«Entro nella vita delle persone per farle uscire di casa». Anthropology of evictions in Milan

Abstract

This article investigates the social dynamics trigged by the implementation of eviction procedures in the contemporary Milan. We will focus on the social and working role of some officers who, with an institutional mandate, perform evictions. Our goal is to show how working practices, imaginaries, local moral worlds address the actions of these public officials. Starting from a Milanese case study, we intend to interpret the loss of house as a social, multidimensional, and articulated fact that shed a light on relations, tensions and social inequalities of the contemporary urban areas. Through the analysis of our ethnographic date, we claim the necessity of overcome the well-spread common sense – prevalently legal, and rhetoric, primarily media and political – on evictions, underlining the correlations between the implementation of laws, agencies, social structures and economic models.