Categories
All posts

Evaporating Solidarity: The Response to Displacement Cannot Be Sustained by Empathy Alone

After the second anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it is now time to ask what happens when the fragile social relations that were able to handle the arrival of millions of displaced people start to break down. Many commentators have argued extensively that grassroots solidarity networks consisting of individual actors and local organisations […]

Categories
All posts ELMO series: CEE housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations

Without shelter: housing policy in wartime

This article is part of the multilingual ELMO series CEE housing movements resisting neoliberal urban transformations and it originally appeared in English and Ukrainian on Spilne/Commons on 2nd April 2022. Translated from Ukrainian by Yuliia Kulish. “The realtor said that today there were more than 300 requests, with only 5 apartments successfully found.” “We searched all […]

Categories
All posts

“They are hoarding rubbish and burning tyres wherever you put them…”: Displacing and Disciplining Roma Waste Pickers in Belgrade

Since 2009 Belgrade has become the site of massive interventions in ‘public order’ that revolve around one problematic subject: the ‘informal individual Roma waste picker’. Interventions to restore ‘public order’ usually come under different banners ranging from hygienic living conditions, to security, to civil rights. In the name of realizing common goods these interventions profoundly […]