SQUAT, or the Radical Community Builders of Reunified Berlin [a podcast]

In the 1990s, a newly reunified Berlin was the site of a squatters’ movement that saw a wave of politically radical young people occupy abandoned structures and create informal housing collectives. Within this urban landscape, some settlements explicitly centered women and queer communities who employed squatting after the fall of the Berlin Wall as a strategy of resistance — against neoliberal housing policy and rising gentrification, against political disillusionment and hopelessness, and against a society that marginalized their identities. I sought to answer the question of how squatters not only responded not to this unprecedented political reality, but also crafted new ways of thinking about community and identity. To investigate this, I conducted 5 interviews informed by oral history and social science methodologies, and augmented them with diverse data sources ranging from interviews to newspaper archives to punk music. I found that squatting provided people with an opportunity to 1) form counter-societies with values, norms, ideologies, and cultural productions distinct from the mainstream, 2) respond more satisfactorily to Germany’s historical and political context while simultaneously building transnational solidarities, and 3) modify urban space to meet their needs and claim a right to the city. To make my findings relevant for a broader audience, I have presented them in a 5-episode academic podcast series, the scripts of which are compiled here. Audio versions of the episodes can be found at mayajustinegreen.com/squat.