The Production of Squatters as Folk Devils: Analysis of a Moral Panic that Facilitated the Criminalization of Squatting in the Netherlands

This article assesses recent improvements to Cohen's original formulation of the concept of moral panic. A case study is made of a moral panic generated in the Dutch media regarding three accusations made by the police concerning booby traps and weapons caches in the squats of Amsterdam. These claims, while shown to be fantastical in nature, gave credence to a ideological discursive formation that portrayed the squatters' movement as increasingly violent. Squatters were subsequently manufactured as folk devils requiring control via juridical repression, a process that resulted in the criminalization of squatting in 2010.