Commons as utopias of care: the case of the social center Lucha

Between 2012 and 2017, an abandoned barracks located in the Italian city of Bologna was squatted and renovated by a group of young people, culminating in the establishment Làbas, a self-managed centro sociale (social centre). Within Làbas, an range of social projects (such as a kindergarten, a shelter for homeless people, a library, a pizzeria and a micro-brewery) and public events (i.e., concerts, seminars, public screening of movies and documentary) were organised with the ambition “to give back a square to the city”. Using ethnographic data including field notes and interviews with activists, this chapter analyses Làbas as an example of “utopia of care” (Fano Morrissey and Serughetti 2024). In dialogue with studies on commoning, the analysis aims to shed light on the daily “practices of care” through which the space was managed, as well as to examines the use of “narratives of care” to defend the squatting and its activities. In this exploration, the chapter draws upon feminist perspectives to recognise care, love and solidarity as “cultural residuals of hope” (Lynch 2022) and their key role in the everyday organising of prefigurative politics.