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The Right to Squat: Legal Consciousness and the Legitimation of Illegal Activities in Detroit

Tue, August 19, 12:30 to 2:10pm, TBA

Abstract

“You’re going to have squatters, might as well be good ones,” a Detroit police officer told me. In a city with over 80,000 abandoned properties and an unemployment rate around 20%, it’s not surprising that nearly everyone in Detroit has encountered squatters. In coping with the deplorable conditions of urban life in Detroit, many residents occupy abandoned properties and take over vacant lots. Using data from over 35 in-depth interviews with Detroit residents who witness and/or illegally occupy vacant property in the city, this paper contributes to the legal consciousness literature by exploring the effects of a pervasive mis-interpretation of Michigan’s Adverse Possession law, colloquially known as “squatter’s rights”. I demonstrate that a shallowly-conceptualized but wide-spread belief that squatters in Detroit have rights to the properties they occupy serves to legitimate the de jure illegal activity of squatting. Combined with the state’s virtual inability to impose sanctions for squatting, the commonly-held legal consciousness of “squatter’s rights” in Detroit has effectively shifted the activity of squatting into the space of what I call “non-legal” property actions — as one squatter said, “It doesn’t feel illegal… so is it?” While not always desired, the presence of squatters in Detroit neighborhoods is commonly accepted, condoned, and even advocated in part because residents believe that there is an underlying legal basis for the activity. Furthermore, this paper reaffirms prior claims that legality is a fluid concept that cannot be reduced to a stark division between legal and illegal.

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