Occupation, as a means of achieving change, emerged from worker struggles that sought everything from higher wages to the abolition of capitalism. These confrontations in particular attract media attention. Thus occupations are often in conflict with political authorities and forces of established order, especially the police.
In many cases local governments declare occupations illegal because protesters seek to control space over a prolonged time. Unlike other forms of protest like demonstrations, marches and rallies, occupation is defined by an extended temporality and is usually located in specific places. That is to make public spaces more valuable to the citizens in contrast to favoring the interests of corporate and financial capital. Often, this is connected to the right to the city, which is the right to inhabit and be in the city as well as to redefine the city in ways that challenge the demands of capitalist accumulation. Occupation attempts to use space as an instrument in order to achieve political and economic change, and to construct counter-spaces in which protesters express their desire to participate in the production and re-imagination of urban space.
Opposed to a military occupation which attempts to subdue a conquered country, a protest occupation is a means to resist the status quo and advocate a change in public policy. As an act of protest, occupation is a strategy often used by social movements and other forms of collective social action in order to squat and hold public and symbolic spaces, buildings, critical infrastructure such as entrances to train stations, shopping centers, university buildings, squares, and parks.
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