The "S" Factor. Feminist Spaces and the Production of Safer Spaces in Urban Context

Despite the phases of more or less visibility and mobilization, feminist movements tend to produce structures of maintenance even in time of abeyance, according to Taylor’s definition (1989). Feminist spaces are typical example of such structures (Spain 2016). Beyond protests and other type of repertoire of action, the opening and management of political space allows for testing prefigurative politics and everyday practice of social change. According to gender studies assumption about gender based violence as a structural organizing factor of contemporary society, feminist spaces develop counter-community of emotions, politics and relationships. How and why are these spaces safer? Why activists produce and preserve these spaces? Why the notion of safety politically matter? In order to disentangle this puzzle, I will make reference to my PhD research project on the comparative analysis of feminist spaces between Rome and Madrid. Using participatory action research as a comprehensive approach I pursued three years of participant observation, interviews and focus group in three different type of spaces: quite institutionalized women’s spaces; self-managed feminist services; radical transfeminist and queer squats. Retrieving from a constructivist grounded theory method of analysis, I focus on safer spaces as a working concept guiding different levels of understanding: actors; spaces; repertoire of action; in/out relations. Although these factors simultaneously occur, I am here disentangling them in order to shade light on all the facets of the emotional, political and relational density of safety. Safety, in contrast to neoliberal understanding of the concept, is not a stable configuration but an ongoing and relational process. While engaging with safer dimension of activism, feminist spaces are oriented to directly challenge and to re-shape democracy from below.