Navigating off-grid living: Dignity and resilience on urban waterways

Abstract

This paper explores London’s continuous cruising community through Polanyi’s double movement theory, analysing how boat dwellers navigate between market commodification of waterways and collective practices of protection and re-embedding. Drawing on seven months of ethnographic research, participant observation, and reflexive thematic analysis, we explore how itinerant liveaboards negotiate semi-off-grid living as both a technical infrastructure withdrawal and a vernacular resistance to the housing market. Our paper reveals mobile precarity as a governance condition produced by strategic neglect of infrastructure, the removal of mooring spaces, rising license fees, and intensified enforcement. The commercialisation strategy through Water Safety Zones and “eco-mooring” schemes demonstrates how environmental discourse legitimises displacement. Yet community responses transcend simple coping through practices of mutual aid, cross-class solidarity, and collective resistance that we theorise as everyday decommodification. The paper makes three contributions: extending Polanyian analysis to mobile housing contexts; reframing off-grid living as mundane politics rather than spectacular lifestyle; and positioning dignity as an analytical bridge between precarity and value transformation. By disrupting the terra-centric/aquatic divide that structures urban theory, we reveal how spatial assumptions about land-as-property versus water-as-flow sustain both the metabolic rift and housing inequality. The paper demonstrates that inclusive urban futures require recognising waterways as legitimate dwelling spaces deserving of infrastructural rights, not mere leisure commodities subject to market pricing.

Introduction

The economic crisis of 2007–2008, driven by a volatile financial sector, brought to the fore various discourses about unorthodox lifestyles as alternatives to dependence on the financial sector and crony capitalism (Hughes, 1999). This crisis, which led to a ‘cost of living crisis’ experienced by many citizens globally, indicated a broader shift away from the post-war model of abundant work opportunities and consumerism. This changing material reality contributed to a loss of trust in mainstream political institutions and to the rise of populist, xenophobic rhetoric, thereby creating imbalance and conflict (Thorleifsson, 2019). The gig economy and the COVID-19 crisis further widened the divide between the rich and the poor, highlighting the inability of national governments and world leaders to work together (Kim, 2020). The crisis of humanity has become more severe due to the threat of global wars and political conflicts, which project fear and cause trauma (Rozanov et al., 2019). The decisions made by the so-called ‘elite power structures’ (Sovacool and Brisbois, 2019, p. 1) have made the lives of most of the ordinary working population challenging (Macnaughton and Frey, 2018). Moreover, media and social media-biased content, driven by trained algorithms, creates social echo chambers that perpetuate injustices across societies, ecosystems, and economies and marginalise silent voices (Choi et al., 2020). Against this background, many citizens globally feel disempowered to challenge the power structures. Thus, it is unsurprising that some citizens contemplate disconnecting from societies that breed injustice. A complete disconnection is a utopian aim, yet many citizens seek to reduce their dependence on global systems, become more self-sufficient, and consume less (Hüttel et al., 2020). Instead, they are creating microsystems that enable experimentation with new meanings of values that unfold at the social, spatial, and network margins (Ateljevic, 2020). Examples of these attempts include limiting dependency on the monetary system by launching micro-currencies that operate in the specific spaces (Gelleri, 2009), ensuring micro self-sufficiency through regenerative farming techniques such as permaculture (Haney and Morrow, 2024), the tiny house movement (Shearer and Burton, 2018) and disconnecting from consumer culture by adhering to different values (Chatzidakis, 2022), such as sharing and caring (Chatzidakis et al., 2021), among others.

This research explores London’s itinerant liveaboard community, specifically those practising continuous cruising, within this broader spectrum of alternative socio-spatial practices, positioning London’s inland waterways network as a critical site for negotiating the politics of urban dwelling and social reproduction. Through the lens of itinerant liveaboards, the aim of this research is to explore the materiality and socio-political dimensions of the London inland waterways, closely tied to the broader urban development of the areas through which London boaters navigate. Following Bowles et al. (2019), we recognise that social science scholarship remains predominantly terra-centric and sedentary, grounded in a dichotomy between water and land in which water is represented as the other. Looking from water back to land helps denaturalise these assumptions and rethink motion, temporality, and matter, a perspective that informs our approach. Building on Bowles (2024), who places liveaboards within resilient practices linked to neoliberal urbanism, we develop our argument through Polanyi’s (1944/2024) counter-movement thesis as its overarching framework. This lens explains how the expansion of market economies often triggers counter-movements that challenge the commodification of labour and nature, seeking to resist the negative legacies of market-driven systems. Polanyi’s double movement describes the tension between market forces and social protections in capitalist societies, an idea widely used to critique commodification, commercialisation, and neoliberal doctrine, and to forecast their decline (McMichael, 2023). The double movement comprises the push for free-market reforms and the counter-movements that mobilise against them (Maertens, 2008). Goodwin (2018) suggested that Polanyi’s ideas on emerging non-market economies should be extended to contemporary grassroots movements whose lifestyle patterns challenge current systems of value creation. This is a well-trodden path, and rather than retracing it, this research seeks to enrich it by exploring its very roots in the context of communities such as liveaboard boaters engaged in continuous cruising on London’s waterways (Figure 1).

Figure 1.

Source: © 2024 Tims London Waterways photos. https://www.timslondonwaterwayphotos.uk/index.php/london-waterway-map.

