Project description
A closer look at housing rights of marginalised communities
Once viewed only as shelter and a basic human right, housing has transitioned into a commodity – a product to be exploited for profit. While affordable housing is a core European value, commodification is restricting its access. Supported by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the SQUAT project aims to explore what this means for the homeless people, political squatters, Roma and migrants who do not have access to legal-title housing. Specifically, it will reconstruct concepts of squatting, homelessness, tenure and adverse possession using philosophical and data-driven methods. It will also compare squatting laws in Italy, Poland and the UK to assess compatibility with European standards. Natural language processing will be used to examine the evolution of legal concepts.
Objective
"SQUAT is an innovative 24-month research project examining squatting, informal settlements, and home invasion through European human rights frameworks. The project challenges traditional property law paradigms by developing a comprehensive legal-philosophical-computational analysis of housing rights from society's margins.
The research addresses Europe's housing crisis by examining tensions between human rights to housing and property rights. While affordable housing is a core European value, commodification of residential units restricts access. Traditional scholarship remains trapped in a ""legal-title-trap,"" focusing on formal ownership while ignoring housing practices of marginalized communities including homeless people, political squatters, Roma, Travellers, and migrants for whom squatting may be the only available tenure. Recent criminalization of squatting across Europe makes this research urgent.
The project pursues three objectives: reconstructing concepts of squatting, homelessness, tenure, and adverse possession using philosophical and data-driven methods; developing comparative analysis of squatting laws across UK, Italy, and Poland to test compatibility with European human rights standards; and constructing an ambitious normative theory providing moral and legal appraisal of squatting.
SQUAT pioneers integration of computational linguistics with normative legal theory through Natural Language Processing using Word2Vec to analyze how legal concepts evolve across frameworks, combining computational analysis of legal corpora with traditional scholarship, and employing Queloz's needs-based concept appraisal evaluating concepts by practical needs rather than abstract definitions. This represents the first application of word-embedding techniques to property-related concepts in European human rights contexts. The project transcends existing scholarship by reframing squatting as potential rights-claiming rather than law-breaking."
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
- humanities languages and literature linguistics
- social sciences sociology social issues social inequalities
- social sciences law human rights human rights law
- social sciences law human rights international protection of human rights
- humanities philosophy, ethics and religion philosophy political philosophy
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA)
MAIN PROGRAMME
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European Fellowships
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-MSCA-2025-PF
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
16126 GENOVA
Italy
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.