Ontheemde huisvesting: Grensgeografieën bewonen, stedelijke allianties smeden translokale voorstellen vanuit ontheemding

Across Europe, the urban condition is increasingly defined by displacement, shaped by the entangled forces of bordering regimes and neoliberal urbanism. This dissertation introduces the concept of 'displaced housing' to theorise how displacement is not merely endured but actively inhabited, negotiated, and transformed within urban contexts. Grounded in multi-sited fieldwork in Athens, Brussels, and Berlin, the research foregrounds the spatial practices and political imaginations of displaced communities as they navigate fragmented and exclusionary housing systems. Displaced housing is theorised through five interrelated dimensions. First, it is defined by its intersectional grounding in bordering and neoliberal urbanism, where racialised migration control and exclusionary housing systems intersect to shape urban precarity. Second, it presents an epistemic challenge to binaries of legal/illegal and formal/informal, emphasising the fluid, overlapping subjectivities and housing arrangements that resist static categorisations. Third, it is situated within an urban ecosystem of geographies and alliances, formed through movement across sites, shared infrastructures, and coalitions between displaced citizens and non-citizens. Fourth, it constitutes a propositional practice of collective imagination and urban invention, in which inhabitation becomes a mode of political presence, care, and world-making. Fifth, it is shaped by the translocal circulation of knowledge, practice, and solidarity, as spatial tactics and political imaginaries travel across cities and are reassembled in locally situated ways. Methodologically, the research is grounded in a translocal comparative framework and combines participatory action research, research by design, ethnography, digital ethnography, mapping and visualisation, and situated analysis. This approach embraces the fragmented and contingent nature of both fieldwork and displacement, enabling the tracing of spatial propositions and alliances across differently positioned cities. The dissertation illuminates, through displaced housing, an expanded understanding of urban life from the margins, demonstrating that displacement is integral rather than peripheral to contemporary urban transformations. By centering the agency of displaced populations, this research not only critiques prevailing urban exclusions but reads transformative pathways toward inclusive and equitable urban futures.