This special issue of Passerelle coordinated by Aitec was originally imagined as a revised
edition of the 2008 issue, entitled “Europe pas sans toit” (“Actions against a
Homeless Europe” ), which presented an overview of the situation of housing in
Europe. In 2008, the crisis and its impact on housing were already a topic
discussed in the issue, given that the subprime crisis had just taken place.
Four years later, we believed it was important to call upon some of the authors
in the previous issue as well as to contact others, to show the devastating
impact of this «crisis» on inhabitants and their living environment.
By providing a critical analysis of the crisis, viewed through the
perspective of housing and from a European angle, we hope we were able to successfully
avoid the pitfall of cliché – even though the term is omnipresent in the media
and in political discourse –, and that we have succeeded in taking up the
twofold challenge we had defined: to place the question of housing at the
centre of the analysis of the crisis, and to deconstruct the dominant narrative
on the reasons for the crisis.
Charlotte Mathivet coordinated this issue of Passerelle. She is a
political scientist and a Right to Housing and Right to the City activist. She
works at Aitec and the international network Habitat International Coalition
(HIC).
To download this issue of Passerelle, click here
