ABSTRACT
The aim of this chapter is to focus on the voices of squatting activists and the way they have framed squatting as well as the way they have contested dominant discourses on squatting in Sweden. On the basis of different data sources, above all documents and texts produced by the squatters themselves, the way that squatters have described themselves and their adversaries is analyzed. Based on the material produced by Swedish squatters, this chapter presents how squatters have portrayed themselves as rational, honest and representative of the interests of ordinary citizens so as to resist the discourse created by the media and the political elites. They did so by rejecting the dominant labels and reassigning them to other actors, but also by stressing their respectability. Moreover, the discourse of squatters contains traces of the mentality created among the Swedish popular movements of respectable citizens taking responsibility in their own hands and using the corrupt character of their adversaries to describe themselves as the authentic and trustworthy representatives of the citizens.
