We really hope you find it useful & it gets out far and wide - again, it’s free to read & share!

With huge thanks to co-editors Aiden Sidebottom & Sheldon Zhang, all our contributors, @uclpress.bsky.social for seeing value in the proposed book, the reviewers, & our funders the ESRC @ukri.org /end

We appreciate that more & better evaluation evidence isn’t a silver bullet.

But it’s unethical & ineffective to keep throwing money at anti-trafficking interventions without a more nuanced understanding of how they are helping or hurting. 3/

Featuring a great set of contributors from across public health, crime, social work & social care, politics, international development, and - crucially - lived experience of trafficking & anti-trafficking.

We hope this book will inform & encourage evaluations that are critically needed here. 2/

It'll be #OpenAcces in Spring 2026 :)

Read the history of how ordinary people fought back. Rent Strikes is available to download free from UCL Press: uclpress.co.uk/book/rent-st...

🧵(10/10)

In the Global South, housing struggles often take different forms. In the favelas of Brazil, organized workers fought against exploitative “rent seekers”. Their struggle reveals how informal rental markets generate their own forms of intense exploitation.

🧵(9/10)

One of the greatest catalyst for tenant revolt worldwide? Inflation.
It consistently acted as the “spark” that ignited collective tenant actions across borders.

🧵(8/10)

What were tenants fighting for? Historically, demands consistently revolve around: 1) Lower rents; 2) Renovations and maintenance; and 3) Fighting evictions. Tactics include the refusal to pay rent, withholding a portion of it, or channeling unpaid rent towards repairs.

🧵(7/10)

Understanding women's role requires different sources. The book employs autobiographical narratives to capture their specific experiences of managing household reproduction amidst activism.

🧵(6/10)

Tenant action was fundamentally connected to global politics. In Panama, rent strikes were interwoven with anti-imperialist struggles challenging U.S. domination. In France in the 1970s, immigrant rent strikes drew on the experience of Algerian national liberation.

🧵(5/10)

Another central argument is that women have consistently played a pivotal role in tenant activism, linking struggles over rent to the daily reproduction of the labour force. The role of women is analysed in case studies in New York, Rome, Buenos Aires and others.

🧵(4/10)

The volume shows how the language of resistance often centers on E.P. Thompson's concept of “moral economy”. Tenants define certain rental practices as unfair and reject the domination of market laws. They denounce landlords as “profiteers”, “sharks”, or “vultures”

🧵(3/10)

The core conflict analyzed in the book is the enduring contradiction in capitalist urban development: housing as a basic human need (use-value) versus housing as a source of profit and capital accumulation (commodity/exchange-value)

🧵(2/10)