Dispossession and dissent: migrant activism against mortgages in Madrid

The Spanish right to housing movement has become a reference for housing struggles across the globe. Yet the movement’s marked diversity, particularly in a moment of rising xenophobia in Europe, has largely escaped notice. In this article, I reveal how Andean activists impelled the housing movement in Madrid, articulating lines of protest and methods of action that would then prove integral to the movement’s arsenal of resistance. In untangling the migrant history of the housing movement, I argue differential experiences with inequality and discrimination on the one hand, and alternative modes of habitation, cooperation, and social justice on the other mean migrants can serve as key catalysts in social mobilizations. In considering diverse social movements, meanwhile, I probe not only previous engagement in activist struggles, but also migrant lifeworlds that influenced later dissent. Again accounts that privilege extant transnational activist networks and/or local struggles over collective consumption, this methodological orientation demonstrates how to trace the role of modest transnational flows and subaltern geographies within contemporary social movement struggles.