Liveaboard dwellings are often associated with liminal housing experiences and are frequently framed as emblematic of an unconventional lifestyle (Galuszka, 2024, p. 133). In the literature and policy discourse, liveaboard dwellers are known as itinerant boaters, liveaboards, barge travellers, and boaters either moored in the marinas or continuously cruising. These terms partially overlap and are used inconsistently and interchangeably across academic work, governance bodies, trusts, charities, and public discourse. The historic term bargee traveller refers to individuals whose occupations involved living on barges along Britain’s inland waterways since the 1700s, and whose work was initially tied to the waterways, such as transporting goods (Worrall, 2019). The term boater refers to both permanent and non-permanent, i.e. holiday residences (CRT, n.d). The term liveaboards refers to people who use a boat as their primary residence, either permanently moored in a marina or on a continuous cruising route (CRT, n.d). The community primarily uses the term liveaboards to denote cultural identity (Shelter England, 2023). The terms continuous cruiser and itinerant boater are used interchangeably. They are defined regionally in England and Wales to describe the legal rights and responsibilities of dwellers who do not have a permanent mooring in the marina (CRT, 2023) and who must move their mooring space every fortnight, unless specific exemptions apply, such as families with school-age children (CRT, 2023). Continuous cruisers, i.e. itinerant liveaboards, are represented by the National Bargee Travellers Association (NBTA), an advocacy group in England and Wales that supports their interests on inland waterways through the ethos of mutual solidarity, including casework and campaigning.

Our research focuses on itinerant liveaboards undertaking continuous cruises along Greater London’s inland waterways, being in a liminal position of living off-grid.

The meaning of off-grid living is complex. It draws on vernacular meanings imposed by the local context, i.e., the legacy of the space and place, and the context of contexts, i.e., disciplinary norms. Vannini and Taggart (2016) conceptualised living off the grid in technical terms as living without, or minimising, the need for connections to conventional utilities, i.e., electricity, water, sewage, and gas. Caprotti et al. (2017) also added the dimension of Wi-Fi networks. Furthermore, important references on off-grid living discuss its vernacular meaning, such as disconnection from the mainstream capitalist free-market paradigm, consumerism and embodiment of an anti-capitalist ethos and utopian praxis (Chatzidakis, 2022). Here, the meaning of off-grid living extends beyond simply detaching from conventional utilities to encompass the vernacular sense of being off-grid. Situating our inquiry within one of the world’s most networked and commodified cities, we employ ‘off-grid’ in liminal terms, referring to both its technical and vernacular practices of decommodification, reduced consumerism, and the cultivation of alternative value systems, whether voluntarily or being forced to change the lifestyle patterns. The research explores the interrelationships among these dynamics and identifies commonalities across liveaboards within a continuous-cruising community.

Research approach

The seven-month research on the houseboat was guided by the premise that social science requires a “double hermeneutics” (Giddens, 1987). To produce trustworthy knowledge, researchers must understand their own position without projecting it onto the study. Bourdieu (2003, p. 281) calls this “participant objectivation,” which involves reflexive awareness as essential for authentic, reliable, and transferable knowledge (Lincoln and Guba, 1986). This entails situating ourselves within the social field and recognising our positionality, revealing implicit structures and power relations without projection. Guided by Bourdieu (2003), the research engaged deeply with liveaboard boater communities engaged in continuous cruising, continually examining our positionality and its impact on our understanding of the socio-spatial dynamics of urban waterways and the communities within them.

Throughout our research, we recognised that we were not privileged academics; our work was shaped by our health, housing, profession, and foreign-accented precarity, grounded in our experience. One of us brought an embodied perspective that provided insight into how health conditions, including a long-term hidden disability (Equality Act, 2010) since childhood, and physical constraints influence waterways experiences, helping to make our positionality explicit, aligning with calls for embodied reflexivity in social research. The other’s itinerant liveaboard trajectory was shaped by professional precarity and housing insecurity. Both perspectives informed our questions and resonated with participants’ accounts. Our personal experiences are invaluable analytical resources, part of our methodological scrutiny.

For us, thus, precarity encompasses more than economic instability; it also signifies broader insights of health, well-being and social ethos. We adopt a reflexive stance that frames embodied experience, including living with a long-term health condition, not as a limitation but as a generative methodological positioning.

One of us spent about 15 days a month on the houseboat and the rest on the grid. Time on the boat was adjusted due to a long-term health condition (Equality Act, 2010). Although one was occasionally absent, constant communication, regular visits, and presence on inner waterways enabled active participation, including living aboard and attending community meetings, which were essential for accessing unspoken knowledge and building trust. Another author, an itinerant liveaboard mainly on the River Lee and Stort, provided further insights. During this period, we conducted conversational interviews with current and former itinerant liveaboards from diverse backgrounds, ranging from economic and safety precarity to racial subjugation to those deliberately choosing itinerant liveaboard as a lifestyle preference. We also included (1) service providers operating near the locks, such as water point maintenance contractors, who retained responsibility for pump-outs, lock operations, and maintenance; (2) those working in the cafes near inland waterways; (3) and Canal & River Trust volunteers and fundraisers. Social events that were organised to inform the public and broader communities about fundraising and protests were observed. We collected and contextualised media and social media discourses about living on the houseboat, but used them primarily as a confirmatory tool. Contact with the liveaboard boaters was maintained throughout the research process. A photographic journal was used as a memoir and incorporated into the analysis. Guided by ethnographic intent, research is obliged to be rooted in its socio-cultural and geopolitical context to explore research phenomena without essentialising them (Wolcott, 1985). We analysed our data using reflective thematic analysis (Braun and Clarke, 2006), searching for patterns within the discourse and utilising both semantic and latent coding to identify them (Braun and Clarke, 2022). Reflective thematic analysis was performed using a six-stage recursive analytical process that consists of 1) familiarisation with the “collected” fieldwork data, 2) semantic and 3) latent coding, 4) theme development through identifying discourse patterns, 5) review and 6) refinement. Reflected thematic analysis yielded the themes of ‘dignity’, ‘freedom’, and ‘solidarity’, which served as an anchoring point for discussion. The occasional direct quotes we present are not selected at random; instead, they reflect a pattern that emerges from the reflective thematic analysis.

