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This paper aims to contribute to the scholarly work on the internal dynamics of contemporary housing movements. In particular, it explores the spatial strategies through which squat inhabitants change the configuration of the squat to turn an abandoned building into a house for multiple families. The main argument is that these strategies, requiring horizontal participation and solidarity, catalyse the transformation of a sum of people dispossessed of the house into a collective, political subject. Therefore, the author proposes to analyse housing squats as “educational sites of resistance”. The findings come from the author's participant observation of Rome's housing movement organisation Coordinamento Cittadino di Lotta per la casa. In addition to providing empirical knowledge, the paper aims to offer inputs for investigating to what extent the process of politicisation is shaped by the space and what constitute the peculiarities of a so‐recomposed collective subject.

Movements such as degrowth, Occupy, solidarity economies, permaculture, low impact living and Via Campesina variously address key issues of the contemporary era such as inequalities of wealth and income, environmental crises, and achieving sustainable cities and production. This series demonstrates the breadth, depth, significance and potential of 'alternatives' in the construction of this century, focusing on the type of future each movement advocates and their strategic agenda.Alternatives and Futures is of interest to scholars and students across the social sciences and humanities, especially those working in environmental sustainability, politics and policymaking, environmental justice, grassroots governance, heterodox economics and activism.The series offers a forum for constructive critique and analytical reflection of movements' directions, activism and activists, their assumptions, drivers, aims, visions of alternative futures and actual performance and influence.

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The article explores the role of solidarity in housing movement organizations in Rome (Italy). Most notably, it enquires the modalities through which activists try to prevent the housing eviction of precarious urban dwellers, the majority of whom are immigrants. The argument is twofold. First, these practices foster solidarity between migrant and non-migrant locals, contributing to the formation of a new collective subjectivity that brings together individualized local and immigrant inhabitants sharing a need for a roof. Second, this process has an impact on the cityscape as it contributes to mapping alternative models of city construction. This article is based on an extensive participant observation (2016) in the network Movements for the Right to Inhabit and on in-depth interviews with activists and experts.