A structural view on housing movements: Strategic lessons from a field of contention approach

Abstract

In this article, we share strategic lessons from applying a ‘structural field of contention’ approach to a comparative study of housing struggles in Hungary and Romania since 1989. The aim is not to highlight details and specificities, but to show the benefits of looking beyond individual progressive movements in focus of most previous literature, instead capturing the ideological and structural complexity of housing contention, with different positions on the political spectrum, in an integrated way. With such analytical approach, we can grasp the broader field of relations where various answers to the same structural processes are generated and interact with each other in a dynamic way. In this way, a strategically informative view on how structural processes become politicized can be gained for both housing struggles and engaged research.