Papers by Ibán Díaz-Parra
Revista de Estudios Socioeducativos RESED
Ciudades
La gentrificación es un proceso socioespacial que expulsa a las clases trabajadoras de un área ur... more La gentrificación es un proceso socioespacial que expulsa a las clases trabajadoras de un área urbana. En los últimos años, el proceso se ha extendido por todo el mundo y se ha solapado con el desarrollo turístico, contribuyendo a la expulsión de la población de bajos ingresos de las mismas zonas. Esta dinámica se ha intensificado en los espacios centrales, acelerando también la desaparición de los usos productivos. Con una perspectiva de clase, este artículo explora las interacciones entre el desplazamiento laboral y el residencial en la vida de los trabajadores de la industria artesana, tradicionalmente vinculada al centro histórico de la ciudad de Sevilla. El artículo concluye que ambos procesos siguen caminos sutilmente distintos pero que se retroalimentan.
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 2023
Platform capitalism is a growing reality with a widening social and economic impact. The rapid ex... more Platform capitalism is a growing reality with a widening social and economic impact. The rapid expansion of Short-Term Rental (STR) platforms has led to new challenges for policy regulation. The main objective of this paper is to shed some light on current conflicts surrounding the regulation of STR. The body of literature on this topic mainly focuses on the increasing substitution of sharing economy by commercial hosts. By contrast, we explain that the ideological notion of host hinders the understanding of the supply-side structure. A critical approach (as critique of ideology and ideological categories) should entail a class perspective based on rent theory and engage with critical works on platform capitalism. In this article, we propose an innovative analytical approach to STR supply-side supported by rent theory, which focuses on the relationship of agents with land and technology ownership and specialised management services, as these are forms of rent appropriation. From this point of view, these supplyside agents are not hosts, but class factions with common and competing economic interests in rent appropriation. Therefore, they can employ a variety of strategies to influence the political regulation of STRs. Based on in-depth interviews with landlords, individual managers, and corporate agencies in Andalusia (Southern Spain), we show the conflicting internal structure behind the ideological notion of host and even professionalisation.
Journal of Urban Affairs , 2023
In the last two decades, gentrification has emerged in Spanish-speaking urban studies as a powerf... more In the last two decades, gentrification has emerged in Spanish-speaking urban studies as a powerful and controversial concept that revitalises the debate on urbanisation processes. However, some scholars have opposed gentrification as an alien notion and a spurious generalisation from the experience of cities in the Global North, useless for urban studies in the Global South. In this context, the aim of the article is to defend current scientific work on gentrification that bridges diverse urban geographies. We also challenge a rigid and reductionist division of the urban world into a few homogeneous regions by engaging with current debates on comparative studies. We propose a dialogue between the Mexican and Spanish cases of gentrification, connecting these processes in distant urban regions. The main finding is that, despite enormous contextual differences, there is common ground for gentrification studies in Mexico and Spain in the recent historical processes of urban renewal of historic centres for touristic exploitation.
Antipode, 2023
Current debates in radical urban studies and comparative urbanism focus in part on the denunciati... more Current debates in radical urban studies and comparative urbanism focus in part on the denunciation of universalisation in urban theories as an expression of Eurocentrism. Decolonial and postcolonial scholars risk rejecting general theorising in the name of particularism, difference, and the fragmentary character of the world and reducing every urban policy transmission to the result of colonial relations. On the contrary, it would be more productive for radical scholars to pay attention to common pathways and universalist aspirations of anti-capitalist urban struggles. This paper traces the connections between three experiences of self-managed habitat production, developed by grassroots movements in Latin America and Europe. The comparative case study enables discussion of universalising aspirations of struggles against capitalist urban development. The paper concludes that collective and solidarity-based self-construction is a universal form of production of space, common to any culture at some point and to some extent, and that the self-managed production of habitat is a potentially universal paradigm for current anti-capitalist urban struggles.
