Citizens, Squatters, and Asocials: The Right to Housing and the Politics of Difference in Post-Liberation France

Abstract

“In Marseille the Squatters Occupy!” So the headline of the Monde Ouvrier announced after six families illegally took up residence in a vacant house in 1946.1 Following World War II, France began reconstruction amidst a crippling housing shortage. During the housing crisis, homeless families sought shelter in partially destroyed buildings, under bridges, or in rapidly growing shantytowns. Many were from metropolitan France; others were colonial subjects from North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Some families had migrated from Italy or Spain before the war, or were displaced persons from Central or Eastern Europe. As one Marseille squatter remembered, “Families, children, and the elderly lived where they could, in bombed houses, in caves, in public washhouses … and in infectious slums.”2 As the provisional government deliberated comprehensive plans for postwar reconstruction, many families grew increasingly desperate and began to organize and attend local meetings. Building on their shared experiences of everyday life, a movement was taking shape. Although many had begun illegally occupying buildings out of necessity, squatting became a political statement and part of an evolving agenda. Squatters argued that housing was both a human and a citizenship right.