Domesticating space: Spatial politics and everyday care infrastructures under urban austerity. An ethnographic perspective from Làbas, Bologna

This article explores urban care infrastructures through an ethnographic study of the Municipio Sociale Autogestito Làbas di Bologna (Làbas autonomous social municipality). Located in a public building shared with institutional services, Làbas produces everyday mutualist practices that transform urban space. Analysing the quadriporticus, the heart of the space, it is shown how care emerges through everyday acts and spatial configurations that produce an ambivalent form of domestication: at once “homemaking” and governing space. This contribution highlights the importance of considering the spatial - and not only relational - dimensions of urban care, warning against idealised accounts of informal care infrastructures and drawing attention to their fragile and politically dense nature.