Revista INVI
En el marco de la crítica al colonialismo académico y de la búsqueda de unos estudios urbanos no ... more En el marco de la crítica al colonialismo académico y de la búsqueda de unos estudios urbanos no parroquialistas, este artículo presenta un caso en el que estos flujos siguen un camino inverso, de la periferia al centro, por lo que ensayamos abordar un caso europeo desde conceptos, prácticas y teorías en desarrollo actualmente en América Latina. La producción de viviendas en Marinaleda (Andalucía, España) evidencia conexiones con las experiencias cooperativas de Uruguay, con las que comparte parámetros de autogestión y ayuda mutua. En América Latina este tipo de experiencias fueron analizadas desde la perspectiva de la Producción Social del Hábitat (PSH), desde la cual se aborda el caso. El estudio se apoya en observaciones participantes en Marinaleda, complementado con entrevistas con informantes claves y el análisis documental. El análisis evidencia que el caso europeo se integra dentro de las versiones más militantes de la PSH latinoamericana, en la medida en que -a partir de con...
Contemporary Social Science, 2015
This article studies the transformation of the frames of political activists who come from autono... more This article studies the transformation of the frames of political activists who come from autonomous social movements in Argentina and Spain. The cases of Kirchnerism in Argentina and Podemos and the local electoral coalitions in Spain, despite all their contextual and historical differences, follow the same pattern of politicisation. They took place within a general social tendency towards post-politics, understood as the reduction of politics to technical management, without questioning the existing capitalist order. In both cases, the model of politicisation starts within an exceptional political event: the social protests of 2001 in Argentina and the mobilisations of the 15M or indignados in Spain in 2011. Drawing on participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the article examines how social actors readjust their frames by managing the contradictions between their previous autonomous logic of action and their new institutional roles, according to the changing economic and political context. It concludes that there has been a clear process of politicisation, materialised in the rise of new generations of political activists, but to some extent the post-political situation remains both in the exceptional political moment and in the electoral coalitions, as the core of the economic system remains unquestioned.
Mediterranean Politics, 2016
Abstract This article analyses the relationships between the M15 movement and radical labour orga... more Abstract This article analyses the relationships between the M15 movement and radical labour organizations in Spain. Based on semi-structured interviews and document analysis, it concludes that to the extent that the economic crisis has evolved, the relations between the M15 and the trade unions have moved from mistrust to convergence. This is especially evident in the case of radical trade unionism with which the M15 shares several features. Although the M15 has been studied as an example of a ‘new social movement’, recent changes suggest certain shifts in relation to the type of activated subject and to the motivating factors for collective action. One of the consequences of this is the closeness to the institutions of the workers’ movement, which blurs the borders between old and new social movements.
Urban Science
Intensive tourism in historic city centers is causing socio-spatial effects that are already visi... more Intensive tourism in historic city centers is causing socio-spatial effects that are already visible to society. This has led politicians and academics to focus on the issue, creating a debate about gentrification in certain central urban areas which overlaps with studies on touristification, understood by some authors as tourism gentrification. This article aims to identify whether socio-demographic changes identifiable as touristification have occurred in the historic centers of two Andalusian cities, Seville and Cádiz, and which we interpret as the replacement of residents with visitors. The work is based primarily on the exploratory analysis of socio-demographic data from the Population Register and data on housing and rentals provided by different sources. The work shows strong indications of a relationship between the increase of tourist apartments and losses of residents in both historic centers. The paper concludes by pointing to the need for further research on this relatio...
The Urban Politics of Squatters' Movements, 2017
Squatted Social Centres (SSCs) can hardly be detached from the housing question. Housing shortage... more Squatted Social Centres (SSCs) can hardly be detached from the housing question. Housing shortage, unaffordability, real estate speculation, market failures, social housing policies, and increasing pressures towards home ownership in capitalist cities are usually contested by most forms of squatting. However, housing needs and struggles are not the only motivation behind the squatters’ movements. This chapter examines whether squatters’ movements evolve as a self-driven process independent of the ‘housing question’ or as a direct response to it. By comparing nine European cities, the authors discuss the interactions of the squatters’ movements and the neo-liberalisation of both housing markets and policies. They also explain the main differences between European cities in terms of alliances of squatters with other housing movements.
