Neighbourhood Unions for Social Participation

Self-organisation plays a special role in neighbourhoods that, due to their gentrification in recent decades, have increasingly poorer conditions for social participation for their residents (Glatter 2021). Using the example of the Raval neighbourhood union (sindicat d`habitage) in Barcelona, I will use my empirical research to show the particular relevance of this self-organisation for the everyday social participation of the residents of the neighbourhood.

To this end, I will (1) show how social participation in Spain has been framed by the transformation of the welfare state. Subsequently (2) I will show empirically which questions arise for the residents of the Raval and (3) how they deal with them. Collectivisation as a strategy to counter the tendency towards individualisation through social neoliberalisation appears to be a productive strategy.