Introduction: Embedding the Analysis of Housing Contention in the Sociopolitical Complexity of Structural Crises

Abstract

AbstractThe chapter introduces the main objectives of the book: (1) to develop an analytical approach able to account for the structural and ideological complexity of contemporary housing struggles, and (2) to illustrate the practical gains of this approach by a comparative study of housing contention in two capital cities in Europe, Budapest and Bucharest. The chapter situates the book in the context of current debates on housing mobilization, arguing that studies of the post-2008 housing contention wave have been overly focused on politically progressive movements in the West. However, a closer look reveals a higher ideological complexity of housing contention: mobilizations by different constituencies and with different agendas, sometimes occupying different ends of the ideological spectrum and seeing a continuously changing landscape of alliances and oppositions. The structural field of contention approach proposed is aimed to account for these complexities based on a multi-actor, contextually embedded approach to movement formation.