Behind barricaded doors: gender, class, and power in the London squatting movement  (Rowan Milligan)

I am exploring how gender and class condition power and hierarchy within the London squatting movement. Squats are a significant intervention in drawing the housing crisis out of an individualised, private sphere, and recasting it as a collective struggle. Many squats function both as a material solution to the housing problem through providing shelter and support whilst also functioning as social spaces, with cafes, bars, and other communal activities. As these are forms of resistance that are situated inside the home, I am examining whether these purportedly feminist and autonomous spaces subvert or replicate gendered/sexist divisions of labour and interpersonal relationships. Further, I am exploring how control and power are distributed within these spaces, and how class and gender condition power dynamics and interpersonal relationships. To do this I will be looking at several dimensions through which power and hierarchy are forged and maintained: aesthetics, language, decision-making, conflict, mutual aid, relationships, and more, and how class and gender affect these dimensions and thus the ability to access or maintain positions of authority and security. If power and hierarchy are conditional, even if you fulfil the conditions, to what extent are these alternative forms of living secure, freeing, actually self-determining?