Radical Methodological Openness and Method as Politics: Reflections on Militant Research with Squatters in Catalonia

In 2017, it was estimated that over 87,000 families-around 270,000 people-lived in squatted properties in Spain. Such figures, often used by the media to stigmatise residential occupations and generate moral panic, give an ill-defined yet powerful indication of the prevalence of squatting within and outside organised housing movements. From these came the question: How to elevate the "minor knowledges" of precariously housed people in an ethical, engaged, and situated way, in dialogue with a coordinated activist push to reframe squatting as a political strategy? Based on the experience of the first "strategic positivist" survey about squatting in Catalonia, we offer a situated reflection on the tensions and contradictions of militant research in a shifting political terrain. The urgency and ethics that guided our process made it necessary to operate through methodological openness and to consider method as politics, advancing a broader agenda of movement-relevant research supporting non-speculative forms of inhabitation.