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Paper short abstract

The term “itinerant citizenship” theorises the activism of Southeast England’s boat-dwellers, which draws on human rights legislation and working-class rebellious custom to defend a mobile and affordable way of living on canals inherited from the industrial past, amid contemporary neoliberal crises.

Paper long abstract

Southeast England’s boat-dwellers were known for making their political organisations strategically ungraspable by the state (Bowles 2019). However, as canals face increasing enclosure and privatisation, and as more people move aboard in response to persistent housing and cost-of-living crises, the National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA) has become a permanently conspicuous representative of the itinerant boat-dwelling population. This paper examines how, since the 2010s, the NBTA has positioned itself both “with and against” the state (Lazar 2024). On the one hand, its defence of a mobile and affordable way of life relies on consultative and judicial mechanisms, drawing on UK and European human rights legislation. On the other hand, it celebrates working-class culture and histories of struggle, and consistently opposes proposals that would “sedentarise” boat-dwelling and thereby co-opt it into the enclosure of waterways.

While the term “citizenship” is not directly used by NBTA activists, I deploy it analytically to show that these struggles extend beyond disputes over cruising patterns and boat licensing with the 'charitable trust' that manages the canals (Canal and River Trust, CRT). For NBTA activists, itinerant boat-dwelling constitutes a “rebellious custom” (Thompson 1991) that deliberately rejects the logics of exclusive ownership and asset accumulation. This radical vision on housing, however, does not receive universal embrace among boat dwellers and is largely sidestepped by the CRT. I therefore reflect on my own theoretical commitments to alternative possibilities when debates over the future of the canals are entangled with polarised views of activism and the governing institution.