‘They don’t see us as human’: Regeneration and Resistance on an Inner-City Estate

This paper explores the relation of structural violence, emotion and resistance on London’s Aylesbury Estate, a mass housing development that has been undergoing ‘regeneration’ since the mid-1990s. Drawing on oral histories of Aylesbury tenants, it considers how it felt and what it meant to live in long-term uncertainty over the future of one’s home. Reflecting in particular on the testimony of a resident who has campaigned against the regeneration for the past 20 years, it further examines the physical and emotional toll of such a struggle, as well as how activism bred of fear and precarity aligned residents together.