Squatter

Squatting consists of occupying an abandoned or unoccupied area of land and/or a building – usually residential – that the squatter does not own, rent or otherwise have lawful permission to use.

Author Robert Neuwirth suggests that there are one billion squatters globally, that is, about one in every seven people on the planet. Yet, according to Kesia Reeve, "squatting is largely absent from policy and academic debate and is rarely conceptualised, as a problem, as a symptom, or as a social or housing movement."

Some squatting movements are political, such as anarchist, autonomist, or socialist.