Abstract

The paper explores the politics of life at the margins of Bucharest, Romania, and the emergence of homing infrastructures within socio-technical conditions that for the many are a matter of uninhabitability (Amin, 2014; Simone, 2018). The work focuses on a number of illegal instantiations of ‘urban dwelling’: a community of drug users living within socialist blocks deemed for demolitions since the late ‘80s; evited Roma people squatting pavements in the city center to fight for their right to housing; and a tunnel passing under Bucharest’s central train station, where a number of homeless people established their home for years. Through years of extensive ethnographic observations, photo-taking, and interviews, the paper traces an assemblage of bodies, veins, syringes, substances, and various relationships of power and affect, which speaks of drug addiction, homelessness, racialized bodies and extreme marginalization, but also of a sense of belonging, solidarity, reciprocal trustiness, and becoming (Lancione, 2016). The goal of this work is to trace the emergence of a very peculiar and enduring infrastructure of ‘home’ and ‘care’ within supposedly uninhabitable, and illegal, spaces. It contributes to debates around homing practices at the margins of the urban (Brickell et al., 2017; Veness, 1993).

Convenor and Chair: Prof. Divya P. Tolia-Kelly

All welcome. Coffee, tea and cake is provided.

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By: Martin Wingfield
Last updated: Friday, 13 September 2019