clear legislation on ownership are needed in order to improve conditions in this and other deprived areas of the city.

The aim of this article is to analyze how social class markers are constructed in the discourse on gated communities in a postsocialist urban context. The case of Poland is used as an example of apost-Communist country where the number of gated communities is increasing rapidly in urban areas. The material of study consists of 50 articles published in the largest national newspaper.

This article argues that the discourse on gated communities is constituted by and constitutes class divisions and social class markers prevalent in the country since the fall of Communism. The “new” capitalistic system with its inherent social divisions is described as creating demands for “new” forms of housing where gates function as separators, protectors, and class identifiers. Residential differentiation is a reality in Polish society, and private space has become a symbol of exclusivity and spread throughout the country along with the popularity of gated forms of housing.

The aim of this article is to suggest an explanatory set of factors to the popularity of gated housing in the Polish context. The explanation focuses on the divide between the public and the private sphere and encompasses economic, cultural and institutional explanations to the gating phenomenon. The empirical material consists of interviews, discourse analysis, a questionnaire, official reports and data, and legal regulation analysis. The Polish example display that both the remnants from the past and the contemporary ideals can be derived from the public-private divide. This divide has played a central role in the negotiations on urban space, the role of housing, and the identities and activities connected to housing and spatial issues since 1989. It is argued that the introduction of market economy followed by socioeconomic inequalities, has resulted in specific forms of creative strategies for individual actions among Poles and to the popularity of gated housing.

The aim of this chapter is to examine the reasons behind the increasing residential disparities in the city of Gdansk. Namely, I will look how the changes in urban policy, urban planning and ownership regulations have affected the development of the old and new residential areas in the city. Processes of decline and the emergence of gated communities are of main interest for illustrating urban development and specific examples of residential areas of Gdansk have been used to demonstrate the important role of urban policy and urban planning together with ownership conditions on the development in the city since the fall of communism. I argue that the lack of an explicit urban policy, including urban planning, has created enclaves of wealth and poverty in the city. Furthermore property rights’ regulations are complicated and unclear and hinder improvements of old and historical residential areas and a more integrated development of housing investments in the city.

The aim of this article is to examine the reasons behind the growing popularity ofgated communities in Poland by applying cultural, institutional and economic explanationsin the Polish context. The empirical material consists of interviews, newspaperarticles, legal acts concerning housing, official documents and a questionnaire. Thedivide between the public and private spheres is central to the explanatory model, andit is argued that it is this that has played a central role in the emergence and popularityof gated forms of housing in Poland. The introduction of a market economy and subsequentsocio-economic inequalities has resulted in specific forms of individual strategiesregarding housing preferences. It is suggested here that this specific form ofindividualism, connected with institutional shortcomings, cultural legacies and thepresent housing market, is reflected in the enclosed and private living spaces of today’s Poles.

Since the fall of communism, some crucial political, economic and social changes have been taking place in the former communist societies. The objective of the thesis is to examine the processes of residential differentiation taking place in the urban landscape of the Polish city of Gdańsk after the introduction of the capitalist system. The focus is on different forms of residential differentiation and the social, economic and historical factors behind these forms. The empirical material that forms the basis of the thesis consists of interviews, newspaper articles, a questionnaire, official (national and local) reports and documents. Study I examines the way in which different social, economic, historical and physical conditions coincide in the formation of space and the processes of decline in the period of transformation in Poland. The focus lies on a specific residential area in the center of Gdańsk and the lack of improvements in this particular area, which would stop its successive decline. Study II explains the emergence of gated communities in the post-communist urban context and discusses the reasons for their increasing numbers and popularity. The main argument is that the popularity of gated communities is tightly intertwined with the communist past, emerging in reaction to the housing conditions that prevailed under communism. Study III investigates how social class markers are constructed in the discourse on gated communities in post-socialist Poland. The “new” capitalistic system, with its inherent social divisions, is described in the discourse as creating demands for “new” forms of housing, where gates function as separators, protectors and class identifiers. Study IV concentrates on the support for the formation of gated communities in the legal and regulatory framework in Poland since 1989. The paper asserts that the outcome of liberal politics and legal regulation in the country is the neglect of spatial planning and imprecise urban policies.