Challenging Austerity, 2017
Andamios, Revista de Investigación Social, Sep 1, 2016
Revista Española de Investigaciones Sociológicas, 2019
This article analyses the way in which social movements adapt their reference frames when they de... more This article analyses the way in which social movements adapt their reference frames when they decide to participate in the electoral arena and institutional politics. For this purpose, it studies the case of a citizens' candidature that came to municipal government of a city of Cádiz in 2015. The article proposes the concept of spatial frames of motivation, diagnosis and prognosis in order to study collective action, combining frame theory and spatial theory. This approach permits to identify frame transformations and the tensions experienced by activists when they face institutional participation, and the role of spatial practices and discourses in these tensions.
Cuadernos Geográficos, 2020
El turismo ha ganado peso de forma progresiva e imparable en el sur de Europa suponiendo una part... more El turismo ha ganado peso de forma progresiva e imparable en el sur de Europa suponiendo una parte fundamental de la economía de gran parte de sus ciudades. Sin embargo, estos procesos no se encuentran exentos de problemas y contradicciones, que se expresan de forma diversa en el espacio urbano. Como presenta este monográfico, el rápido crecimiento de la economía del turismo urbano ha provocado ciertos cambios sociales, espaciales y económicos entre las comunidades locales, que se han evidenciado en los últimos tiempos en torno a usos incompatibles del espacio público, incremento generalizado del precio de la vida, sustitución de residentes por visitantes en el parque residencial, desplazamiento forzoso, declive demográfico de los centros urbanos, sustitución y desaparición de tipologías comerciales tradicionales, entre otros. Estas cuestiones se exploran, en primer lugar, a partir de este artículo introductorio; segundo, con un artículo teórico centrado en la relación entre turismo...
Anduli, 2022
In recent times, Spain has seen the emergence of a number of social movements advocating for dece... more In recent times, Spain has seen the emergence of a number of social movements advocating for decent housing. This has been in parallel with the deepening and generalization of this problem for an important part of the population. These movements integrate political ideas and forms of collective action that have developed and matured over the last two decades in markedly different situations. This article proposes that, rather than disconnected groups and movements, we can speak of a long sequence of ongoing mobilization with various waves of urban protests, which reached their maximum relevance under the economic crisis. This narrative takes the city of Seville as a case study and depicts the main features of this cycle as observed from an investigation based on direct participant observation.
Research on the squatters’ movement has focused preferentially on agency, forms of organisation a... more Research on the squatters’ movement has focused preferentially on agency, forms of organisation and the legal implications, while its historical dimension and the spatial contexts have not been examined sufficiently. This chapter aims at solving this deficit by conceiving the urban space as mediation between squatters’ practices and broader economic, political and social processes. Hence, the development of urban squatting depends on specific socio-spatial conditions in each city or metropolitan region. The authors of this chapter analyse all the cases of squatting in the city of Seville (Spain) from the 1970s onwards and interpret their contextual circumstances. In particular, they explain how shifting socio-spatial structures in the city of Seville influenced the effective location of squats and the urban strategies adopted by squatters.
This article strives to contribute to the debate on how and why a large sector of Spanish activis... more This article strives to contribute to the debate on how and why a large sector of Spanish activism has shifted to institutional politics after the 15M or Indignados movement. Since 2014 there has been a transition from protest and social contestation, i.e. autonomous and self-managed activism, towards politically conventional participation within the realm of political parties and electoral candidacies. Strategic changes within the protest cycle started in 2011 with the burst of the 15M respond to the tension between two reference frameworks and two alternative spatial projects. These projects drive to antagonistic tendecies towards the fetishization of the State and the fetishization of the community. Drawn on semi-structured interviews and analysis of social movements and political organisation documents, it concludes that autonomist practices are the basis for a shift on the institutions in a context of crisis.
Uploads
Papers by Ibán Díaz-Parra
de reestructuración productiva que impulsan la construcción de edificios, equipamientos e infraestructuras necesarios para el soporte de una economía urbana en plena transformación.
En este libro, se analiza la metamorfosis espacial urbana asociada al ciclo ascendente de los negocios inmobiliarios. Considerando experiencias en distintas ciudades de México, Sudamérica y España, destacan las formas en que operan los actores, mecanismos y fuentes de inversión que configuran un mercado de bienes raíces dinámico y diversificado, favorecido por un contexto de políticas urbanas neoliberales.
