Reinventing the People's House : Time, Space and Activism inMultiethnic Stockholm

The paper focuses on an anti-austerity and anti-racist urban movement, emerging from themultiethnic precariat in Sweden’s most disadvantaged metropolitan areas. It has catalysed thereinvention of a common space with roots in the labour movement of the late 19th century, ThePeople’ House, a meme for contemporary community centres, loaded with hopes of contestingracial stigma and structurally conditioned precarity of citizenship and labour. Scrutinising a specificcase, the authors address the ambiguous emplacement of a People’s House in a Stockholmwrought by financialisation, polarising processes of segregation, the commodification of welfareinstitutions and interventions by competing NGO coalitions in a post-political age.Funding agencies: FORTE; Swedish Research Council for Health, Working Life and WelfareSwedish Research CouncilSwedish Research Council for Health Working Life & Welfare (Forte) [2006-1524]; FORMASSwedish Research Council Formas [250-2013-1547]; Swedish Research CouncilSwed