Narrow Margins

Our research investigates when, where, and for whom trespass has become a criminal offence.

The Narrow Margins project focuses on four communities that stand to be further marginalised due to changes in the law around trespass.

They find themselves increasingly squeezed onto the narrow margins, caught between the sharp end of criminalisation and denied legitimate uses by existing property systems.

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The project investigates the wider context of the Police Act 2022 and conducts empirical research into life on the narrow margins:

• Bringing new understandings to the everyday impacts of trespass criminalisation;
• Denaturalising and complicating the concept of trespass;
• Offering an original conceptual approach which incorporates the wider global and historical context of English property systems;
• Engaging with communities as partners to understand:

1. Encounters with criminalisation (police, owners, private security);
2. Motivations behind “trespass”;
3. Experiences of property (precarity, insecurity, home/homelessness);

• Demystifying the margins and countering negative stereotypes and misunderstandings around the reasons behind “trespass”.

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The Narrow Margins approach

Formalisation of property	Steady criminalisation of trespass
> Contests on the ground ignored > Ownership assumed and untested > Title over use > Claims over use are settled/fixed	> Discretionary and vague powers > Beyond private property > Denies other property/land relations + accountability

Unsettle the ownership model	Connect two sides of the Narrow Margins	Grounded in experiences at the Narrow Margins
> Property as performance > Genealogical and transcolonial approach > Trespass as entry point > Recognise other property relations	> Identify where title is assumed and uncontested > Re-spatialise the Narrow Margins > Identify ways private and public space are policed	> Challenge epistemic authority > Mental sketch mapping > Centre everyday experiences of enclosure > Platform policy recommendations and make discursive interventions