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The Squatting Europe Kollective is a transnational collective of academics and activists working on the phenomenon of squatting in a variety of fields, which include urban studies, sociology, political science, anthropology, geography and history.

Squats and self-managed social centers can be seen as expressions of a grass-root movement that seeks to re-appropriate urban space through the mobilization and the cooperative empowerment of the competences, the knowledges, resources and practices that inhabit the de-localized space of the neo-liberal city.

Squats and self-managed social centers often seek to embed their activities in their surroundings either by offering services to the local inhabitants or to win over the support of the local populations. Be that as it may, these activities imply the emergence of an alternative way of conceiving the city.

Hence the focus of our seminar will be on the following topics:

- network building capabilities of squats and social centers

- constrains and the potential of such experiences

- the kind of city these practices might engender