Social Movements and Alternative Housing Models: Practicing the “Politics of Possibilities” in Spain

The paper introduces Gibson-Graham’s conceptualization of the “politics of possibilities” to housing studies in order to reveal how alternatives to the neoliberal housing model can be practiced here and now through the action of social movements. Centred on the main current Spanish social movement around housing, the Plataforma de los Afectados por la Hipoteca (PAH), the paper shows how Gibson-Graham’s conceptualization, built around three moments (the “politics of language”; the “politics of the subject”; the “politics of collective action”) offers the possibility to understand the main political importance of subject and place as drivers of change and practice of alternative models. Indeed, the paper shows how the core of PAH’s political repertoire has consisted in disrupting the neoliberal model of “personal responsibilization” in order to set a variegated model of housing. The proliferation of the PAH all around the Spanish country and the politicization it favoured raise important questions for Spanish contemporary politics.