Accordingly, we treat Polanyi’s concept of the countermovement as both the theoretical anchor and an empirical question, using London’s liveaboard continuous cruisers as a grounded case through which to explore how countermovement dynamics are enacted and how they may be constrained, institutionalised, or commodified in the process.

Literature review

Drawing on Polanyi’s analysis of market society (Polanyi, 1944/2024), the literature review explores the theoretical context of commodification that gives rise to the countermovement, focusing on how social relations and socio-ecological factors become market objects governed by market logic. We consider greenwashing as a modern way to legitimise unregulated environmental efforts governed by market objectives, hiding or depoliticising nature’s commodification and social relations. We further explore the concept of countermovement, especially resistance to market expansion and efforts to re-embed markets. This framework supports our view that liveaboard cruisers are part of a broader countermovement that contests commodification and social-space arrangements. Lastly, reflecting Polanyi’s warning that countermovement can be co-opted and commodified, we analyse how these dynamics appear in our case.

Commodification, consumerism and greenwashing through a Polanyian lens

For Polanyi (1944/2024), market domination rests on the commodification of labour and land, a process that, as Goodwin (2018) notes, solidified the modern market system. Crucially, this commodifying logic extends beyond labour and land to encompass all spheres of life, including environmental discourse. Business decisions driven by self-interest and profit maximisation shape not only the market economy but also the framing and mobilisation of environmental concerns. Marx’s Capital, Vol 1 (Marx, 1976) (1867/1976), a brief passage on ‘the historical tendency of capitalist accumulation’, explains how the drive for accumulation leads to capital concentration, labour exploitation, and environmental degradation. It commodifies environmentalism, turning ecological concerns into a marketing tool rather than addressing the root causes of ecological destruction (Foster, 1999). The system removes a defective part, i.e. an observable part that causes pollution, but preserves the ideology of growth based on consumerism. Nevertheless, the original object that caused pollution and signified the materialist concept of growth at the expense of the environment and society is replaced by a new object that is no longer associated with the original negative connotation (Carrington et al., 2016, p. 23). Consuming products labelled as environmentally friendly, i.e. ‘eco’, ‘natural’, or ‘carbon neutral’, imposes the same ideology of growth based on intensive consumption just under the label that signifies sustainability. The broken system is rehabilitated (Alexander, 2014). This alienation between the environment and society, driven by profit growth, is a metabolic rift (Foster, 1999), a foundational concept for understanding the ecological crises society faces. Foster (1999) points out that the alienation between humans and nature stems from the historical marginalisation of nature in classical sociology and in social science more generally. Marx’s work thus reveals a complex interaction between society and the natural environment. Polanyi’s ideas draw centrally on Marx’s theorisation of primitive accumulation (Prudham, 2013) in dividing humans from nature. The relationship structures embedded in greenwashing perpetuate the system that causes injustice in the first place. In most societies, consumption remains a symbol of affluence. Material possessions are positioned as signs of happiness (Graeber, 2007). Consequently, individuals promote consumer culture influenced by aspirations to signal social status or conform to trends (Valendia-Morales et al., 2022). Thus, the planet’s sustainability cannot be attributed solely to individual consumer accountability (Giesler and Veresiu, 2014); it reflects a broader obsession with growth and consumerism as measures of success. As Lloveras et al. (2022) observe, commodification, growth, and consumption cannot resolve the problems they generate, even when growth is labelled ‘green’ consumption. Haigh’s (2012) semiotic analysis of prominent corporations’ financial reports illustrates this dynamic; terms such as ‘low carbon’, ‘green’, and ‘sustainability’ are situated on the same plane of equivalence as financial wealth and fiduciary responsibility. Environmental values, reduced to carbon metrics, become commodities. Within this framework, expressions of solidarity and ecological care carry no meaningful weight in corporate decision-making; material gains, rather than environmental ethics, drive investment decisions. Beker-Olsen and Potucek (2013) define this phenomenon as greenwashing, as the dissemination of false or deceptive information regarding an organisation’s environmental strategies, goals, motivations, and actions. In this sense, greenwashing can be read as a contemporary discursive accompaniment to commodification: it extends market logics by translating ecological responsibility into market-friendly claims while leaving core profit imperatives intact. Critiques of greenwashing question the reliability of sustainability assessments and data (Popescu et al., 2021), suggesting, for instance, that Environment, Society, and Governance (ESG)-certified investments let investors evade accountability. Haigh’s (2012) semiotic analysis shows investors fail to show genuine commitment beyond material assets. The meaning of value remains unchallenged, with fiduciary and environmental duties ignored for financial gain. ESG is used to deceive, as scholars elaborate. The concept of value remains tied to financial welfare, thereby fuelling consumption-driven growth (Scales, 2014). A gap exists between ‘sustainable’ claims in commodification and the challenge of establishing credible standards for regeneration and inclusion. Through Polanyi’s (1944/024) lens, greenwashing may represent commodification through consumerism, as its underlying motive is profiting from growth rather than meaningful social or environmental change. Against this commodifying logic, however, society may organise a protective countermovement that seeks to re-embed market relations within different meanings of value, within social and ecological limits.

The countermovement

Polanyi (1944/2012) argued that limiting the economic sphere to market phenomena overlooks significant aspects of human history. Various forms of value creation, such as integration, sharing, and cooperation, have historically co-existed with market dynamics, particularly in the context of indigenous knowledge (Cabrales Salazar et al., 2021). These alternative practices can reshape the mobilisation, production, and consumption of goods while preserving cultural identities, thereby diverging from the free-market ideologies prevalent today (Goodwin, 2018). Thus, it is conceivable to explore urbanisation practices that differ from those based on constant commodification, consumerism, competition, and individualism. A paradigmatic shift occurs once an overwhelming personal understanding of the meaning of value is disrupted (Ateljevic, 2020). One of the most important differences between Marx and Polanyi lies in their views on the role of social class in society. Marx identified the working-class struggle against capitalist exploitation as the key driver of social transformation (Selwyn and Miyamura, 2014). In contrast, Polanyi emphasises that countermovement(s) transcend class boundaries, uniting diverse groups almost spontaneously and instinctively in pursuit of social change (Polanyi, 1944/2024; Maertens, 2008).