La preponderancia del capital inmobiliario en la producción del entorno
construido advierte la transgresión del espacio social debido a las prácticas invasivas de ocupación del suelo que promueven modelos de edificación que violentan el hábitat y el sentido social de la ciudad. Los casos analizados se proponen dilucidar las implicaciones socio-espaciales asociadas a este proceso, incluyendo las condiciones de habitabilidad, la emergencia de externalidades negativas y fenómenos como la gentrificación, la segregación y la fragmentación en los contextos urbanos de referencia; en otras palabras se da cuenta de
los conflictos de sentido en la forma de hacer ciudad.
The economic crisis has led to a rise in protest movements, which confront political institutions and conventional forms of democracy, and develop new spatial and organisational strategies. This book examines these cases, in addition to those groups who, contrastingly, have used institutional politics to achieve their aims, such as new political parties like Podemos in Spain or Movimento 5 Stelle in Italy.
Analysing the extent to which there has been a change in approach when it comes to contesting neo-liberal capitalism, this book makes an important contribution to the study of social movements and radical politics. With a comparative perspective and an emphasis on studying the largely unexplored recent social and political dynamics in the European periphery, this book is essential reading for students, scholars and activists interested in social movements, radical politics and European politics more generally.
Desde la década de los años setenta, los científicos sociales han mostrado un notable interés por la cuestión urbana. Dentro de los análisis críticos, han predominado las aproximaciones de base marxista, con una tendencia más ortodoxa o más heterodoxa según el caso. Algunos de estos autores utilizan los tempranos trabajos de Friedrich Engels como inspiración, frente a los académicos positivistas que tienden a referir la Escuela de Sociología Urbana de Chicago como su principal precedente. Sin rechazar la contribución en las aportaciones marxistas, el presente texto se cuestiona sobre la existencia de referentes de estudios urbanos en la tradición anarquista y sobre la especificidad de la aportación de los mismos. Para ello se recurre a los trabajos de Eliseo Reclús y Piotr Kropotkin, ambos geógrafos de profesión, en cuyos textos se trasluce una temprana preocupación por el hecho urbano.
Los diecisiete trabajos incluidos son una muestra tanto de la diversidad que se dio en el coloquio, como de la existente en el estudio de la gentrificación en América Latina a nivel general. Así, junto a investigadores ya consolidados, encontramos textos presentados por jóvenes y jovencísimos investigadores, que aportan parte de los trabajos desarrollados para sus futuras tesis doctorales, o exposiciones sintéticas de las mismas. Asimismo, los casos trabajados cubren una parte importante de la amplia geografía latinoamericana, con una nutrida representación de México, con aportaciones del Distrito Federal, Querétaro y Morelos, y del resto de la región: Santiago de Chile, Buenos Aires, Río de Janeiro, Lima, Bogotá y Cartagena de Indias. Más allá de esto, en los trabajos puede reconocerse tanto algunos de los aspectos de un debate incipiente sobre esta cuestión. Para empezar, la propia diversidad de usos que se le están dando al término y, en relación a esto, la cuestión de si aspectos particulares como el desplazamiento son consustanciales al proceso o no.
Key words: social movements, housing, fight cycle, Spain, 15-M.
There are good reasons to argue that only the state is able to carry out the management of the space on a broad scale because only the state has the techniques, resources and conceptual ability to do that. Likewise, popular management of the habitat is rather common in Latin-American cities, although it´s limited to areas abandoned by state and private capitals, usually peripheral sectors. Thus, the capacity of grassroots and self-managed organizations to produce space in central areas, disputing with state and private capitals, is debatable as well as their possibilities to condition transformations and evolution of the internal structure of big cities .
MOI emerged from the process of democratization after the military dictatorship. From then on, the organization has played a significant role in the recent evolution of the city center of Buenos Aires. It has transformed squatted and ruined buildings in new neighborhoods developed by cooperation and self-management under collective property, creating a notable net of residential and social spaces. Besides this, MOI has an explicit vindication of right to the city with a particular sense. First, following Mayer´s (2009) comments on the right to the city, there is a reclaim of the city “as appropriation”·, as the right to redistribution for those deprived. Second, the right to the city vindication of MOI includes the right to the city center and the right to root in particular city areas, that is to say a demand against displacement to peripheral areas.
