Miguel A. Martínez (urban sociologist)

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Miguel A. Martínez
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Born (1970-07-01) July 1, 1970 (age 53)
NationalitySpanish and Swedish
Academic background
Alma materUniversidade de Santiago de Compostela (Spain) (Ph.D., 2000)
ThesisLabyrinths and laboratories of urban participation. Strategic planning, historical centres and the squatters' movement (1999)
InfluencesJesús Ibáñez, Tomás R. Villasante, Chris G. Pickvance, Margit Mayer
Academic work
DisciplineSociology
Sub-disciplineUrban sociology, Housing, Social movements, Political science, Urban planning, Social Geography
InstitutionsUppsala University, Sweden
Main interestsUrban and housing movements, housing policies, urban commons, social life of cities, social structures, migration, labour, critical theory, political economy, Marxism, critical realism, participatory-action research, discourse analysis
Websitehttps://miguelangelmartinez.net

Miguel A. Martínez (born 1970) is a Spanish sociologist specialised in urban sociology, social movements, urban activism, squatting, housing, urban planning, urban politics and participatory/activist methods.

Martínez is Chair Professor of housing and urban sociology at the IBF (Institute for Housing and Urban Research), Uppsala University (Sweden) since 2017. The IBF is a multi-disciplinary research institute that founded the journal Housing, Theory and Society, and co-manages the International Journal of Housing Policy. He was previously affiliated to the City University of Hong Kong and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain), and a visiting researcher at the universities of Newcastle (UK), Antioquia (Medellín, Colombia), Kent (Canterbury, UK), Chicago (USA), Tsinghua (Beijing, China), Porto (Portugal), Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and the CAS (Centre for Advanced Study) Sofia (Bulgaria).

Prof. Martínez is world-known for his research on urban squatting movements. His publications have been widely distributed among academics, students, activists and policy-makers. He was awarded with the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond (Sweden) sabbatical grant, the CAS Sofia (Bulgaria) Advanced Academia Fellowship, and the Provincial Government of Pontevedra (Spain) Research on Humanities and Social Sciences Award, among other recognitions and grants.

In addition to his involvement in various progressive social movements, Martínez has also been devoted to fiction writing (short stories and poetry), photography, independent communication media (press and radio), and the practice of sports (running and hiking).

Education and career

Martínez was born in the town of La Bañeza (León province, Spain) but mostly grew up in Madrid until the age of 23 years-old. His mother worked as a nurse in public hospitals, whereas his father was a civil servant at the state-run postal service. Both parents came from relatively poor backgrounds in the countryside but migrated to Madrid and concluded university degrees. Martínez had many books from social sciences, history, politics, philosophy and novels available at his parents’ home, which triggered his early scientific and literary curiosity. Gossip magazines, tabloids, newspapers and tv films and documentaries opened up Martínez’s eyes to the understanding of all walks of life early on. Despite being raised in urban settings, Martínez regularly spent his childhood holidays with his mother’s relatives who were peasants in the countryside of León. After finishing secondary school and during his university years as undergraduate (1988-1993), Martínez did many jobs such as bartender, disc jockey, maid, baby sitter, distribution of commercial flyers, organiser of fundraising parties, hospital companion of ill people, interviewer, computing coder, teacher of statistics and intern in a market and social research company (Caleidoscopia S.L.), which was established by some of his university friends, including sociologist and writer Ramón J. Soria. In that period, he also conducted radio programmes in Radio Carcoma. At the same time, he became regularly involved in the movement opposing the military conscription, squatted social centres, counter-information media, and solidarity with the Latin American left. The social milieu at the Complutense University was particularly politically rich and vibrant, and he also enjoyed the teaching of brilliant professors such as María Jesús Miranda, Mariano Fernández Enguita, Narciso Pizarro, Fernando Palazuelos, Carmen López Alonso, Rafael González, Ángel de Lucas, and Jesús Ibáñez. The latter developed an original methodological approach to qualitative methods (‘discussion groups') and suggested paths forward to a ‘dialectic methodology’ akin to participatory-action research. Other primary sources of intellectual insights were the IOE and Red CIMAS sociological organisations. Theoretically, he was strongly influenced by Marxism, Bourdieu, post-structuralism, anarchism, autonomism, and the epistemology of complex systems. As an undergraduate student he empirically investigated topics such as the cultural mode of production, global political economy, social movements, criminology, social structures, peaceful conflict resolution, militarism, sexuality, mass communications, social groups and social networks.

