The Micropolitics of Criminalisation

This PhD research by Deanna Dadusc [pdf] analyses how the criminalisation of the Amsterdam squatting movement works.

ABSTRACT:
The key research question addresses how criminalisation operates as a
technology of government, what kind of relations of power are constituted through this
processes, and how these are experienced and resisted. By paying attention to the
relationship between politics, ethics and affects, the focus of this project is on the
micropolitics of criminalisation and its resistances, where affects, everyday lived
experiences, and embodied relations of power and resistance play a central role.
The analytical framework conceptualises power relations as heterogenous, productive
and constitutive forces rather than simply repressive and oppositional ones. This
enables to analyse how criminalisation works by deployment of legalistic tools and
policing practices, by engendering contested moralities around private property and the
uses of urban spaces and by constituting specific modes of experiencing, acting and
resisting. Moreover, this perspective unfolds the complex relations between
criminalisation and resistance: the focus is placed on the active and creative power of
heterogenous struggles that counter relations of power by means of protests and direct
actions, as much as by experimenting subversive conducts, social relations and modes
of life.
This project engages with Activist-Research, aiming at producing a platform for
collective reflection on how to resist criminalisation. Here resistance is not intended as
an object of study, but as an epistemological perspective: namely a mode of unmasking,
knowing and analysing how power operates. The empirical materials presented in the
form of Intermezzi (between chapters) and Boxes (within chapters) constitute composite
and collaborative process of reflection and narration.

The Micropolitics of Criminalisation: Power, Resistance and the Amsterdam Squatting Movement