Squatting London

'A timely and urgent book that challenges how we come to think about property and homeownership while reminding us that there are other ways – makeshift, precarious and subversive – of inhabiting and transforming the city. Squatting London chronicles the everyday actions of the city’s diverse squatter community and the alternative urban landscape that they have come to assemble and cultivate' -- Alexander Vasudevan, author of <i>The Autonomous City: A History of Urban Squatting</i> 'The generative power of squatting lies at the core of the stories, people and places narrated in Burgum's beautiful book. If one takes squatting not just as a site of politics, but as a productive infrastructure enabling for multiple forms of the political to flourish and become, then one sees the role squats plays in enriching the grounds upon which the many - not just squatters - can struggle for more just housing and cities. Squatting London is a forceful call to take such generative power seriously and an important resource to work with it' -- Michele Lancione, author of <i>For a Liberatory Politics of Home</i> 'Homes without people, people without homes. This book demonstrates that squatting is not just the correction of this unfair mathematics, but also the creation of collectivity and a generation of political subjects in a context of social disregard and dispossession' -- Raquel Rolnik, author of <i>Urban Warfare: Housing and Cities in the Age of Finance</i> 'Contemporary squatting research has long needed an analytically grounded ethnography of squatters themselves. Burgum has listened to the voices we need to hear. In sophisticated reflections on their experiences, these London squatters tell of the elation of being with a crew acting for the common good, and the fragility of lumpen collectives. It’s an invaluable snapshot of a ground-level social movement among the most deprived elements of a western society' -- Alan W. Moore, author of <i>Occupation Culture: Art & Squatting in the City from Below</i> 'Who deserves space? Who is entitled to home? Squatting, Sam Burgum tells, flips dominant propertied scripts, insisting that home should be linked to use, rather than privilege. In a powerful and subversive account, Burgum opens up the political space of the city as he takes us inside London's squats' -- Nicholas Blomley, Professor of Geography, Simon Fraser University 'A remarkable theatrical ethnography, whose author Samuel Burgum trespasses in revolutionary territories. Meeting deep material, social, political and cultural needs, the squat is a question mark for property owners – and more-than-imaginary stepping stone to commoning' -- Anitra Nelson, author of <i>Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy</i> 'Burgum seamlessly merges activist and academic accounts as he provides a thought-provoking overview of the various left-wing squatters and squatted projects which continue to exist in the cracks of contemporary, gentrified London' -- E.T.C. Dee, author of <i>Squatting the Grey City</i>