After graduating in sociology and political science (with a specialisation in social psychology) in 1993 he moved to the city of Vigo (Galicia, Spain) and started a PhD programme in the the Department of Political Science, University of Santiago de Compostela. His main jobs of this period were: consultant for workers’ and consumers’ cooperative firms, instructor of socio-cultural animation in non-formal education, and researcher for a community-based organisation at the historical centre of Vigo. The latter job revived Martínez’s interest in urban and housing matters. Professor Tomás R. Villasante was the main supervisor of his doctoral dissertation (1999), in which he compared participatory processes in the urban plans targetting the historical centre of Vigo with one case of citizen participation in strategic planning (in the metropolitan region of Medellín, Colombia) and the squatting movement in Spain. As a doctoral candidate, Martínez conducted research at the INER (Instituto de Estudios Regionales) in Colombia, supervised by anthropologist Hernán Henao, and at the Urban and Regional Studies Unit, University of Kent (Canterbury, UK), supervised by sociologist Chris G. Pickvance (while also attending a regular seminar on social movements coordinated by Dieter Rucht and Christopher Rootes). Professor Pickvance became a frequent long-distance mentor for Martínez over the following decades.

In the period 2000-2002 Martínez was employed in a consultancy firm as the director of the Housing Department at the Municipality of Vigo. This professional appointment led him to study more legal and technical issues of urban planning and housing policies. He was also hired as adjunct professor by the University of Vigo (teaching economic sociology, sociology of education, and urban and rural sociology), and as associate professor by a private school of architecture in Vila Nova de Cerveira (Portugal), Escola Gallaecia. He also contributed to reports on housing, urban planning and sustainability coordinated by the Eixo Atlántico think tank. In 2003 Martínez was appointed as a senior post-doctoral researcher “Isidro Parga Pondal” affiliated to the research group on the sociology of migrations (ESOMI nowadays) based in the Department of Sociology and Political Science of the University of A Coruña. In this institution he worked on migration issues with brilliant professors such as Antonio Izquierdo, Carmen Lamela and Laura Oso, in addition to his research on squatting movements, and housing and urban matters. In 2004 Martínez visited the University of Chicago and joined for three months The Transnationalism Project at the Department of Sociology, under the leadership of Saskia Sassen. Between 2005 and 2007 he was employed as associate professor at the University of La Rioja (Logroño) mainly teaching sociology of education, general sociology and research methods. In those years, he also conducted six months of research in Porto (Portugal), affiliated to the Department of Sociology, University of Porto. In 2007 Martínez became affiliated to the Department of Sociology II, at the University Complutense of Madrid, where he soon was awarded a Ramón y Cajal senior researcher scholarship. In this institution he taught sociology of migrations, urban and environmental sociology, sociology of tourism and population. Professors Jesús Leal and Tomás R. Villasante were the key urban sociologists of this Department with whom Martínez collaborated. During this period he pushed further his activist-research in relation to squatting. In 2009 Martínez called different scholars studying squatting movements to meet in Madrid, then starting a stable network of cooperation, collective analyses and publications – SqEK (Squatting Europe Kollective, later changed to Squatting Everywhere Kollective) – active for more than a decade. He also investigated social and urban densities in the city centre of Madrid, and its urban globalisation, and collaborated with architects and planning studios such as AUIA and Paisaje Transversal. In addition to frequently participate in the Critical Mass (Bicicrítica) of Madrid, he taught social and sustainability issues in relation to cycling and urban transport, as instructor of the 4 Cities Master in Urban Studies that took place in Brussels, Copenhagen, Vienna and Madrid. Politically, the 15M or Indignados movement, starting in 2011, led him to more regular and diverse engagements, especially in protests against home evictions.

