Abstract

This paper is based on an analysis of collective temporary residences in the municipality of Torino. Its goal is to show how collaborative housing sites can become a place of production of communitarian discourses and practices. The increasing importance of the «local» in contemporary housing policies is connected to processes of rescaling and to the adoption of a specific focus on «new generation» housing interventions. Observing collaborative housing sites can be fruitful to see how policies devoted to individual autonomy and activation can have some ambivalences, well exemplified by the paradox of a «temporary community». The beneficiaries of this kind of housing measure are invested with the responsibility to build part of the local social protection infrastructure. Observing this specific declination of the concept of community allows to show some characteristics of contemporary social policy, notably the coexistence of socializing and individualizing dynamics.