Paper Short Abstract:

In 2023 a squatting enabled the opening of a center for (migrantized) homeless people in Frankfurt (Main). After a decade of struggle, the grassroots initiative Project Shelter found itself negotiating with city officials – and amid current contestations of the ‘Social’.

Paper Abstract:

In this contribution, I present observations and insights from my PhD research with the grassroots initiative Project Shelter in Frankfurt (Main), of which I have also been a member for many years. The group has organized accommodations and support for homeless migrantized people for almost a decade. After several unsuccessful attempts to open a self-organized center for migrants by squatting vacant buildings, Project Shelter succeeded in 2023 as part of a coalition with the solidarity kitchen ‘ada kantine’ and the collective ‘Freiräume statt Glaspaläste’ (‘autonomous spaces instead of glass palaces’).

Surprisingly, city officials not only tolerated this new squat, but actively mediated between activists and the building owners. When the owners eventually decided to demolish the building, a city politician found an alternative house and financially supported the move and renovations through their department. Although the new building (so far) is only temporary until the end of 2024, this marks a definite turning point in the relationship between city officials and the grassroots initiatives involved.

Through collective struggle, homeless migrantized people seem to have shifted from objects of exclusion to objects of local 'welfare', presenting Project Shelter with new constraints and modes of control – but also opportunities for subversion and coalition building. Using the concept of social (state) regimes at the intersection of border regime analysis (Hess) and critical research on the social state (van Dyk/Haubner), this paper explores how the crisis of neoliberalism unfolds on the ground as the simultaneous collapse and re-making of social structures.