ABSTRACT
In most cases, squatter migrants move from a poor place to a rich place. The opposite is possible too. This is a micro case study of Europeans squatting as migrants on the Lower East Side of New York in the late 1980s. At the time, this was still a relatively poor neighborhood. The main source of information is an in-depth interview with Anna (the name has been changed for anonymity), a Dutch woman who, after arriving as an art student in New York in 1988, tried to join local squatters and then formed a group to open up their own building. In the Netherlands, she had lived in a large squat, but her first encounters with the Lower East Side squatter scene were alienating:
When I came to New York in 1988 there were maybe five or six big squats. I did not have a home and visited all these squats to try to get a room. This did not work at all. One building said: “we already have enough women”. The other squat said “we already have enough Europeans”. Yet another group said “we already have enough white people”. Thus as a white, female European, they did not want me.