Polanyi explores the society’s spaces and its social order through the lens of various classes and insists on regulation to protect itself. Polanyi argues that the countermovement transcends class lines to unite everyone in the struggles they face as a community. Thus, there is a clear distinction in how the class is understood within the social class system. In order for society to challenge the oppression, there must first be recognition of the main challenge that is shared between the classes within the society that comes from the different (class) background in relation to that particular context that oppresses them. That is the key discourse to be elaborated in the following sections.

Vernacularity of off-grid living

Various off-the-grid vernacular urban initiatives are present globally. Researchers stress the importance of considering off-grid transitions among economically affluent populations (Lemanski, 2023) and learning from co-production in informal sectors (Lategan and Cilliers, 2017). They ultimately aim for transformative change rooted in the needs and aspirations of those living in off-grid contexts. O’Neill (2024) explores the phenomenon of suburban off-the-municipal-grid living in Bucharest, mainly focusing on the experiences of residents, examining how the individuals, often from upwardly mobile backgrounds, are trading the comforts of socialist-era apartments for bigger, newer homes in the suburbs that lack essential municipal services such as treated water and sewage. Off-grid living symbolises a desire for a more affluent lifestyle and a claim to belonging in an “imagined First World” (ibid., p. 1). However, relying on private alternatives to municipal services leads to significant challenges and indignities, undermining the aspirational aspects of suburban living. Co-producing knowledge with social movements is crucial for improving urban development outcomes but requires addressing power dynamics and inequalities in research relationships (Mitlin et al., 2019). One of the most prominent manifestations of the vernacular concept of off-grid living is the tiny house movement, which is not simply about the size of the house but also considers non-structural factors such as design, legality, community, and environmental impact (Shearer and Burtun, 2018). The primary assumption of the tiny house movement is that living in a small space reduces the environmental impact and spatial footprint (Ford and Gomz-Lanier, 2017). Due to limited space, consumption patterns and energy use are controlled, and possessions are reduced. Living in a tiny house is considered a countercultural act against the legacy of living in large cities and large houses. Shearer and Burton (2021) illustrate ways to live that are less harmful to the environment, reduce energy costs, and support compliance with climate change regulations (Dóci and Vasileiadou, 2015).

Exemplified by the Exarcheia neighbourhood of Athens, Greece, Chatzidakis (2022) argues that the socioeconomic crisis has transformed consumer activism, shifting its focus from ideological purity to a more pragmatic approach that addresses immediate social needs. This evolution reflects a broader struggle between maintaining original anti-consumerist values and responding to the urgent demands of a crisis-ridden society. Being outside the consumerist ethos can also be interpreted as being off the grid in spatial and temporal contexts and considered as a vernacular off-grid initiative. Thus, although the citizens of Exarcheia in 2015, during the Greek crisis, did not live off-grid in its technical meaning, they went off-grid in its vernacular sense by shifting their value system.

Many movements on the periphery of the system, from permaculture (Ateljevic, 2020), being partially financially off-grid (Gelleri, 2009), doing the tiny house movement (Shearer and Burtun, 2018) and changing the nature of consumer activism (Chatzidakis, 2022), do not take the meaning of the word off-grid only technically, i.e. as a simple disconnection from the utilities (Vanini and Tagart, 2016), but in a vernacular sense to pave the way for an alternative future.

Given the infrastructural conditions of liveaboard life, we attend to off-grid living in both its technical and vernacular socio-political senses. Among continuous cruisers, off-grid practices may be adopted as a survival strategy or pursued as a matter of choice. Off-grid living, therefore, denotes, on the one hand, reduced reliance on conventional utilities and networked infrastructures and, on the other, an ideological orientation that distances everyday life from mainstream capitalist imaginaries. We position London’s liveaboard continuous cruisers in this liminal terrain, at the intersection of the material definition advanced by Vannini and Taggart (2016) and the vernacular framing developed by Chatzidakis (2022).

However, Polanyi (1944/2024) posited that countermovement can paradoxically enhance commodification.

For instance, the tiny house movement can be co-opted by social media’s influence on the desire to consume extraordinary experiences, show them to the world, and capitalise on them (Penfold et al., 2018). For instance, critics of the Slow Food movement, initiated in 1989 in Italy to promote autonomy from global industrialised food systems (Thompson and Kumar, 2018), argued that its growing popularity led to its commodification and the reinforcement of neoliberal ideals (West and Domingos, 2012). Yet, the slow food movement remained rooted in its original legacy, which politicised the therapeutic ethos of Italian left-wing politics, enabling it to remain a counterculture. This highlights the significance of intent (Thompson and Kumar, 2018) over the form of the off-grid movement in understanding the factors linking off-grid living to societal developments. In Polanyian terms, this could be framed as decommodification, since the meanings of abundance and value do not align with the dominant doctrine. Yet, decommodification in the context of successful off-grid projects does not appear as an opposition to commodification, but rather as its better versions, as it makes communities resilient to global changes, provided that the ideas remain focused on the well-being of the local environment.

Liminality and precarity of off-grid living on London Waterways

In contemporary London, precarity is a prominent feature (Kambouri, 2024). The high cost of urban housing pushes some towards narrowboats as affordable alternatives (Pérez-Martínez and Fernández, 2021). Contemporary discourse on liveaboard cruising mainly highlights precarity, with Herman and Yarwood (2024) coining ‘mobile precarity’ as an ‘ontological condition’ (ibid:1) of living on London Waterways.