From 2013 to 2017 Martínez worked in the Department of Public Policy at the City University of Hong Kong. This time he taught topics such as political philosophy, comparative governments, theories of political analysis, urban politics and sociology, and qualitative research methods. In his first funded project there, he compared the 2014 pro-democracy Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong with the 15M movement in Madrid. A second project focused on the industrial gentrification and the participatory planning limitations of the Kowloon East district. A third project investigated governance and urban movements in the Spanish left-municipalist experiences after the 2015 local elections. In parallel, he visited and read extensively about Asian cities and politics. Professors Ray Forrest, Ngai-Ming Yip and Bart Wissink became his main collaborators in the department. In March 2017, at the age of 46, Martínez was appointed chair professor at the IBF (Institute for Housing and Urban Research), Uppsala University, while holding a double affiliation with the Department of Sociology in the same university where he taught courses of urban sociology and qualitative research methods. He substituted professor Mats Franzén, who went into retirement and kept working as emeritus in the same institutions. In his first years in Uppsala, Martínez concluded the edition and co-edition of two already initiated books.[1] and, particularly, his own solo author book in English language comparing squatting movements across Europe[2]. He continued and expanded his investigations on the housing movement in Spain in addition to other projects about housing in Sweden, and a five-years cooperation with architects from Belo Horizonte (Brazil) focusing on urban struggles and commons. Professors Irene Molina, Dominika Polanska, Carina Listerborn, Catarina Thörn, Håkan Thörn, Don Mitchell and Brett Christoffers became some of his main intellectual references in Sweden. At the same time, he continued collaborations with Spain-based colleagues such as Robert González, Ángela García Bernardos, Javier Gil, Lorenzo Vidal, Luisa Rossini, Ibán Díaz-Parra, Inés Fernández-Cuelli and Ismael Yrigoy. Between 2021 and 2023 he edited a Handbook on Urban Sociology (Edward Elgar publisher) to which he contributed with a chapter on the social and critical dimensions of urban studies.

Research

Martínez’s academic background is firmly rooted in the field of urban and housing studies and especially in the intersection between urban sociology, political science, social movements and urban planning. He was equally guided by participatory action-research (PAR) methodologies as they were practised in Spain and Latin America. In addition to a manifold of research topics, he was increasingly concentrated in the study of urban and housing struggles, and squatting in particular. This was intensified with his involvement in SqEK over a decade. The 15M movement in Spain (2011) and the Umbrella Movement in Hong Kong (2014) opened up new research avenues in his career. His initial research focused on the cities of Vigo and Madrid (Spain), Medellín (Colombia) and Porto (Portugal). Later on he frequently travelled across Spain and Europe, with short stays in North and South American cities, China and South-East Asian countries, in addition to his almost four-years work in Hong Kong.

Martínez’s firs relevant study consisted of a participatory action-research project with the Community Development Plan in the historical centre of the city of Vigo (1993-1999)[3]. He investigated housing conditions, urban planning, gentrification trends and community self-organisation. In particular, he revealed how social structures, social organisations and planners related to each other in contentious ways. Some of the key conflicts under scrutiny were about the definition of historical values, the image of the city centre and the policy priorities in the implementation of urban plans. Citizen participation thus mobilised the residents’ housing needs and their resistance to displacement, while researchers contributed to support their claims with their sociological findings. From a theoretical point of view, this study identified overt and hidden mechanisms in processes of citizen participation regarding urban planning and gentrification effects. A second research project broadened the scope to the strategic planning of cities and metropolitan areas, with fieldwork in Medellín (Colombia) and the examination of secondary sources from other cities (1997-2003)[4]. This study led Martínez to critically analyse the relationship between economic, political, social and ecological contexts and the entrepreneurial-led approach of strategic planning. Simplified explanations and analytical SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) models used by planners were also subject to critique. Against this backdrop, other processes of manipulative citizen participation were revealed, but also possibilities for more complex, democratic and socio-ecological forms of participation. The concept of ‘strategic invention’ was thus coined in order to explore the multiple relations between action and knowledge when applied to participatory planning processes[5]. Soon after, the research focus moved to the squatting movement. The lack of sociological and historical research on that field and its urban dimensions were the initial gaps that this study aimed at filling. The first book authored by Martínez about the squatting movement in Spain (2002)[6] argued that its development had to be explained by specific social contexts (housing crisis, unemployment, youth transitions, and the spatial needs of other new social movements) and found that its protest repertoires addressed, above all, local authorities and policies. One of his most celebrated articles found that squatting movements had developed anti-globalisation actions and discursive frames even before the 1999 protests in Seattle[7].

