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Paper short abstract:

For migrants with an irregular status, housing precarity acts as a barrier for safe reporting when they are victims of a crime

Paper long abstract:

Safe reporting of a crime has been linked to the fear of deportation. When migrants with an irregular status are victims of a crime, they face difficulties or are hesitant to fill a complaint before the police officers and juridical institutions due to the risk of deportation (Delivino, 2019; González, 2019). However, little attention has been paid to the connection between the access to housing and the violation of basic rights, including the safe reporting of a crime.

For migrants with a precarious legal status, housing could be a factor which increases the risk of being victim of a crime, since migrants suffer scams related to room rentals. Similarly, living in precarious settlements increases the likelihood of being victim of physical violence. However, housing is also a factor which hinders safe reporting further than the idea of deportation. In cases in which house and workplace overlap, filling a complaint because of labour exploitation or sexual aggressions is not an option. In all the exposed cases, the housing situation plays a key role not only as a cause of vulnerability of those victims of a crime, but also in their decision to fill a complaint.

We present an anthropological-legal study which explains the interrelation between precarious housing and safe reporting of a crime, working as a cumulative segregation within the city of Barcelona, the urban border. It describes the impact of the lack of access to housing, the (im)possibility of defending the violated rights and the existence of state-induced impunity.