Liveaboard residence on barges and narrowboats in Britain dates to the late eighteenth-century expansion, when living on the inland waterways was bound up with work on them, such as the transport of goods and materials. In contrast, most contemporary liveaboards work on the shore (Worrall, 2019). Building on the shift from work-based liveaboard to liveaboard as an alternative housing strategy, liveaboard living in Greater London took on countercultural tones mainly from the 1960s onward. In England and Wales, the British Waterways Act 1995 regulates the residential use of rivers and canals and is enforced by the Canal and River Trust (CRT, 2012). The CRT is a charitable operator (Register of Charity Commissions, 2012). Liveaboard continuous cruisers pay an annual licence fee to the CRT, starting around GBP 1,400, which increased by 9% in 2023 and 14% in 2024, in 2026 by 15%, in 2027, and by 20% and in 2028 by 25% (CRT Canal & River Trust, 2024). Reflecting societal changes in urban London’s landscapes, inland waterways deserve attention to understand precarity and instability in city life. Many London liveaboards on continuous cruising work in creative industries and universities, often under precarious contracts. In 2022, around 165,000 Londoners were on zero-hours contracts, up from 14,000 in 2010 (Office for National Statistics, 2023), with estimates that the number continues to rise. Off-grid living stems from this social precarity (Brione et al., 2024). Yet the number of itinerant liveaboards has almost doubled in the last decade (CRT, n.d.), mainly due to long-lasting austerity, the housing crisis, and energy poverty (Herman and Yarwood, 2024). According to the CRT (n.d.), the number of itinerant liveaboards on London’s canals and rivers was about 2000 boats in 2010 in the Greater London area, with around half being itinerant liveaboards on continuous cruise. By 2023, the number of boats on continuous cruising was approximately 4000 (ibid.), reflecting rising demand and a growing boating community. Thus, more use of the London Waterways requires various strategies for waterway restoration.

The research recognised many challenges related to waterways management, including pollution, degradation, and loss of socio-cultural importance (Paul and Bardhan, 2022). Alasauskaite (2021) explores one of the eco-restoration schemes piloted by CRT and London Islington City Council, in which boaters can use moorings on the Regent’s Canal in Islington if they pay an extra 33 GBP per day to use cleaner, less polluting fuels while mooring. Although this project was environmentally driven, it did not holistically consider social outcomes. The itinerant liveaboards who could not afford this charge, or did not want to move there in principle and solidarity, were pushed away from the Regents Canal, resulting in severe congestion in areas where they were not charged. These eco-charges can be sidelined through greenwashing, as they are used to push out the itinerant liveaboards and replace their presence with more commercially driven activities. Local governments, thus, co-opted consumerist discourse as a tool for economic competitiveness (Walker, 2015). Dooling (2009) coined the term “eco-gentrification” to describe the consequences of environmentally driven urban development on socially marginalised groups, a term that can indeed be applied to the pilot scheme. Sylvester and Underhill (2024) argue that London boaters are in a so-called ‘dwelling paradox’. London boaters are not counted as customers of private water companies because they are off-grid, thereby illustrating the liminality of itinerant liveaboard existence on London’s inland waterways. However, they are exposed to water and sanitation risks (ibid). Further challenges for the London liveaboard on continuous cruising include accessing National Health Service appointments, though this is partially mitigated by the availability of walk-in clinics. Another challenge is the postal address: liveaboards on continuous cruising either registered it with friends or family, or occasionally with their employer, or obtained a post box from the city council, expressing the liminality of their existence.

Although it is not legally possible to remove liveaboards from London’s inland waterways, CRT is doing so indirectly by not providing the necessary infrastructure maintenance (Cowan and Hardy, 2023, p. 175), or by monetising of mooring rights thus disturbing the ethos of liveaboard living by trying to achieve social gentrification of the mooring spaces through eco-mooring initiative thus transforming essential housing infrastructure into a market-driven asset (NBTA London brunch, 2024; CRT, n.d). Accessible only to economically wealthier boaters (Bowles, 2024), moorings that require payment beyond the licence fee thus cut out the identity and spirit of continuous cruising among liveaboards. As observed, eco-moorings remain largely empty (Figure 2). The income from eco-moorings was not achieved; the free mooring spaces are congested, resulting in an indirect attempt at social cleansing. London Boaters thus navigate between commodification and decommodification, highlighting the liminality of their existence and the paradoxical social context in which they are situated.

Figure 2.

Eco-gentrification of London's inland waterways mooring spaces. source: NBTA London, https://nbtalondon.wordpress.com/2024/05/13/new-chargeable-moorings-across-london/

Dignity, but also pride and respect

As a counteract to the precarity, a sense of dignity, pride, and respect is also observed through the lens of the vernacular off-grid lifestyle. We incorporated some of the itinerant liveaboards’ quotes to present the argument. These quotes were not chosen randomly, but illustrate a pattern observed through reflective thematic analysis.

