The State´s Poverty Trap: The Reproduction of Informal Settlements in Santiago, Chile 1990 - 2017
Author: Valentina Abufhele, valentina.abufhele@gmail.com
Department: Department of Sociology
University: The New School for Social Research, United States
Supervisor: Virág Molnár
Year of completion: 2018
Language of dissertation: English
Keywords:
Informal settlements
, Poverty
, Governmentality
, Subjectivities
Areas of Research:
Housing and Built Environment
, Political Sociology
, Regional and Urban Development
Abstract
This dissertation analyzes the persistence of informal settlements in the city of Santiago, Chile during the last 27 years (1990-2017). Although informal settlements have historically been a common feature in Chilean cities, their continuity became noteworthy during a period of democratic governments characterized by an upturn in macro-economic performance, decreased poverty rates, and—paradoxically—state efforts to reduce informality through the increasing provision of housing to low-income groups. Building upon Foucauldian scholarship the dissertation argues that a “regime of government” of informal settlements has contributed to reproducing informality through the practices and interactions of state actors and informal settlement residents. I explore the emergence, consolidation and effects of this regime of government through a qualitative multi-methods study that includes documental analysis, interviews, and participant observations.
Against explanations that understand informality as produced by residents’ poverty or by their practices of resistance, I suggest that informal settlements’ persistence responds to the operation of a regime of government structured around a “politics of poverty.” That is, a framework that represents and intervenes upon informal settlements as “territories of poverty.” Through the politics of poverty the state makes informal settlements visible and legible, and shapes a housing policy aimed to render this population governable. However, the politics of poverty has become instrumental for residents, too. Residents engage in a tactical appropriation of the state’s politics to make informal settlements useful as a means to improve their immediate economic situation and access to permanent housing.
This empirical approach to the persistence of settlements serves as a lens to analyze changing power relationships between authorities and low-income residents, and between political government and self-government practices. Contrary to theories that understand informality as driven exclusively by neoliberalism, my case shows that it results from the assemblage of three political rationalities: neoliberal, social-democratic, and paternalist-assistance. The assemblages of political rationalities create entwined yet conflicting practices of political and self-government. Subjects mirror and refract the government rationalities imposed on them, creating a “poverty trap”: a mechanism that reproduces informality. Finally, these practices are not fixed and permanent but subject to changes, altering power relationships over time.
