Experiencing urban space. Moroccan women in the neighbourhood of Lavapiés (Madrid)

Resumen

How do some migrant women from Morocco experience and represent a south European city given the actual context of urban transformations and recent flows of migration to "fortress Europe"? The work in progress we would like to present to you flows in between two existential territories: our studies on gender and migration and our political activism in the squat movement and, in particular, in "La Escalera Caracola", a squatted house for women in the multiethnic neighborhood of Lavapies in Madrid. It is from this specific location that we look for connections between different women inhabiting and circulating this area and it is from this position as white women squatting in the historical center of Madrid that we investigate current and potential forms of social cooperation in the neighborhood. The present research exceeds our desire to reflect on and learn how close and simultaneously distant others live and imagine the city, how we, women breaking into empty houses in order to resignify space and assert its potential to differ, make it open for ourselves and others. It also pretends to be an uncertain experiment of interaction, an encounter with performative political value.