These cases are related to housing status, i.e. homelessness, renting, and ownership and the context of subjugation, both contexts being antithetical to dignity and respect. Many itinerant liveaboards have traumatic experiences with housing and subjugation, In 2024/2025, there were 4 times as many rough sleepers in London as in 2009/2010 Trust for London (n.d.). While off-grid living is mainly individual, everyday mooring routines and shared infrastructure foster informal networks and support (Bowles, 2024). One of the reasons observed throughout the thematic analysis was that the itinerant liveaboard community was less prejudiced and expressed a capacity for care and inclusion. As observed, there is a sense of solidarity among the itinerant liveaboards to help address the chaos and precarity. Darius [pseudonym] did not understand that the previous Housing Benefits welfare scheme was replaced by the so-called Universal Credit in 2012. It resulted in the eviction. After sleeping rough in a tent, the city council confiscated their belongings. Moreover, the mob physically attacked them, leaving both physical and mental injuries. They were given shelter by a liveaboard boater. It was a 4-metre-long fibreglass boat without the engine, as the owner needed to refurbish it. With sharply increasing homelessness in London, fibreglass boats provide shelter (Worrall, 2019), thereby linking rough sleepers to life on London's inland waterways and to the liveaboard community. Another liveaboard boater, Emmanuel (pseudonym), who moored nearby, donated a tarpaulin due to an insulation challenge. Although fibreglass boats are not well insulated, former rough sleepers prefer living on inland waterways rather than on London streets or in occasional shelters. Emmanuel also accompanied Darius to the walk-in clinic, registered them with the National Health Service, and prepared food. As Darius got better, another itinerant liveaboard provided a foldable bicycle. One of the liveaboards who worked on the inland waterways and distributed coal, diesel and wood gave Darius occasional work. Helping rough sleepers was very common among London itinerant liveaboards.

Some boaters were victims of racism and prejudice, such as the case of Irish travellers being mistreated by the public. Zack (pseudonym) mentioned that despite being a skilled carpenter, they were paid as ‘nonqualified’ while working in the city. ‘Everyone thought I was a thief,’ said Mr Zack, illustrating the position of many marginalised communities in London. Zack now only serves boaters, and said: ‘These people [community-boaters] never judge me [sic].’ One boater mentioned that caring has always been part of community life; for instance, boats in the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s accommodated same-sex couples in the UK, as only a few landowners would rent properties to same-sex couples, as Carol (pseudonym) told us. In the contemporary context, boaters are marginalised in the inland waterways’ discussions and decision-making, as one of the activists mentioned, ‘Bargee Travellers have a long-standing and unenviable reputation for being on the wrong end of right-wing persecution.’

Thus, it not only helped in economic terms but also restored dignity to individuals marginalised by systemic and epistemic violence. Besides recognising the precarity of liveaboard living on London waterways, there is also an earned dignity and respect that persists in the context of liveaboard boating. Community solidarity thus became an evident pattern. Although the economic precarity is widely visible, so was the abundance of solidarity and care.

Liveaboard arrangements range from boat ownership at £10,000–£40,000 for habitable vessels (Battersby, 2025; Canal Junction, n.d), compared to London’s average property deposit of £144,000 (Hughes, 2023). Unlike property, boats incur no council tax, ground rent, or service charges, but do incur annual CRT licensing fees (£700-£1500). Itinerant liveaboards also engage in informal, trust-based renting or sharing of project boats needing refurbishment.

As one participant noted, being able to cover living costs independently brought back dignity. An NHS administrative worker, for instance, on a fixed-term, yet working full-time, needed to claim housing benefit to rent. Landlords and estate agents were hesitant to rent to those seeking benefits, so they temporarily lived on a friend’s boat. Years of austerity and crony politics, with many working full-time on precarious contracts, have led to socioeconomic precarity (Haile, 2023). Another pattern was that itinerant liveaboards chose the lifestyle to avoid renting or buying land-based property.

Emmanuel (pseudonym) mentioned that although they ‘dreamed of living off-grid and being more self-sufficient’, it took courage to rent a friend’s boat on trust. The main reason for living on the boat was to live alone, which was unaffordable despite a full-time job. Emmanuel, a captain with relevant skills, chose the boat as an option.

My parents would like to visit me, but it is not possible in a shared flat. I could not afford to rent a flat alone, so my only possibility was to live on the boat. I only needed a trigger to move to the boat, and welcoming my parents was that trigger.

Furthermore, the high rents and challenging contracts with agencies and property developers were very stressful; thus, as one of the boaters said directly, ‘…Living on a boat brought me back my dignity [sic]…’

One liveaboard boater on continuous cruising said they could not obtain a mortgage because they were self-employed with fluctuating income. Instead of making a mortgage deposit, they bought a boat…‘I had some savings, and instead of using them as a deposit for a mortgage, I bought a houseboat.’ They benefited from not being dependent on fluctuations in mortgage interest rates that brought many London households to the verge of collapse. Indeed, the Monetary Policy Committee's previous rate cycle rose from 0.1% in December 2021 to 5.25% in August in response to rising inflation (Brione et al., 2024).

Freedom, but also responsibility and sacrifice

Itinerant liveaboards utilise mainly off-grid solar energy, supplemented with wood and coal in winter. They manually handle off-grid energy production. Living off the grid is paired with energy poverty. As communicated by Emmanuel (Pseudonym)…It is freezing. You go for a walk to gather the wood, chop the wood and afterwards add smokeless briquettes to light the fire. You appreciate it when you are aware of this effort and how much energy it takes to heat the home…

Wood-burning stoves on liveaboard vessels present an environmental paradox. While often perceived as a sustainable heating option, they emit CO2 and, more critically, particulate matter (PM2.5), with impacts exacerbated in dense urban settings.

UK emissions inventories identify domestic solid-fuel burning as a major source of PM2.5, but usually do not separate emissions from wood-burning stoves on liveaboard boats. Yet, emissions from the boats are likely small compared to heating a larger flat. A boat’s smaller volume requires less energy for heating and cooking and is used sparingly only when solar energy is insufficient. Thus, nationally, boat emissions are small but can occasionally be significant in dense urban moorings in winter (EMEP/EEA, 2019). An itinerant liveaboard understands the effort to generate energy off-grid and uses it responsibly. It is not only about responsibility towards the natural environment, it also requires liveaboards' time and energy to produce energy when solar panels are insufficient.

Awareness of resource scarcity also significantly influenced water usage. For instance, one itinerant liveaboard commented, I think twice about showering on the boat, noting that refilling the water tank requires significant time and organisation. The boat's physical space constraints, along with time and logistics, also had a major impact. Because the boat's volume is much smaller than a flat, residents had to reduce their material possessions. The analysis shows that these circumstances led to a distinct shift in consumption habits, as written.

