Learning Through Unhoming. Extended Squatting Time and Agentic Homemaking After Squatting in Rome

Abstract

The article examines the lasting effects of squatting in Rome by tracing how its political and pedagogical legacies persist long after eviction. While the physical removal of individuals from a space is often considered the defining moment of eviction, it is, in reality, only the culmination of a lengthy and complex social and legal process—one whose consequences continue to unfold far beyond the moment of displacement. Although squatting is often understood as politically transformative, little attention has been paid to the forms of agency it cultivates and how these endure after unhoming. Drawing on feminist and anthropological approaches, the article introduces agentic homemaking as a relational practice shaped through collective dwelling and shared political struggle. Through the life stories of two former squatters, it shows how people confront unhoming by mobilizing care, mutual aid, and learned knowledge to resist structural inequalities and rebuild their lives. The article also advances the concept of extended squatting time to highlight the enduring influence of squatting as a lived pedagogy that produces marginalized forms of knowledge central to urban politics and everyday survival. Together, these concepts foreground overlooked forms of agency that emerge in the aftermath of dispossession, offering new perspectives on urban struggle, relational resilience, and future-making.