GATEKEEPING BELONGING:

'Proof of Address' as a Practice of Exclusion

BACKGROUND

• Germany (Meldebescheinigung)
• Palestine (key)
• UK (utility bills)

• A "proof of address" is often an essential requirement to take part in or gain access to various urban infrastructures, goods, and service
• From obtaining a residence permit or the right to work all the way to library membership
• Legitimation of belonging and tenure
• Different practices of 'proving' tenure in different parts of the world:

• Rationale: Week 8: thinking about how the city functions for people who migrate there

OUTLINE

QUESTION: For whom does the practice of requiring a "proof of address" produce tenure insecurities and how are these negotiated?​​

• Case Study: ExOPG “Je So’ Pazzo”, Naples

• Invisibility, Legibility, and Mobile Bodies

• The 'static' Home and the Right to Aspire
• Conclusion

CASE STUDY: ExOPG “Je So’ Pazzo”

• Used to be a forensic psychiatric hospital (Ospedale Psichiatrico Giudiziario)
• Occupied by student activists in 2015 (Vasudevan 2014)

• "We slept here every night for 4 months in order to prevent the place from being evicted [and] started a complex communication process, still in progress, with the Municipality of Naples" (Ausilio, 2023)

• Now an autonomous community centre called ExOPG “Je So’ Pazzo” (“I am crazy” in a Neapolitan dialect) (Yakin, 2022)

• Uncertain future as City of Naples seeks to put property up for sale (Ausilio, 2023)

• Includes a library, afterschool care, various sports areas including a gym and a climbing wall, and a health care clinic
• Run a weekly “Migrants’ help desk”, with a pool of lawyers who deal with residence permit requests 
• Central to Naples' Migrants and Refugees Movement in 2016 fighting against 'Fortress Europe' (Movimento Migranti e Rifuguati Napoli, 2024)

Invisibility, Legibility, and Mobile Bodies

• Navigating laws and state legibility (Sparks, 2010)

• "We ask for freedom for our brothers, sisters and siblings, we ask for documents to get us out of invisibility, in order to work safely, to protect us from blackmail in the workplace and from being unreasonably fired from a job. We seek documents that allow us access to treatment in hospitals and to attend school, documents to recognize children born in Italy, and documents that can allow all people to travel across European countries." (Movimento Migranti e Rifuguati Napoli, 2024)

• ExOPG re-centering migrant experiences of the city and bringing attention to their struggles

 The 'static' Home and the Right to Aspire

• Many migrants face insecure tenure and precarious living conditions.
• 'Proof of address' assumes home as a 'static' place which often doesn't align with dynamic/temporal realities
• Where someone provides an address this does not necessarily reflect where they live or feel they belong
• Who has the right to aspire for a different future? (Melly, 2010)
• Belonging as the right to "future aspirations" (Simone, 2004)
• Paths to tenurial security are often riddled with contradictions and further marginalisation (Anand and Rademacher, 2011)

CONCLUSION

• 'Proof of address' is a central instrument of exclusion within the violent regimes of property, surveillance, and bordering
• Upholds property's 'power to exclude' (Blomley, 2003)
• Entraps migrants in ‘a vicious circle of precariousness’ (Niebler and Animento, 2023)
• ExOPG example shows rules and regulations are always negotiable and highlights the power of collective action 

QUESTIONS?

REFERENCES

Anand, N. and Rademacher, A. (2011) Housing in an Urban Age: Inequality and Aspiration in Mumbai. Antipode 43 (5), 1748-1772.

Ausilio, M. (2023). Revolutionary Social Centre in an occupied prison - ex OPG in Naples. Cooperative City. https://cooperativecity.org/2019/11/11/revolutionary-social-centre-in-an-occupied-prison-ex-opg-in-naples/

Blomley, N. (2003) Law, Property and the Geography of Violence: The Frontier, the Survey and the Grid. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 93 (1), 121-141.

CSD Diaconia Valdese (2021). MONITORING ILLEGITIMATE PRACTICES: Report on practices found at Italian police headquarters. https://bit.ly/3CPIo1S.

ExOPG “Je So’ Pazzo”. (n.d.). Chi Siamo [Who We Are]. ExOPG “Je So’ Pazzo”. https://www.jesopazzo.org/2024/03/06/chi-siamo/

Niebler, V., & Animento, S. (2023). Organising fragmented labour: the case of migrant workers at Helpling in Berlin. The Economic and Labour Relations Review, 34(4), 689–706. doi:10.1017/elr.2023.46

Melly, C. (2010). Inside-out houses: urban belonging and imagined futures in Dakar, Senegal. Comparative Studies in Society and History, 52(01), 37-65.

Movimento Migranti e Rifuguati Napoli. (2024). Fighting Fortress Europe as/for migrants and refugees in Naples. THE FUNAMBULIST MAGAZINE. https://thefunambulist.net/magazine/music-and-the-revolution/fighting-fortress-europe-as-for-migrants-and-refugees-in-naples-2  

Sparks, T. (2010) Broke Not Broken: Rights, Privacy, and Homelessness in Seattle. Urban Geography, 31(6), 842-862.

Simone, A. M. (2004). For the City Yet to Come: Changing African Life in Cities. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press.

Vasudevan, A. (2014) The Makeshift City: Towards a Global Geography of Squatting. Progress in Human Geography, doi: 10.1177/0309132514531471, 1-22.

Yakin, S. (2022). ExOPG “Je So’ Pazzo”. European Association of Lawyers for Democracy & World Human Rights (ELDH). https://eldh.eu/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Report-on-ExOPG.pdf

PHOTO REFERENCES

• ExOPG “Je so' Pazzo”. (2016). [Map of ExOPG “Je so' Pazzo”] Retrieved March 27, 2024, from https://www.produzionidalbasso.com/project/trasformiamo-lex-opg-di-napoli/

• (All other pictures by author)