These initial studies suggested a threefold theoretical explanation: a) Marxist and Weberian approaches were central in the analyses of power relations, but had to be supplemented with the epistemology of complexity and the identification of various forms of grassroots’ resistance; b) PAR methodologies provided holistic insights for the social verification of knowledge – the ways that social organizations use sociological information in their collective actions; c) Different global processes and contexts are required to explain the emergence and aims of urban movements, but local and urban politics explain better activists’ practices and strategies. These findings were tested and expanded in Martínez’s next projects on housing and urban planning in Galician and Portuguese cities, with an increasing attention to environmental constraints. In particular, his comparison of participatory planning processes in Vigo and Porto contended that participation increased the social conflict, which was explained according to the local strategic interactions between social movements and planning authorities[8].

Martínez’s research on squatting, housing, anti-neoliberal and pro-democracy movements after 2011 led him to explore their mutual connections and their institutional and non-institutional impacts. His theoretical framework was then undergirded by three key concerns: 1) What sociological conceptions of space can provide the best explanation of social processes of inequality and domination when spatial variables are relevant? 2) How processes of citizen participation actually occur in city planning and the management of spatial goods? 3) What kind of social contexts and spatial scales are relevant to explain the dynamics of urban change in different cities of the world? To respond these questions, Martínez produced different theoretical writings and empirical studies, especially those focused on squatting and housing movements. On the one hand, he suggested the notions of ‘convergent movements’[9] and ‘hybrid autonomy’[10] to explain ebbs and flows in the mutual relations between social movements, with the illustration of the anti-austerity 15M uprisings and squatting well-established practices in Spain. On the other hand, Martínez revealed the features of ‘anomalous institutionalisation’[11] processes and ‘socio-spatial structures’ of opportunities and constraints for the development of urban activism such as the squatting movement across Europe[12]. He also distinguished specific modular practices of relations between squatters and migrants[13]. Likewise, the examination of the squatting movement allowed Martínez to identify crucial discursive frameworks in their political identity in relation to autonomy[14], the right to the city[15], the commons[16] and counter-hegemonic strategies facing criminalisation[17]. A critical review of the ‘commons’ concept also led him to propose a specific anti-capitalist framework that is applicable to squatting and other social movements. Regarding the anti-evictions movement in Spain, Martínez and colleagues contributed to the analysis of its intended and unintended outcomes[18], its development as a ‘multi-pronged’ housing movement[19], its intersectional/reproductive features, and its ‘double horizon of political temporality’. They also confirmed the influence of ‘protest cycles’ and contexts of state-led financialisation on the reactions performed by housing struggles[20]

Selected publications

Peer-reviewed articles

Books

  • Martínez, Miguel A. (Ed.) (2023) Research Handbook on Urban Sociology. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

