Antipode’s 8th Institute for the Geographies of Justice: Housing Justice in Unequal Cities

In partnership with the Housing Justice in Unequal Cities Network, UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy, and La Hidra Cooperativa in Barcelona, the Antipode Foundation convened the 8th Institute for the Geographies of Justice (IGJ) from June 13th to 17th 2022, in Barcelona, Spain. In keeping with the mandate of Antipode, IGJ 2022 took up questions of research and scholarship in radical geography. In addition, this institute focused on the theme of housing justice. Learning from housing justice movements in Barcelona, and strengthening housing justice as a field of inquiry through theory and methodology, the institute paid close attention to the relationship between radical geography and social justice struggles.

IGJ 2022 buillt on the seven past institutes organized by the Antipode Foundation as well as the Summer Institute on Methodologies for Housing Justice organized by the UCLA Luskin Institute on Inequality and Democracy in 2019. Taking the form of an interactive workshop with 20-25 participants, IGJ is meant to be a space of learning, collaboration, and dialogue for doctoral students and early career researchers in geography and related disciplines.

Led by Melissa García Lamarca (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and the Barcelona Lab for Urban Environmental Justice and Sustainability), Nik Heynen (University of Georgia), Maria Kaïka (University of Amsterdam), Ananya Roy (University of California, Los Angeles), Carme Arcarazo (Barcelona Tenants Union), and Jaime Palomera (La Hidra Cooperativa), IGJ 2022 included workshop sessions on the present history of housing movements, key debates and methodologies in housing justice, models of radical engagement in housing justice, and the politics and ethics of housing justice research. This institute also explored the broader context of academic lives in radical geography with sessions concerned with teaching and pedagogy, academic publishing, and public scholarship. A key part of IGJ 2022 is the opportunity to learn from housing justice movements in Barcelona and to situate such movements in the present historical conjuncture of global financialization and related mobilizations. Through public plenary sessions and thoughtful engagement with movement-based scholars, IGJ 2022 foregrounds emergent imaginations and practices of housing justice from tenant unions to social housing to policies of expropriation and redistribution.