I only wanted to live on the boat temporarily until I get a mortgage, but I do not want to leave anymore. I minimised the number of possessions I own… so rewarding to be part of this and to feel a sense of community.

The sense of becoming part of the community is observed and discussed in both semantic-implicit and latent-explicit forms. Within this context, value is redefined, shifting from material accumulation towards community resilience and resource autonomy. The daily labour of producing energy, rationing water consumption, and curating possessions is not only a mundane routine but also a political practice. This work is the basis for pairing responsibilities with achieving freedom from the economic pressures of high rent, centralised utility costs and mortgages. This autonomy is not a passive state but one that must be actively produced and maintained. It depends on a deep sense of responsibility, manifested in mindful resource consumption that is in stark contrast to their taken-for-granted status in conventional urban spaces. For these itinerant liveaboard, managing their mobile domestic space becomes an act of earned sovereignty, where freedom and responsibility are inextricably linked.

Furthermore, this behavioural transformation may persist beyond the duration of living liveaboard, as one former boater explained:

We no longer live on the boat, but we learned so much about resources… and how to be grateful when we have them. We will never take them for granted.

The quotation illustrates how practical necessities can be turned into lasting principles. The gratitude and resource awareness developed on the water are adopted as a permanent ethic, changing how individuals consume regardless of their living environment. Itinerant liveaboard status thus functions as a pedagogical space, imparting lessons that persist even when individuals transition back to life on land. The daily discipline of managing scarce resources fosters an enduring consciousness that outlasts the material circumstances that gave rise to it.

Solidarity: Keeping the community together

‘People from all walks of life have continuously inhabited the rivers and canals. Some wealthy, some not, some temporary, some permanent…’ as one of the itinerant liveaboards wrote.

While class privilege remains a distinct determinant of success in the UK (Ashley and McDonald, 2024), the shared precarity of the “itinerant liveaboard, i.e. continuous cruiser” lifestyle fosters a unique cross-class solidarity. Itinerant liveaboards, regardless of background, face identical infrastructural deficits, from water shortages to congestion, which necessitate an ethics of care and sharing. This communal ethos operates as a counterculture to the hegemonic values of London’s financial sector, characterised by individualism, inequality, and wealth accumulation (Edwards-Dashti, 2022; Onaran et al., 2022). The UK economy, dominated by the financial sector, accounted for 12.8% of the UK’s economic output in 2022 and 13% in 2023 (City of London Corporation, 2024).

However, itinerant liveaboards are existentially threatened by the Canal & River Trust’s (CRT) shift toward a neoliberal “user-pays” model following a £300 million reduction in state grants (Figure 3). To survive, the CRT aggressively commodified waterways (CRT, Canal & River Trust, 2024). As Cowan and Hardy (2023, p. 175) argue, since direct eviction is legally complex, the CRT instead effects indirect displacement by withholding necessary infrastructure maintenance. When combined with the privatisation of public canal paths and mooring spaces ( CRT, 2025), this strategy transforms essential inland waterways housing into a market commodity accessible only to the itinerant boaters willing to pay (Bowles, 2024). This “social cleansing” disturbs the liveaboard ethos; yet, as bookable eco-moorings remain largely empty (Figure 2), the strategy appears to generate displacement without the anticipated financial return, indirectly disturbing the itinerant liveaboard ethos and existence, creating fear and anxiety.

Figure 3.

Government grant proposal settlement.

Complementing these economic pressures, the CRT tried to deploy specific spatial governance mechanisms, most notably ‘Water Safety Zones’ (WSZs), to effectively reduce residential mooring capacity (CRT, 2023). These zones facilitate enforcement against boaters in areas re-designated for corporate and leisure consumption. The NBTA London brunch (2024) characterises this as “forced commodification,” arguing that the enclosure of waterways and displacement of the liveaboard community are prerequisites for introducing high-yield, for-profit activities (Cowan and Hardy, 2023).

The implementation of WSZs revealed a procedural bias: while complaints regarding “visual disturbance” were solicited from residents of new luxury waterside developments, liveaboard communities were largely excluded from consultation, generating existential insecurity about their housing tenure. Despite protests, the CRT commenced enforcement in January 2022 (CRT, 2025). Based on recent Freedom of Information (FOI) disclosures, the Canal & River Trust (CRT) spent £860,000 on external contractors for boat removal in the 2024-25 financial year. This expenditure is part of a broader, costly enforcement framework, with total enforcement costs—including internal teams and legal fees—amounting to approximately £4.31 million in that period (ibid.).

 This expenditure reinforces the view of NBTA representatives that the policy seeks to erase the existence of the itinerant liveaboard community, thereby impoverishing the urban landscape of inland waterways.

In response to these existential threats, the NBTA mobilised campaigns such as ‘Stop the Boat Cull’ and ‘Boats are our Homes,’ transforming the River Lee into a site of political contestation where visual media (Figure 4) asserted collective resilience against displacement. This resistance is grounded not only in the physical defence of space but also in the legal assertion of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights; i.e., the right to respect for one’s private life and home. As one London-based NBTA representative articulated:

This is my home–it is where I’m raising my daughter. To have CRT try to force me out of it makes me more resolved to defend it so that the waterways can remain a place for everyone.

Figure 4.

Stop the Boat Cull! and No Mooring sign, London, Hackney. Source: Author.

