Dr. Jane Ball Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University Jane.ball@newcastle.ac.uk

1. When are squatters likely to be militant?The regulation of residential squattingin England and France Dr. Jane Ball Newcastle Law School, Newcastle University Jane.ball@newcastle.ac.uk

2. When are squatters militant?Studying outsiders in England and France • There is a move from individual squats to larger collective, militant or overt squats • Dealt with by public and criminal law responses rather than private law ones • Why is that? • Is that better or worse? • Reviewing the law using possible evidence-based theories about outsiders: • Foucault - power • Lindbeck and Snower – economic power

3. This paper concerns housing squats:Bouillon’s typology • Bouillon conducted interviews in squats in Marseille 2000-2005 • Squatters are extremely variable types of people • She identifies two types of squat: • The ‘housing squat’ or ‘squat of necessity’ and • The ‘squat of activities’ or ‘squat of conviction’ • The latter were less successful • Collective housing squats are an established and conventional form in France although there are recent crackdowns

4. A ‘squat of activities’ In Tarragona

5. Squatters as outsidersFoucault and the power relationship • Squatters are generally agreed to be societal outsiders (Green, Becker, Reeve, Cohen, Cooper) ‘folk devils’ • Foucault can be used for evidence-based explanations of cause and effect (Hunter and Nixon) • Foucault (1971) said that the position of outsider is the product of a power relationship • The madman in a play is stigmatized and silent BUT • There is a sudden switch when the madman is the only character on the stage telling the truth • Collective squats today promote moral causes to create such a paradigm shift in perception.

6. Squatters as outsidersInsider outsider theory and economic power Insider outsider theory provides evidence of the processes of exclusion from housing : • Lindbeck and Snower for employment, but applied to housing • In housing this is the result of barriers to access to homes and barriers to eviction – transaction costs • These barriers protects insiders – tenants and home owners • If these barriers are too high, then outsiders cannot access a home, become increasingly stigmatized and deteriorate quickly • Squatting is a response to this, often a cold hard choice of necessity This theory suggests that the stigmatization can be addressed by an awareness of how barriers work

7. Insiders and the response of outsiders • France has suffered from insiderness in the housing market and from militant collective squats much longer than England (Ball, 2011) • Insidernessdescribes: • a dysfunctional housing market where there is a kind of sclerosis of the market, which adversely affects everyone • conditions where there are too many barriers to access to housing but also too many barriers to exit from housing (i.e. difficulty evicting people) • The homeless are the bellwether for the system as a whole • Outsiderness, here describes the self-help responses to insiderness of squatters in collective squat.

8. The individual squat and the private lawoccupying space (1) The main (but limited) power for an individual squatter lies in: • The difficulty of eviction (transaction costs) • Getting on with neighbours and caring for the home An ancient law granting squatters title in England and France after a long apprenticeship has common roots in Roman law: • Practical in the wilds of the Roman empire (usucapio). • In France this is very difficult to obtain • In England this is becoming difficult to obtain: • High cost criminalization (widening discretion for police?) • limiting of private –law remedies

9. The individual squat and the private lawoccupying space (2) • This is a moral battle , because the State can make it easier or harder to get access or evict • Traditional Justifications: • Economic use of land/mitigating homelessness/ labour evidenced by repair • The existence of squatters’ title creates public order in the long term (Savigny) • This supports property owners because of the long-term difficulty in evidencing ownership ‘the diabolical proof’ • Low visibility, rewards getting on with neighbours, cheap to public authorities and high public order value • It is the job of the state to act impartially between claimants

10. The collective squat and the public law (1):greater difficulty in eviction • Why do squatters abandon the incentives of the private law? • The collective squat increases public costs of their removal: • Groups are harder to evict than individuals (transaction costs are higher) and this is expensive • Groups allow continuity with less effort – they can work in shifts to continue occupation. • Continuity also ensured by advertising presence on the net. • Group squats propose moral purposes and provide useful squatted social centres, appealing over the heads of neighbours to an international audience. • A deliberate policy of confrontation rather than slipping away before eviction raises the public profile.

11. Turning full circle: Public law expensively doing the same as the private law • The State tries to replicate what squatters do in seeking out empty properties • In France a largely failed policy of spotting and requisitioning empty property since 1945 • In England, the Empty Homes Agency • Very high cost of evictions to displace collective squats, so evictees carry a sense of injustice around Europe • Impartiality of State threatened by compensation to landowners who lose title (ECHR) incentivizing crackdown • In very large squats in transitional economies , title bestowed on whole areas by public decree (de Soto)

12. Conclusionoccupying space • Limiting squatting involves the state in higher public costs than the old law, instead of impartially adjudicating on each claim on its merits • It also creates social divisions and a fissile state of indignation • Insider-outsider theory proposes that a level playing field will improve things: • Effective, correct, and appropriately timed eviction after fair adjudication • Improve access, reduce stigmatization and free up money to spend on homelessness • If the private law of squatting did not exist, you would have to invent it.