Between urban commons and touristification: radical and conservative uses of the law in post-austerity Southern Italy

Abstract

The movement for the urban commons in Southern Italian cities has been facing the increasing touristification of the historic centres, a process of value extraction built on the character of ‘authenticity’ and ‘marginality’ of the urban poor’s living to the external gaze. In this resistance, activists encountered the law both as a counter-hegemonic tool exploited to assert their claims over the urban space and as a governmental technique deployed by the public administration to partially tame their political praxis into bureaucratic frameworks. The law has thus been used both to shelter the marginalised from the effects of touristification and as a means to govern urban space by extracting value from urban poverty. This analysis highlights how movements opposing the commodification of urban poverty could gain political strength from creatively exploiting legal tools, which would allow them to protect the interests of the poor and achieve wealth distribution. It also stresses how urban studies would benefit from integrating the perspective of critical legal studies that considers the law as a battleground for social conflict.

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