This resolution highlights a crucial theoretical distinction observed on the waterways. While a traditional Marxist analysis views class conflict as the primary engine of change, the situation on London’s canals is better understood through a Polanyian lens. Marx focuses on the structural conflict between classes, such as the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, to dismantle capitalism; however, Polanyi (1944/2024) focuses on the tension between the self-regulating market and society’s protection and solidarity. The CRT’s attempt to enforce a dominant market logic, i.e. commodifying waterways and treating housing as a revenue stream, triggered what Polanyi described as a “countermovement.” On the canals, this countermovement transcends traditional class lines. Whether from privileged backgrounds or precarious working conditions, itinerant liveaboards face a threat to their existence. Thus, instead of fracturing along class lines, the community converges around a shared aim: to live with dignity. This solidarity confirms Polanyi’s argument that when the market threatens the fundamental substance of human life, in this case, the home, society organises a protective response that bridges social divides.

Conclusion

This research explored London’s continuous cruising itinerant liveaboard community as a distinct mode of semi-off-grid living, characterised simultaneously by a technical withdrawal from networked infrastructures and a vernacular distancing from dominant capitalist imaginaries. This liminal condition is best understood through Polanyi’s double movement: the ongoing push to commodify urban space, infrastructures, and social reproduction, and the countervailing practices through which marginalised groups seek protection, re-embedding, and alternative value creation.

The research first positions the waterways not as a lifestyle backdrop but as a politically charged socio-spatial field in which liveaboards negotiate housing, work, mobility, and belonging from the land back to the water perspective, thus challenging terra-centric assumptions in urban theory (Bowles et al., 2019) while foregrounding the materialities of movement, mooring, and infrastructural constraint. Methodologically, sustained embodied engagement and reflexive “participant objectivation” enabled access to the ordinary ethics and unspoken knowledges through which cruising life is organised, while recognising how researchers’ own precarity and health shaped what could be seen, felt, and asked. Combined with conversational interviews and reflective thematic analysis, this approach grounded the debates on commodification and countermovement in the lived realities of everyday survival and collective care. Empirically, the study shows that mobile precarity (Herman and Yarwood, 2024) is not merely a descriptive label, but a governance condition produced at the intersection of London’s housing crisis, labour insecurity, and waterway regulation. Rising licence fees, intensified enforcement, congested moorings, limited access to services (healthcare registration, postal address, sanitation), and the displacement effects of “environmental” initiatives together expose how infrastructural marginality is politically made and unevenly borne. At the same time, this research argued that the community’s responses cannot be reduced to either romantic autonomy or bare coping and compliance. Instead, dignity, freedom, and solidarity emerge as patterned, relational achievements that counteract stigma and insecurity, including practices of mutual aid for former rough sleepers, refusal of judgment across lines of racism and traveller prejudice, and an insistence that “boats are our homes” in the face of institutional strategies that extract the meaning of home to its bare market value. Themes of dignity, freedom and solidarity clarify how decommodification operates here less as a withdrawal from the city than as a contested revaluation of what counts as value and what the meaning of value is. The value of time, care, shared know-how, and resource attentiveness, generated through the daily labour of heating, water management, and living-with-less, which in turn reshapes consumption habits and environmental sensibilities, even when boaters later return to land-based housing. The analysis also cautions against treating off-grid practices as inherently green or politically secure. In this context, drawing on critiques of greenwashing and eco-gentrification, the research shows how environmental discourse can be mobilised to legitimise social exclusion of eco moorings, and to translate ecological concern into a user-pays regime that displaces low-income residents, while simply reshuffling mooring spaces without addressing the challenge. The environmental paradox of wood-burning stoves underlines that sustainability claims must be situated, scalar, and attentive to local atmospheric impacts rather than resting solely on “smallness” or self-provision. In this sense, the waterways become a diagnostic site for contemporary urban politics. The CRT’s turn toward commercialisation under fiscal pressure, the monetisation and enclosure of mooring space, including pre-bookable moorings and Water Safety Zones, and consultation practices that privilege adjacent property owners, illustrate how market logics migrate into the governance of what, for many, functions as essential housing infrastructure. Yet these same pressures also intensify cross-class solidarities and collective claims to protection, aligning closely with Polanyi’s insight that countermovements can transcend class boundaries even as they remain vulnerable to co-optation and institutional capture. The contribution of this research is, therefore, threefold. First, it extends Polanyian political economy into a waterborne, mobile housing context. Second, it reframes off-grid living as a socio-spatial politics of decommodification enacted through mundane infrastructures and moral economies rather than through spectacular alternative lifestyle narratives. Third, it demonstrates how dignity functions as an analytical hinge linking precarity, governance, and value transformation in an urban setting where the housing crisis is increasingly managed through marketised access to space. Finally, the findings carry direct implications for urban governance, i.e. if waterways are to remain spaces for everyone, policy must treat continuous cruising as a legitimate housing form with corresponding infrastructural and participatory rights, rather than as an externality to be priced out through environmental charging, enforcement outsourcing, or the incremental privatisation of mooring and canal path spaces. More inclusive consultation and social-impact assessment are necessary to avoid eco-gentrification dynamics that punish poverty under the banner of sustainability. By centring the lived ethics of resource care and mutual support, the paper argues for a re-evaluation of urban value creation that recognises social and environmental wellbeing as constitutive rather than residual goals of city-making. It positions London’s liveaboard community as a fragile but instructive countermovement whose resilience exposes both the limits of market urbanism and the political possibilities latent in everyday practices of re-embedding.

Finally, this research highlights how the liveaboard community actively confronts the ‘metabolic rift’, the deepening alienation between society and the environment, driven by the capitalist imperative of profit growth (Foster, 1999). However, this rift is further deepened and sustained by a ‘terra-centric’ spatial logic that naturalises sedentary land ownership while treating water as a chaotic ‘other’ (Bowles et al., 2019). By shifting our analytical vantage point from land to water, we sought to denaturalise these assumptions, revealing that the continuous cruiser lifestyle is not merely a housing solution but an attempt to heal this rift. In refusing to be fixed to the land, these boaters reject the static commodification of nature, embodying a fluid, metabolic relation to the urban environment that rethinks motion, temporality, and matter.