Recent literature has drawn the attention to the impact of neoliberal and financialised urban policies on the enjoyment of access to housing by the urban poor, as well as on how these policies limit the spheres of action that are possible in urban margins. Yet literature tends to pay less attention on the modes of government the state actors use to manage access to housing. Examining housing exclusions and their contestations gains relevance in the current context, in which homelessness is growing and evictions are increasing in numbers. This paper examines how council housing managers negotiate access to housing with occupying families, using neoliberal and disciplinary modes of governance. The concept of informality is used as an analytical device to explore diverse interpretations on occupations as well as to shed light on the management practices of council housing estates. The article is based on ethnographic fieldwork, conducted from December 2017 to April 2019 in the Metropolitan Area of Lisbon, in close collaboration with the Association Habita. It contends that while occupations are criminalised, the state itself also resorts to extra-legal practices in the governance of homelessness. The forms of governance employed by council housing managers are enmeshed with diverse forms of informality, producing both housing exclusions and inclusions.

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A lectio præcursoria is a short presentation read out loud by a doctoral candidate at the start of a public thesis examination in Finland. It introduces the key points or central argument of the thesis in a way that should make the ensuing discussion between the examinee and the examiner apprehensible to the audience, many of whom may be unfamiliar with the candidate’s research or even anthropological research in general.