References

  1. ↑ Yip, Ngai Ming, Miguel A. Martínez & Xiaoyi Sun (Eds.) (2019) Contested Cities and Urban Activism. Singapore: Palgrave-McMillan. https://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9789811317293. Martínez, Miguel A. (Ed.) (2018) The Urban Politics of Squatters' Movements. New York: Palgrave-McMillan. http://www.springer.com/gp/book/9781349953134
  2. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2020) Squatters in the capitalist city. Housing, Justice and Urban Politics. New York: Routledge. https://www.routledge.com/Squatters-in-the-Capitalist-City-Housing-Justice-and-Urban-Politics/Martinez/p/book/9781138856950
  3. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2001) Urbanismo de rehabilitación no centro histórico de Vigo. Unha investigación social participativa. Vigo: University of Vigo. http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/?Apresentacion-investigacion-social
  4. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (1999) La traslación de estrategias empresariales al territorio: problemas de la planificación estratégica en el urbanismo. Política y Sociedad 31: 93-116. http://revistas.ucm.es/index.php/POSO/article/download/POSO9999230093A/24770
  5. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2008) Complexity and Participation: the Path of Strategic Invention. Interdisciplinary Science Review, 33, 2, 153-177. http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/IMG/pdf/2008_Complexity_ISR_33_2_153_178-2.pdf
  6. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2002) Okupaciones de viviendas y centros sociales. Autogestión, contracultura y conflictos urbanos. Barcelona: Virus. http://www.miguelangelmartinez.net/?Okupaciones-de-viviendas-y-de
  7. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2007) The Squatters’ Movement: Urban Counterculture and Alter-Globalization Dynamics. South European Society & Politics 12(3): 379-398. http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/fses20/current#.VFKCGfmUeFU
  8. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2011) The Citizen Participation of Urban Movements. A Comparison between Vigo and Porto. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35, 147-171. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1468-2427.2010.00956.x/abstract
  9. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. & García, A. (2015) The Occupation of Squares and the Squatting of Buildings: Lessons from the Convergence of Two Social Movements. ACME -An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies 14(1): 157-184. http://acme-journal.org/index.php/acme/article/view/1145/1107
  10. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2016) Between autonomy and hybridity: urban struggles within the 15m movement in Madrid. In Margit Mayer, Catharina Thörn and Håkan Thörn (eds.) Urban Uprisings: Challenging the neoliberal city in Europe. London: Palgrave Macmillan-Springer, pp. 253-281. http://www.palgrave.com/de/book/9781137504920
  11. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2014) How Do Squatters Deal with the State? Legalization and Anomalous Institutionalization in Madrid. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 38(2): 646-674. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/1468-2427.12086/pdf
  12. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2013) The Squatters’ Movement in Europe: A Durable Struggle for Social Autonomy in Urban Politics. Antipode. A Radical Journal of Geography 45(4): 866-887. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01060.x/abstract
  13. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2017) Squatters and Migrants in Madrid: Interactions, Contexts and Cycles. Urban Studies 54(11): 2472-2489. https://doi.org/10.1177/0042098016639011
  14. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2019). The autonomy of struggles and the self-management of squats: legacies from intertwined movements. Interface 11(1): 178-199. https://www.interfacejournal.net/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/Interface-11-1- Martinez.pdf
  15. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2020) European squatters’ movements and the right to the city. In Flesher Fominaya, Cristina & Feenstra, Ramón A. (Eds.) Routledge Handbook of Contemporary European Social Movements. Protest in Turbulent Times. Abingdon: Routledge, 155-167. https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Handbook-of-Contemporary-European-Social- Movements-Protest-in/Flesher-Fominaya-Feenstra/p/book/9781351025188
  16. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2020) Urban Commons from an Anti-Capitalist Approach. Partecipazione e Conflitto 13(3): 1390-1410. http://siba-ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/article/view/23053
  17. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2019) Good and Bad Squatters? Challenging Hegemonic Narratives and Advancing Anti-Capitalist Views of Squatting in Western European Cities. Culture Unbound 11(1): 165-189. http://www.cultureunbound.ep.liu.se/v11/a10/cu19v11a10.pdf
  18. ↑ Martínez, Miguel A. (2019) Bitter wins or a long-distance race? Social and political outcomes of the Spanish housing movement. Housing Studies 34(10): 1588-1611 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02673037.2018.1447094
  19. ↑ Rossini, Luisa; Martínez, Miguel A. & García Bernardos, Ángela (2023) The configuration of a multi-pronged housing movement in Barcelona. Partecipazione e Conflitto 16(1): 63-86. DOI: 10.1285/i20356609v16i1p63 http://siba- ese.unisalento.it/index.php/paco/article/view/26872
  20. ↑ Gil, Javier & Martínez, Miguel A. (2023) State-Led Actions Reigniting the Financialization of Housing in Spain. Housing, Theory and Society 40(1): 1-21 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14036096.2021.2013316 Martínez, Miguel A. & Gil, Javier (2022) Grassroots Struggles Challenging Housing Financialization in Spain. Housing Studies http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/02673037.2022.2036328

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