The hidden side of metropolization. Governing squats and slums in ...

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Abstract
More than one billion people in the world could be considered as “squatters”. Literature usually
focuses on unruly places like slums in the suburbs of the global cities in the South and in exponential
and uncontrolled growing metropolitan areas in emerging countries. Yet, there are many illegal
settlements persisting at the doors of European cities in different forms, namely, squats in buildings
or illegal occupations of land. I propose here to address these two kinds of occupations. In this paper,
we consider the case of Paris at the metropolitan scale. Squats and slums are both illegal occupations
of space in order to get a house and a place to live or survive. The paper addresses the features of the
public policies implemented towards urban spaces’ illegal occupations. Three dimensions could be
underlined concerning the government of squats and slums: the housing problem, the
metropolization governance and the question of ungovernability of urban societies.
This paper only considers the illegal occupation of urban spaces as a departure point for an analysis
of policy implementation. I assume that the study of squats and slums enables us to demonstrate that
urban authorities are able to implement public policies towards these illegal settlements even if these
occupations seem, by definition, ungovernable. I try to characterize these urban policies and I
address three main features. Firstly, I consider squats and slums as challenges to urban policies.
Secondly, squats and slums become public problems which are put on the local agenda and are
targets of public policies. Thirdly, I examine the policy instruments used by local actors in order to
control illegal occupations in the Ile-de-France Region.