Sophie Gonick

Contesting Dispossession: Immigrants and the Struggle for Housing in Madrid

Lecture by Sophie Gonick, Assistant Professor, Metropolitan Studies Program, Department of Social & Cultural Analysis, NYU

Since the global financial crisis of 2008, housing has been central to critical urban scholarship because it is a key site where the interests of global financial capital and the concerns of everyday urban dwellers converge. Yet there has been little attention to immigrants as they navigate shifting housing markets, even in a moment of unprecedented migration and mobility. In this talk, Dr. Gonick investigates immigrant activism against housing dispossession Madrid. She uncovers Madrid’s histories of homeownership and immigration to demonstrate the pivotal role of Andean immigrants within anti-eviction efforts, as the first to contest dispossession from mortgage-related foreclosures and evictions. She reveals how intimate histories of migration, activism, and financial ruin produced dissent in a moment of housing crisis. In so doing, she reflects on the salience of immigrant activism within struggles for just shelter and more equitable regimes of urban property.

Dr. Gonick is Assistant Professor in the Department of Social & Cultural Analysis at NYU, where she teaches in the Metropolitan Studies Program. Her work examines property regimes, immigrant activism, and housing justice. She has also written about new municipalism in Spain and the United States. Her first book, Dispossession and Dissent: Immigrants and the Struggle for Housing in Madrid, was published by Stanford University Press in 2021.

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