The case of the Réquisitions Collective
“There’s going to be talk about requisitioning in France, and that frightens people. […] It’s an inconvenient law, if it ever gets enforced. But who owns the big buildings in Paris? It’s for banks […] It’s scary, it’s going to raise some seriously big issues. Speculation is a problem and they [the government] don’t want to get involved in issues like that.” (B., CSP75)
“People don’t need tons of rules […]. Ultimately, we can organise ourselves […]. After all, we know full well that the 115, the housing structures, are strict. It’s a kind of prison, isn’t it?” (F., DAL)
Camp set up by the collective on Place des Vosges, 29 July 2021. Produced by: Oriane Sebillotte, ethnographic data and photos taken during the occupation, 2021
Against a background of tension around the issue of housing (Bouillon et al., 2019), a shortage of accommodation relative to demand,[1] and a crisis in the reception of exiles (Lendaro et al., 2019), the streets of Paris have become home to large numbers of rough sleepers. These homeless resort to temporary and often informal solutions to live in the city, solutions that are regulated in different ways (Froment-Meurice, 2016; Piva, 2021). The clearance of an exile camp in Saint-Denis on 17 November 2020 is a significant example, ending with the violent dispersal of between 500 and 1,000 people.[2] In response, on 23 November 2020, some of the exiles and their supporters decided to occupy Place de la République. The repression inflicted on them was widely reported in the media,[3] forcing the issue into the public arena.
Oriane SEBILLOTTE and Anaëlle PIVA, members of Géographie-cités, have published in the journal Justice spatiale / Spatial justice (JSSJ) an overview of the ethnographic survey they carried out within the Réquisitions collective. Over the course of a year, they conducted “participant observations at meetings and campaigning events–which provided material for a multi-situated analysis–along with semi-structured interviews with members of the organising team.”
We examine how the Collective’s actions construct a territory of struggle for the right to a home in Paris, disrupting the socio-spatial order (Dikeç, 2002). We then look at how the occupation of this territory (Ripoll and Veschambre, 2005) is negotiated and the methods employed by the authorities to control it. In particular, we examine this control process through the notion of demobilisation (Baby-Collin et al., 2021; Tilly and Tarrow, 2008), in order to understand how the institutional framework of the protest actions helps to shape their geographies. According to this line of reasoning, territory is first and foremost the product of the physical or symbolic appropriation–however temporary–of a space (Raffestin, 2019 [1980]) and the outcome of power relations.
