‘Your Luxury is Our Displacement’ ꟷ Housing and Anti-Gentrification Movements in a Tourist City: The Case of Lisbon

The city of Lisbon is in the midst of a perfect storm for housing, generated by the intersection of the long wave of economic crisis and austerity with recent touristification, gentrification and massive real estate investment. At the same time, urban mobility is reshaping neighborhoods’ fabric, with effects on the housing activism’s identity, frames and claims. Between 2011 and 2013, Portugal experienced the largest protest cycle since the 1974 revolution. In connection with anti-austerity movements, housing activism has significantly strengthened in the country, and especially in Lisbon, introducing relevant innovations in the identities, forms and content of the housing protest. New actors mobilized, and new initiatives were started, such as the Caravana pelo Direito à Habitação (Caravan for the Right to Housing) and the demonstration Rock in Riot, which gathered together extremely different players, such as poor tenants and disadvantaged minorities, and many of the city’s new inhabitants – e.g. young researchers, professionals, Erasmus students – which one may actually consider as gentrification’s pioneers. The aim of this paper is to understand if and to what extent this interaction between different players is a result of the gentrification process itself, how it works, and what its impact on the dynamics of protest, specially, on the interaction with institutional actors is. The paper is based on different sources and methods: a) participant observation during activists and tenants’ meetings, demonstrations and other actions; c) interviews with activists and scholars; d) frame and protest event analysis