This work is a first approach to the case, an exploratory analysis supported by an ongoing field work based on participant observation and qualitative interviews, developed inside the organization´s work areas as well as in the built environments developed by the movement. The work inquires about the capacity, potential and limitations of contemporary social movements to produce and transform urban space and to develop spatial projects alternative to the ones established by the state.
There are good reasons to argue that only the state is able to carry out the management of the space on a broad scale because only the state has the techniques, resources and conceptual ability to do that. Likewise, popular management of the habitat is rather common in Latin-American cities, although it´s limited to areas abandoned by state and private capitals, usually peripheral sectors. Thus, the capacity of grassroots and self-managed organizations to produce space in central areas, disputing with state and private capitals, is debatable as well as their possibilities to condition transformations and evolution of the internal structure of big cities .
MOI emerged from the process of democratization after the military dictatorship. From then on, the organization has played a significant role in the recent evolution of the city center of Buenos Aires. It has transformed squatted and ruined buildings in new neighborhoods developed by cooperation and self-management under collective property, creating a notable net of residential and social spaces. Besides this, MOI has an explicit vindication of right to the city with a particular sense. First, following Mayer´s (2009) comments on the right to the city, there is a reclaim of the city “as appropriation”·, as the right to redistribution for those deprived. Second, the right to the city vindication of MOI includes the right to the city center and the right to root in particular city areas, that is to say a demand against displacement to peripheral areas.
This work is a first approach to the case, an exploratory analysis supported by an ongoing field work based on participant observation and qualitative interviews, developed inside the organization´s work areas as well as in the built environments developed by the movement. The work inquires about the capacity, potential and limitations of contemporary social movements to produce and transform urban space and to develop spatial projects alternative to the ones established by the state.
allow us a comparative approach. In doing so, we discuss the particular
interactions of the squatters’ movements and the neo-liberalisation of both
housing markets and policies. We explain the main differences between
European cities in terms of alliances of squatters with other housing movements
and, as in Spain after 2011 and in Rome after 2008, the revival of the
housing question by new widespread experiences of squatting.
El ámbito hispano-parlante no es ajeno a estos debates. En la última década ha habido una cierta revitalización del interés por los movimientos de protesta y los conflictos en el ámbito urbano, especialmente a partir de la traducción al castellano de La Producción del Espacio (Lefebvre, 2013). El lema del derecho a la ciudad no ha hecho sino afianzarse tanto en su uso por parte de movimientos de base, como en foros internacionales gubernamentales y no gubernamentales (Asamblea Mundial de Pobladores, Habitat III, entre otros), mientras que la concepción lefebvriana del espacio como mediación tiene una importancia creciente en las investigaciones sobre acción colectiva. Los estudios sobre conflictos en torno a los procesos de urbanización y la producción social del hábitat (Di Virgilio y Rodríguez, 2014 y Rodríguez y Di Virgilio, 2016) y sobre la relación entre territorio e identidades políticas (Composto y Navarro, 2014) gozan de una gran vitalidad en América Latina. Mientras que las movilizaciones contra la austeridad en la periferia europea desde 2011, han dado lugar a una abundante bibliografía en la que destaca la mayor atención prestada a la dimensión espacial de los movimientos (Díaz-Cortés y Sequera, 2015), sus escalas de actuación (Roca, Martín y Díaz, 2017) y la relación entre distintos tipos de espacialidad (Díaz y Candón, 2015).
La motivación de lanzar un coloquio sobre estas cuestiones, es potenciar el debate científico en el ámbito hispanoparlante sobre la relación entre ciudad y movimientos de protesta y entre teoría del espacio y teoría de los movimientos sociales (evitando generalizaciones espurias y atendiendo a las especificidades de los contextos particulares). Se pretende además, que este encuentro sea un primer paso para la constitución de una red iberoamericana sobre política, conflicto y movimientos urbanos.