Presenting new research on squatter activism in a small town.
The term squatting evokes images of punk youths in the 1980s, battling the police over the control of occupied spaces. Indeed, cities such as Amsterdam, Copenhagen and West-Berlin were the scenes of massive riots and radical activism.
But how did squatting develop in smaller towns and cities? And how did the image of the metropolitan-and-militant squatter influence squatter conflicts in these smaller places? To answer these questions, we mapped and analyzed all squatter actions in the Dutch city of Leiden between 1970 and 2010.
Multimedia
The results of our research can among other be found on our project website and on this digital map of all squatter actions in Leiden. In this video, we present our project and another feature: an app that locates all historical squats. Finally, this podcast discusses the squatter actions of migrant workers in Leiden during the 1970s.
Scholary articles
Through four research articles, we provide a full overview of Leiden’s squatter history. In a contribution to the Journal of Urban History, we analyzed the image of Leiden squatters during the 1970s: Who are the squatters? Challenging stereotypes through a case study of squatting in the Dutch city of Leiden, 1970-1980. A comparison between squatting in Leiden and Leipzig in the 1970s and 1980s can be found in our contribution to a volume: Squatting in Leiden and Leipzig in the 1970s and 1980s. We reconstructed the 1990s history of squatters and migrants in our contribution to Urban History: The image of the foreign squatter. The history of the anarchist group Eurodusnie, active in the 1990s and after, can be read in our Framing contests between Dutch activists and local news media: the Eurodusnie Anarchist Group, Leiden, 1997–2002.
Publications in Dutch
The history of Leiden squatting from the 1970s to the present can also be reconstructed through our research articles in Dutch.
A brief overview of squatting in the 1970s can be read in: De metropool voorbij: Een korte geschiedenis van kraken in Leiden in de jaren zeventig [meegestuurd als pdf:1]. A somewhat broader overview, incorporating the early 1980s can be found in: Krakende kattenvrouwtjes en banketbakkers: De diversiteit en dynamiek van kraken in Hollandse steden. The influence of 1970s and 1980s squatting on Leiden’s urban landscape is discussed in: Een stad van onderop: De effecten van kraken op het Leidse stadsbeeld.Squatter activism in Leiden during the 1990s and early 2000s is discussed in two separate texts. The first analyzes the image of migrant squatters in Leiden during the 1990s: Britse krakers en de strijd om beeldvorming in Leiden tijdens de jaren negentig. The actions of the anarchist group Eurodusnie are discussed in: De stad op stelten: een geschiedenis van Eurodusnie (1997-2010)
You can find an overview of all my research publications on this website.
